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Class Notes: Trip Cullman “We Had A World”
00:12:28
Listen: Lauren Class Schneider talks to Trip Cullman, the director of “We Had A World” Presented by Manhattan Theater Club at City Center in Stage II. “Class Notes” actively covers New York’s current theater season on, off, and off-offBroadway.
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- [00:03]
A
Hi, I'm Lauren Klaus Schneider with Clash Notes for Broadway Radio. I'm here with Tripp Kallman, the director of We Had a World, presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center Stage two. Hello.
- [00:15]
B
Hi. How are you?
- [00:16]
A
Terrific, and will be even better after I get to learn about this work that you're doing. In this searing, funny, and deeply personal play, the author, Joshua Harmon, recreates 30 years of family fights, monstrous behavior, enormous cruelty, and enduring love. The premise is that a dying woman calls her grandson and asks him to write a play about their family. So this isn't the first time you've worked with Josh Harmon, and while he's developing a new play, how do you see your role as director?
- [00:50]
B
I see the role of director in the development of a new play very much in terms of dramaturgy. I'm there to offer advice and offer help with clarifying a vision and intention for the work and to always encourage and inspire the writer in terms of rewrites. Not in the way of sort of making it feel like homework, but certainly in the way of making it feel like there's like a. Like a create a creative and fun assignment in the rewrites rather than it feeling like drudgery.
- [01:33]
A
Hmm. It's such a special relationship. And from the first time you read We Had a World, how much has the play changed?
- [01:42]
B
I would say that the sort of overarching premise has not shifted, but there has been a significant amount of rewrites in. In the several years that we've been working on the piece together, primarily around taking out extraneous narration so that the piece is doing more showing than telling, which is always a dictum that I sort of believe in in terms of playwriting. And then I would say also there was quite a bit of work done to really make sure that we were balancing the three perspectives in the play. That's the character of Joshua, the grandson, Ellen the mother, and Renee, the grandmother. So that in a play that is about how three different people can see the same events in three wildly divergent ways, I wanted to ensure that those three different perspectives all had equal validity and equal importance, if you will, that the sort of both heroic strengths of each of the characters were balanced by a commensurate exposure of vulnerabilities, or, if you will, weaknesses in the characters so that they felt like really three fully rounded human beings.
- [03:22]
A
You talked about having worked on the play with Josh for years. Was this a pre pandemic project, or did it start up when things reopened?
- [03:33]
B
It started directly with The Pandemic. Josh found himself idol as of as so many people in the theater did. And he recalled this sort of brief that his grandmother gave him on her deathbed, basically to write a play about their family and set about doing so. And then. So we've been working on it ever since. So that's been about. Since, you know, what would that be? I would say probably 2020. We've been working on it.
- [04:09]
A
What a journey. It has a very small cast. You've alluded to the three characters. Your cast is extraordinary. How did the casting come about?
- [04:20]
B
So it came about in all. I mean, as all casting does, in very, very roundabout ways. I had worked on a reading several years ago with the great Joanna Gleason, and the moment I read Josh's play, she was the person I had in the back of my mind for the role of Renee. And so it's always very serendipitous and lucky that you get your first choice, especially with an actor of that caliber and stature. And then Janine Sarales is a wonderful actress who was in the same class as me at the Yale School of Drama many, many years ago and was really my muse in drama school. I cast her in all of my projects and I fell sort of in mad creative love with her. And she was always on Josh's and my, again, first choice list for the role of Ellen. And then Andrew Barth Feldman. I had worked with Andrew's partner, who's the extraordinary Helen J. Shen, who is currently starring in maybe Happy Ending on Broadway. Anyway, I'd worked with her on a piece called the Lonely Few in LA at the Geffen Theatre and then last season at MCC Theater. And he was around a lot. He came to see the show, I guess I want to say, like, definitely over 10 times. It was extraordinary, his support for Helen. And I just got to know him in that process and thought of him immediately when we started the process of trying to find our Joshua and we did a reading with him and Janine and Joanna, and that really cemented it. I think he is, at the tender age of 22, one of the most dynamic and brilliant actors I've ever worked with. And so it's really. You're right. It's a dream team of these three brilliant performers at the absolute top of their game. And I would say, in terms of Andrew, like, you know, watch out, world. I cannot imagine that he won't. He'll be. He won't become a massive star one day because I think he is just that good.
- [06:50]
A
How exciting. And for you to have put the three of them together. Seems like there'll be a future for Andrew, of course, and the others. Beloved, indeed.
- [07:05]
B
You know, they. They said there's an old adage that. That. That says that I. I think, like, good directing is 95% good casting. I believe in that. I actually think that casting is. Is one of the most important things that a director can be involved with in terms of shaping what the eventual production will look like.
- [07:24]
A
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that morsel. Will you describe what it's like to be in the room the very first day of rehearsal for you and how you might anticipate the actors are feeling and anybody else that might be in the room that day?
- [07:38]
B
Well, I would say, you know, the first day of rehearsal can go either way. Right. It can either be a day of great trepidation and great fear, and that can then, I think, poison the entire rest of a process. Or, you know, my philosophy is always, I have to get everyone on board with the show, with the production from that first day. And if I don't get them on the first day, then I'll never get them. And that includes create, you know, most importantly, creating an atmosphere of deep trust, deep joy and love so that we can go about the process of. Very vulnerable process of. Of working through all of the intense emotionality of the piece in a safe environment, in an environment where everyone feels like they have creative agency to contribute collaboratively to the process of making a production. So in. In my. My estimation, you know, like, when a. When a first day of rehearsal goes badly, it bodes very poorly for the rest of the experience. But when it goes very well, which is what I like to always have, then it. Then the. The rest of the process can be a really fulfilling and joyful one.
- [09:08]
A
And jumping all the way to the first time this play in particular, that it was performed in front of a live audience, and you talked about the vulnerability in the room, and now you're presenting it live. How do you approach that for the actors as they head into that time?
- [09:27]
B
Well, it's a complicated question because this play is being presented at Manhattan Theatre Club Stage 2, which I've done two shows in a show called Quite Choir Boy by Terrell Alvin McCraney and a musical called Murder Ballad many years ago. And so that. That space is a thrust space, so there is really no escaping the audience from the actor's viewpoint. Like, they're just there, and it's a tiny space. It's an only, like, I think 150 seats. So you know, I think part of the process leading up to that first performance is preparing the actors to truly, like, engage with the audience. Especially in a piece like this that is, like I said, in a thrust and also has a lot of direct address, which means that the actors in their monologues are talking directly to the audience. So that needs quite a bit of preparation to steal one's nerves in order to accomplish that. But I always also like to say that, you know, a piece is incomplete until an audience is there. They're the last and most, potentially the most important factor in the creation of a production. So I think, you know, that feels very, very important to get right