Cynthia Erivo (40:42)

Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow caller. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire. We're so done with New Year, new you. This year it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Geminis because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want. And you know what? We love that for you, someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble.

Alan (41:24)

Hey there, you passionate podcast listener. This is Alan from Broadway Podcast Network, dropping in real fast to make sure you know that the network has a full day of live podcast panels already scheduled for Saturday, February 8th as part of this year's BroadwayCon. It's also the 10th anniversary of BroadwayCon as so in addition to BPN's events, there are some additional amazing events planned. All you need is a one ticket which gets you into all three days of BroadwayCon here in New York City. And if you haven't purchased a ticket already, head over to broadwaycon.com and use code BPN for 15% off your ticket. That's broadwaycon.com using code BPN for 15% off. And you can even visit BPN FM broadwaycon to see our confirmed schedule of events. Hope to see you there.

Ariana Grande (42:15)

And we're back. So this past Saturday I got to see one of the final previews of English at Roundabout Theatre Company. It is the 2023 Pulitzer Prize winning play by Sanaz Toosi, who I did not know much about. I did some research on her after the fact. She is the daughter of Iranian immigrants, which takes into effect with the themes of this play and she started writing it in 2017 before she graduated from Tisch. In 2018, it was done at the Atlantic Theatre Company. In 2022, it was also done at the Goodman Theatre rather recently. But this is its Broadway debut and it takes place in Iran in 2008 over the course of a few months during an English class where the students range in ages and reasons for wanting to learn English, as well as the teacher of the class and her reasons for teaching it and what English, the language, means to all of them, as well as what it means to learn a new language. The play is mostly a comedy, I would say. It's overall a comedy with a lot of heart to it, with a lot of meat on the bone and I'll say right off the bat, like, I really enjoyed this. I thought it was a incredibly well acted. This has really been a phenomenal season for acting ensembles this Eureka Day, Cult of Love, Hills of California, O Mary, Even just really wonderful groups of actors who have a clear understanding of their character, of their character's journey, as well as what their character means to the overall tapestry of the production. Right. There's no one who's trying to steal the spotlight from anyone else. Everyone is in service to everyone on stage. Everyone gets their moment to shine. Everyone is a giving scene partner, generous scene partner and really listens and is dropped in. And everyone has a naturalistic quality to their performance while being able to project it to the back row of the theater, which is a lot harder than it sounds. You see so many film actors come to stage and just completely get washed up in the scenery because they can't go further than the first three rows. And you also see actors who maybe studied theater for a long time, but maybe not the deeper elements of performance. They know how to perform, they know how to present, but they maybe are not as good at the dropped in elements of acting. It's a really tough balance to crack. So I want to commend all the actors in this show, first of all. So the play, it doesn't totally center around any one character necessarily. I would say if we were to have any leads, the two leads would be. Pardon me for any mispronunciations. I do. It's been two and a half days since I saw the show and and I tried to go back online to see the pronunciations of the characters so I could be a little more sure about my memory of how it's pronounced and I couldn't find any. So Elam is one of these students played by Tala Ash and she's definitely like the main student character in the show and is probably a co lead with Marjane who is the teacher played by the actress Marjan Nechet. And as I said, every character in the show has a reason for wanting to be there. Elam wants to be a doctor. She wants to study medicine and the body and she wants to learn in Australia what makes certain diseases happen, what ails people and how to cure them. And she can't do that in Iran. She can only. Or she can only do it so far in Iran. And she wants to go to Australia to be a teaching assistant and then get a fellowship and you know, really excel because she's a smart person. But in order to do that, she has to learn English. And there's a test that they have to take in order to qualify for their green card. For their green card or for their passport. And it's called the toefl. And you know, you have, you have to pass it. It's a very hard exam. You have to hit a specific percentage in order to pass. And we eventually find out that Elam has taken it five times, I think, and has failed it every single time. And she's getting frustrated because she is a very smart person, but she feels very dumb learning English. English is a very hard language in a lot of ways. So many words can mean a million things, and there are turns of phrases that can make no sense to the ear of someone from a different country. And so language in general is easier for some people to learn than for others. And no one wants to sound or feel stupid. And when you have a limited vocabulary as you are learning a new language, it's so easy to just feel stupid. And that is probably like the number one thing that gets at our sensitivity. Right. More so than physical stuff. You know, someone can call you ugly and, yeah, like, that can sting for a second, but it's also, it's the face and body you have and you can work out more and, you know, get in stronger shape, but even that, there's only so much you can do. Some body types just lean towards lean, some go towards thicker or muscular. And there's all different ways and shapes to be healthy. Right. And every culture has a different idea of what beauty is. But when someone comes for your intelligence, that is, I feel like a more raw nerve than anything else. Despite how shallow so much of our culture is, intelligence is the thing that people come for. And you can always learn more. There's no shame in not knowing something so long as you are willing to learn and you absorb it and you carry it with you as you continue. Right. But also, we've talked about this on the podcast before. People don't love to admit either when they're wrong or when they just don't know something. So many people now, we sort of trained everyone to feel like it's more important to be the one teaching the information than the one absorbing the information. And what English as a play does is it sort of gets to the root of how everyone can feel silly and how they better themselves, you know, from any kind of humiliation or egg on face. Right. Egg on face and humiliation is basically the same thing. So that is Elam. There's Goli, who is the youngest student. She's I think she's 18, and I can't recall if they say why she's there, why she wants to take the toefl. I think she also wants to study abroad and possibly pursue a career in a different country. But also she just genuinely enjoys learning English and as it turns out, is quite good at learning it, much more so than Elam. There's also Roya, who is, in contrast, that the oldest student there. And Roya is learning English because her son has immigrated to Canada and supposedly he doesn't want her to move to Canada with him until she learns English because he has married someone and they now have a kid and they're teaching their daughter English only, and they want Roya to be able to converse with their daughter. So they're like, until you pass your TOEFL and, you know, can get your green card, you can't come here. So she's there to learn so she can communicate with him and with her granddaughter. And then there's Omid, who is by far the most learned of the group, the most advanced. And I'll get to sort of him in a second. He doesn't really have a reason for being there in any way. And it's perhaps the only real fatal flaw I have with the play is his character. But that's. We'll get to that. Marjan is the teacher. And we learned that Marjan spent nine years living in London and loved it and eventually came back to Iran, got married, had a child, and teaches English in this. It seems like a community center almost, or at this school, to help everyone with their toefls. And she makes it a point to always have the class speak English in class. That's what she says. You know, when you're here, we are speaking English. And in her mind, it is to make everyone better at it, to make it feel more like a first language than a second one, to make it just sort of come naturally to them, which is, there is truth to that. If you read Eat, Pray, Love. God, I can't believe I'm referencing Eat, Pray Love. But if you read Eat, Pray, Love, what Elizabeth says in that book is part of the reason why she was able to grasp Italian so quickly was that she just immersed herself in all of it and just learned what everything meant through conversation as well as through memorization. And the more she forced herself to use it every day, the easier it got. And so she was able to sort of flip in and out of English and Italian very easily. And that is ultimately what Marjan is trying to get the class to do is to stop translating in their head and be able to think in English. Easier said than done, right? When you spend your whole life with one language that is so incredibly different from another and you're learning this new language, you are translating in your head constantly. And it takes so much brain power to be able to not just immediately go to a translation mind frame, right? You have to just sort of. You kind of have to do repetition, memorization until eventually something breaks through. And Elam is already very resentful of this. As, as we've mentioned, she's. It's not coming easy to her. She's resentful of the language, which she eventually admits that she does hate English as a language and she's learning it basically because she has to, and she's viewing it as something to conquer. Goli very much enjoys English. She likes how it sounds, she likes the fluidity of it and she likes how she feels as she's learning it. And when she's impressing people in her life with the English that she knows, Roya couldn't care less. She's doing it because she has to. She has, you know, a semi talent for learning it, but she's not super keen about it and ultimately decides to kind of stand down from it and sort of retreats from the lessons eventually because she finds English to be the enemy after a time and really resents what it has turned her son into. And we never meet Roya's son, but we do watch voice messages that she sends him as well as a voice message he sends her that she recites to the class later on. Omad, we learn, has an American family. He spent a lot of time in America back and forth, but he considers himself Iranian and he is by all intents and purposes fluent, which is unfair because it is a class for advanced learners, but not fluent speakers. And I'm going to get into a little bit of a spoiler alert with this character in a minute. But Omid and Marjane connect in a way. Marjane really does miss London and misses Speaking English. We find out that no one in her family does. Her husband and her child don't really. She likes watching romantic comedies in English that her daughter gets bootlegs up for her. So, you know, we watch her watch Notting Hill in the classroom and Omid sits in with her and they speak English together, sometimes flipping into Farsi, but mostly in English. And what we learn is that Omid actually has dual citizenship and is choosing to live in Iran and goes to these classes Sort of for a reason we don't understand or ever hear about. You know, he's not there to take the toefl. He's not, you know, he's not planning to immigrate back to America. He's. We find out he's engaged to a woman. Despite the connection and flirtation he has with Marjan, the emotions that they have with each other, his character really more exists for Marjan to have her own emotional breakthrough, right? She's projecting onto him all the things she loves about the English language and the English speaking world. And she doesn't necessarily have resentment towards her home country, at least I don't think so. She's accused of it, but we don't really get evidence of that. But she maybe does not love it or is as proud of it as everyone else is of speaking Farsi, of being from Iran. She talks so lovingly about living in London and being able to tell a woman on the street where you know something, giving them directions for a place because she just came off like a native speaker. And there is a pride of that, of being able to fool people that you are. That you belong somewhere when you maybe originally did not. That's why so many people who move to New York love it when they can call themselves a New Yorker. Right? And everyone else in this show has a reason and has reason for being there, as well as a reason for maybe leaving. And Omid, as you find out, has this dual citizenship, is engaged to a woman, doesn't plan to leave, doesn't plan to take the toffel. So it's never really understood why he's there to begin with. It's really that he's there almost as a plot device for Marjan to learn more about herself because she realizes that she, despite the connection she has with him, the feelings she has for him, there's not a lot she does know about him. She's connected to the sides of himself that he's allowed her to see. And he questions her as, why is it, you know, you only like me when I speak English? We never speak Farsi together. And there, I mean, there is truth to that. They don't really speak Farsi with each other. In fact, Marjan doesn't speak Farsi till the very end of the show. And it's. There is a dramatic device they use for the Farsi in this play, which is that whenever the characters are speaking the English language, they speak it with an accent, some heavier than others, some in more broken English than others. As I said, everyone is sort of at a different level of. Fluency. Yeah, fluency. But when they speak in Farsi, they speak English, but without any accent. And you see how much more comfortable certain characters are when they speak in their native language. This is a helpful for an audience because it provides no subtitles for them and people hate reading and it gives you the shorthand as an Amer, as an English speaking audience. The everything, all the information you need from the show as well as the difficulty characters have with the English language when you can see that they are intelligent and have a point of view and humorous and the intimacy they have with each other when they're speaking in their native language. The. I won't say it's a twist, but the coup de theatre that the play does in the last about five minutes is again, spoiler alert. Takes her tafel finally and passes with flying colors. And she and Marjane have a heart to heart because they butt heads a lot throughout the show. Marjane is there to teach everybody, but she is relatively cold to Alamo, who granted, does not make it easy to be warm to Alam is very opinionated and very contradictory. She loves sort of poking the bear and ultimately that leads to her saying a lot of hurtful things to people, even if she doesn't mean it to be. And because she is so much resentment of the class and the English language, she constantly is flipping back into Farsi and Marjan uses it sort of against her. And Alam is always trying to ask Marjan to speak to her in Farsi so they can connect. And she genuinely asks her, why is it you don't like me? I'm your student, you can't play favorites. And I know you like Omid. We all see it. And when she does pass, she and Marjan speak in Farsi, but it's not the Farsi that we've been hearing. It's not English with no accent. It is actually the Farsi language and there are no subtitles. And we just watch these two women for a total of three minutes tops at the very end of the play. Connect with each other and be intimate with each other and be proud of each other and understand each other in their own language. And I didn't stay afterwards. There was a talk back afterwards and I couldn't go. I had a meeting afterwards, but my friend Sophia stayed. I took Sophia with my press tickets and Sophia had told me that the playwright had said that, like, the number one question she always gets is, why didn't you provide subtitles for the end of the play? And the playwright says, if you can't sit in the discomfort of not knowing what someone else is saying for, you know, no more than three minutes, then you absolutely did not understand anything about this play, which is totally fair. And guess what? There are people who are totally roundabout subscribers, Atlantic Theatre Company subscribers, who definitely have seen this play and don't understand why there aren't subtitles. It's the difference between going to theater because it's what you do. It's, you know, part of the culture. And you want to tell people you saw the thing. You want to be proud that you saw the thing by the person and actually sitting there and taking it in and understanding a play where it's at, where it's coming from and what it's trying to do, you don't have to enjoy it, you don't have to like the play, but you need to try to understand what the play is doing before you can make a statement about it or even ask the playwright questions about it. You know, I mentioned this before on the pod, but with my own play, when I had someone give me notes on it, I listened, and I didn't write a single note down because it became very clear to me early on, this person had no idea what it was I was trying to accomplish. And it wasn't that they weren't smart. It was that their notes all of a sudden were no longer relevant. And I feel like the playwright, whenever they hear this question, they must get frustrated. But it's also like that question ultimately says more about you as the audience than it does about me. As I said, this whole cast is pretty phenomenal. I love the majority of the characters. Omid is sort of an anomaly, and he's not a bad character. He's just. I don't think he's as fleshed out as everyone else, which is, you know, my biggest gripe with it. And it's not even one that makes me not like the play. It's just where everyone else has so many facets to them and dynamics to them. I wish that he, considering he is so important to the journey of Marjan and the dynamic of the class as a whole, you wish there was a little bit more to him and he feels a bit more like a plot device. Elam is a really wonderful character. So smart, so insightful, says a lot of truthful things, but is ultimately has no tact and is. Is the epitome of condition, but can't take it. And it results from a deep insecurity, as I said, when nobody ever wants to feel stupid. No one ever wants to feel like the dumbest one in the room. And when you are speaking a different language around people who speak it better than you, you can feel like the odd duck. And that is absolutely what Alam does not want. And you she's giving a presentation on a medical discovery and she wants to read the article in English, which she's doing very well. But then Marjane makes her not recite it, says put it down and give us the gist in your own words. And you see her struggle to do so. She's able to, but it's not as confident and you understand all of the intricacies of this person. And then you have someone like Guli who her interests are that of an 18 year old girl. The very first scene is her for show and tell showing her brow pencil and why she likes it. And she's having trouble describing it at first. She's, you know, it's the beginning of their, of their class journey. But she gets better at English as the play continues. She's actually in my opinion the best in the class because she is starting so much further back than Omid and she gets maybe not as good as he is, but so much better in such a short period of time, whereas he doesn't ever really progress. And she gives this dissertation on Ricky Martin's. She bangs and she understands what the lyrics mean literally as well as metaphorically. And she is able to give a very insightful presentation on, on this song that's both very funny and very sweet. But then she kind of gets not made fun of but she gets reprimanded for by Elam who's like, why did you pick a song in English? Why don't you pick a song in your own tongue and, and explain it to us in English? And you know, such a silly song too. But Goalie likes the song, she likes the English language. And you know, she's 18 and an older person has humiliated her a little bit so she stops herself. But she does ultimately hold her head up high every time she gets kicked down a bit and comes back up being even better at English. And that has nothing to do about the language of English. But the character of Goli, you know this, the language is not the point of the show. It is the reason that we are able to get insight to each character of what makes them tick and what they take pride in and what brings them joy. And I think that it also sort of shines a light on us and any kind of biases that we May have. When we hear someone speak our language and they're not a native speaker, right? And so many people, because they hear broken English, they equate that with a baby learning words. And they'll go, well, you're 45 years old. Why are you speaking like the 3 year old in the park? And it's so fascinating how people just are not willing to expand their brain beyond that rationale. Right? When we did the King and I episode with Corey, we talked about this. People talk about how that show maybe shouldn't be done. And I fully disagree. And one of the main reasons people talk about it is the character of the King of Siam and, oh, the broken English he speaks in and all the stereotypes he has and all these things. And I'm like sitting here going, are you aware of how smart a person has to be not only to speak another language, but understand that language and be able to have a sense of humor in that language? The King of Siam and the King and I is reading the Bible, makes an observation about the Bible, and then later on is able to make a joke referencing the Bible. It's like a throwback. And I'm like, that is a fucking intelligent dude. He has his limitations because it's the. He has the world that he's known for so long, but he's also questioning that world, which is also incredibly insightful and intelligent. Right? It's. It bums me out when people take things at face value in both directions. Either hearing someone speak in a language that's not theirs and consider them dumb because they're not fluent, or to think that a work is problematic because it's not holding every character up to the highest standard of human excellence. First of all, no one ever clears that hurdle. But that's also not where drama lives. But also, it's not a playwright's job to make every community not only feel seen, but feel exceptional. It's their job to find the stories of the world and make them sing. And if you're really good at what you do, you can take a story that is not the story of the majority of the room, and you can make them understand. They'll never live it. It'll never be baked into their skin, but it will stay with them and it'll give them some perspective as they continue onwards. That is what the best theater does. And I think that English does accomplish that very well. It's a story with characters that many people in that theater would never know. It makes them feel like they know them when the show is over. And understands them a little bit better and maybe gives them some new insights and I think that's very special and I want to commend Roundabout for doing it. I think it's a wonderful play. I look forward to seeing what future Roundabout seasons are like and I highly recommend that you all go see it. So please go see English while you can. I'm going to do a quick wrap up now as we head towards the end of this episode and if you have any questions about English, maybe how I feel about its Tony chances now that I've seen it, you can ask me on the Discord Channel. I do think Tala Ash I said this in the predictions episode. She was nominated for, I believe the Lortel and the Drama Desk for leading actress in a play. And as I said, she is probably the closest thing to a lead or co lead that the play has and I think that she would be a formidable nominee. I would love to see that happen. It's not the star vehicle that picture of Dorian Gray or Hills of California is. It's not the two hander that job is. But it's a. You know, I think that this is a very strong contender for play. Hopefully not revival because it's the fucking wild west now that Eureka days a revival. Alright, so moving on. Telemachos, which if you've seen it or you know anything about it, you know why I call it that. Telemachos is the workshop one man production of the first four books of Homer's the Odyssey as created and performed by Joseph Medeiros. Joseph Medeiros is a Broadway performer. He's been in Groundhog Day and Matilda and plenty of other shows. And he went back to school to study the classics and studied Homer's Odyssey and learned it and memorized it in its original ancient Greek. He's been workshopping this for a while. I first heard about this, funnily enough, from Bub. The famous Bub of whom yours truly is inspired by, heard about this from Bub a little over two years ago. He had gone to one of Joseph's early performances of this and told me about it and I heard it and I was like that sounds pretentious and I hate it. But then my friend Aaron, Aaron Albano, who you might have seen in the Yours Truly streaming and you might have seen him with me on theater, all the moving parts talking about Wicked. He informed me about it as tickets were going on sale for this workshop and he had said it was really good. So I went, oh, let's give it A chance. So Joseph Medeiros had basically spent the better part of a year or two workshopping the first book in Ancient Greek. And he would perform it in his apartment for an audience of three people, no more. And as I said, Bub had seen that first book and really spoke highly of it. Aaron spoke very highly of it. But then Joseph also started workshopping the second book. And he was doing that in Ancient Greek, but he was doing it out in the park again for like an audience of three, maybe four. And then he started workshopping books three and four as well. And he put all four together for what was a six hour performance with two intermissions. One was 30 minutes, one was 15. And the entire thing, well, not the entire thing, But I'd say 99% of it was indeed in Ancient Greek. And it was him performing those first four books for us. And I don't know how to describe it truthfully. It is as a feat of theatricality. It is incredible because Joseph is at the root of all of it. He has, if you look through the program, he does have people who've helped him produce it and have been advisors on it. Because when you are creating something yourself, designing it and staging yourself, you need outside eyes to help you put it all together and make sure it looks how you want it to look. But ultimately this all comes from him. And it's a production that is a sense of theatrical ingenuity and wonder is such, like, a flowery word, but it's all I can really think of. He uses all of these household items and toys and food to create props and sets and costumes to play multitudes of roles, to explain to an audience what is happening in a story physically. And does all these drawings and he pulls them out of the wall and underneath the table and turns a blue pillow into an ocean as he puts a toy boat across it. And you understand that Odysseus has left the island of Calypso. And he does this whole assembly of Penelope suitors with different soccer jerseys on. And you understand who each person is and who they're speaking to based on what jersey he's wearing and what jersey he's looking at. He also incorporates the audience. This was for an audience of 15, so it's a little more than the audience of three, but it was an audience of 15. And he engages with you as an audience by not only just connecting with you, but making you a part of the production. It harkens back to how the Odyssey was originally told, with Homer saying it over campfires to audiences as each installment came through his head and he would recite it. And then eventually somebody wrote it all down. But for a long time it was just spoken over these campfires. And this is sort of harkening back to that. And he says right off the bat, through projection texts, that you are going to get bored sometimes because it is an ancient Greek. And he doesn't expect anyone of the audience to understand ancient Greek. But he does say you have permission to be bored. You have permission to let your mind drift because you're not going to understand all of it. And that is totally okay. It's important to know what happens to our brain, where our minds go when we're bored. And once you get that permission, the whole thing becomes a lot easier to take in because you're not working so hard to absorb it all. You are allowing it sort of to come to you and engage with it when you can. And even if you don't always understand what's happening in the dialogue, you understand what's happening in this story. He's very good about giving you enough information and preambles via know projected text to tell you what are the major characters and what's going on. And in these first four books, you know, if you don't know the Odyssey, you can also watch or listen to the Golden Apple if you want. But you know, it's the Battle of Troy, and Odysseus and his men have all gone to Troy to get Helen back, and they do the Trojan Horse and all that, and they finish the battle and Odysseus pisses off Poseidon, I believe he kills his son. And as punishment, Poseidon makes him lost at sea for three years. And then when he is no longer lost at sea, he ends up on the island of Eclipso, where he ends up for another seven years. This in addition to traveling to get Helen and having the battle. So I believe Odysseus has been away from home for like 20 years at this point. Meanwhile, his wife Penelope is there, is back home trying to ward off suitors, and his son Telemikos is growing up without a father and slowly coming into his manhood and learning how to transition from a young man to an adult man. And something that's very smart that Medeiros does is when he's giving you all this preamble and he's showing you all the characters names. There's a little tape recorder playing and all you hear is static, but every now and then you'll hear the character's name in Ancient Greek And I can't remember the ones for Athena or Penelope or Odysseus. I think Odysseus is like Odysseus or something like that. Penelope is like Penalope. But Telemachos we all remember because at the intermission we're all going to get like a slice of pizza and we're all saying to each other, telemachos. So that's how I can. I don't know how to say Telemachos in any other way now, but the ancient Greek pronunciation telemachosis, but that's sort of where the whole show begins, is with Odysseus trying to get out of Calypso's island and come home. And Telemachus is trying to, you know, find his father and learn more about his father while warding off his mother suitors and is sort of learning how to be a man and has this interaction with the goddess Athena and she sort of warns him that he's got to probably murder one, if not all of the suitors, if he wants to ward them all off. And that is the basic gist of the first four books, right? And then Telemachus sailing off to find Odysseus and learning more about Odysseus and all of this stuff and all these crazy things that happens because, you know, the gods and what it. What I mostly want to say is not everything worth seeing is on Broadway. Not everything worth seeing is even finished because as I said, this is being workshopped. The first four books are pretty much down pat. Medeiros is still working on books three and four. And also not everything worth seeing is going to pander to you and make it easy for you. Some things you see are going to challenge you, they're going to bore you a little bit. But there is something special in nothing but pure creativity and channeling what you are passionate about, because Medeiros is clearly passionate about this and using all of your ingenuity to carry across to an audience what you hear and see. And the way that this, that this one man show is able to engage with an audience just on an artistic, theatrical level, right, of having a moment where you're all eating apples together as he does a scene at a banquet table, and then having you create s'mores together, which you aren't even aware you're doing until he brings around the graham crackers. Like you see a tray of items that you don't know what it is, and he puts it on a radiator, turns on the radiator, then takes out Another tray and you realize it's graham crackers with chocolate. And that what you had previously seen were chopped up marshmallows that were dyed red. And you were making s'mores together as you were engaging with this story, much like the people of ancient Greece listening to Homer recite the Odyssey. And he incorporates his childhood toys like Legos and his Sesame street lunch trays. And he uses hand weights to tie to a string, which then allows a bunch of paper wings to fly off into the sky as Athena flies off to Mount Olympus. And he uses projections and he uses movies and uses songs. He sings the man that got away. He sings if I loved you. The whole thing is a marathon of performance. It is a feat of creativity. And it is ultimately like how I would love to see a production of Candide done right, of nothing but household objects all of a sudden repurposed to be a ship, a robe, a ladder, all of a sudden becomes a tree. And all these drawings made with nothing but crayon and paper that get unfurled from the ceiling and fall off the wall. And just seeing how what one thing normally is isn't what it always has to be. All it takes is thinking something through and outside of the box to make it something else. And all of a sudden becomes special in a whole new way. And that is exciting to watch. And I would love it if it comes back because I would love to see how it progresses and how it gets fine tuned because this is not something that is totally in my wheelhouse. Ancient Greek ain't, ain't my gig. Six hour shows, usually not my gig. And I know that he wants to make this basically like a 24 hour thing. He wants to do all the books and make it a 24 hour performance, which is a feat. But I was so surprised at how something that's so not for me was able to engage with me as often as it did and surprise me as much as it did. It reminded me and reminds us all that there is so much out there beyond just Broadway, beyond just musicals, beyond just the English language. Inspiration can come anywhere. And if you are a creative, it helps to take in as much as you can from everywhere. If you consider yourself a lover of theater, see as much different theater as you can. See Telemachus, see teeth, then see English and then, you know, wash it all down with a performance of no Aladdin, if you so choose. Or Moulin Rouge or Titanique. There's merit in all of it, right? I. I know I said this before, maybe not on the Podcast like, when I talk to people about art, it's hard for me to. Especially narrative art like film, theater and tv. It's hard for me to take opinions of people seriously unless they can understand the ridiculous and the complex. I say I need someone to understand the brilliance of Angels in America as well as understand that Michelle Williams's best performance is in the movie Dick. It's just true. You have to understand the silly as well as understand what you will not be able to understand because some things are beyond your grasp. But you can keep learning and keep unpeeling layers. My father and I had an argument a few weeks ago. As you know, Oscar season is approaching us. He could not understand why the substance was doing as well as it did. And he has not seen the substance and he will never see the substance. But he said, I don't know why anyone would make a movie about that that didn't need to get made. And then he goes and sees the Bob Dylan movie, a complete unknown. And he tells me, you should go see it. You got to challenge yourself. You got to go outside your box. Now, first of all, I have not seen a complete unknown yet. I will absolutely see it. I guarantee you. It's not going to be challenging to me. But I did say to him point blank, great, so when are you seeing the substance? And he had no response. It'd be one thing if he saw it and he didn't like it and could come to it from his own perspective while understanding what it's trying to do. But it's hard for me to take a recommendation seriously when that is your attitude about art. And I love my father and you can listen to the Follies episode to know that he's an insightful man. But that's sort of where we're at, right? It's all out there. Theater, film, tv, all of this art is out there. It behooves you to try out some new waters, see what other people are cooking up. Because of all the things that I've talked about on this podcast today of, you know, English and teeth and all in, and this Telemachos is absolutely the thing I remember the most vividly and the most passionately about. And you heard me talk about English for so long, like, you know that that's. I'm not just whistling pixie dust here. I'm being very truthful about that. I thought that even the things that were still needing some work, even the times when I was bored, this was so inspiring in its magnitude and in its personal components. Because there's a lot of Joseph Medeiros life that he incorporates in the show, even just mostly just visually. And it's so honest and raw and exposing while also just being impressive and impactful. And I don't know any other words to say about it. You don't know you're only drinking Sanka until you've tasted coffee. And this isn't the first coffee I've tasted, but whenever I taste it again, I am reminded truly of what like incredibly impressive and exciting theater is. And it doesn't have to be six hours in an ancient Greek to, you know, be considered important. But that also shouldn't make it a hindrance. So with that in mind, I'm going to tell you guys to look out and see what's happening in your areas. Any kind of theater or film or whatever that maybe you were not going to consider before. Maybe go see it. It could be terrible or it could be exciting. It could be your new obsession or it could be somewhere in the middle and inspire you for something of your own down the line. Right. I think that's sort of one of the other great things that art can do is that it can inspire other art. And that's all I really got to say. Yeah. Once again, join the Discord Channel if you haven't joined yet. If you like the podcast, give us a nice 5 star rating or review. Got an announcement coming up very soon. I can't say it quite yet. All I'll is if you are in New York City in February, maybe around February 8th, it might behoove you to be at the Hilton Hotel or no, the Marriott Hotel. The Marriott Hotel in New York City. Maybe just a thought on February 8, maybe around 4:30pm Just letting you know. And that's it. Yeah, I'm trying to think of who I want us to take it away. If there's any audio of teeth available, we will close out with teeth. If not, we will close out with something from a strange loop as that is, you know, more Michael R. Jackson theater. And that's it for now. I will catch you guys next week when it will probably be come from away. If not come from away. Something random. Imagine if that becomes like my Jimmy Kimmel Matt Damon running joke. Come from away coming next week. It's coming soon, I promise. I just gotta get my ass to editing it. Yeah, you guys have a great rest of your week weekend and I will talk to you soon. Take it away. Bye.

Cynthia Erivo (85:28)

There is a dark satanic collision rising from our journey. Something that hunts with laser precision. Deep, deep, deep, deep. That close my eyes and I can envision.

Ariana Grande (85:53)

My index finger has been tingled.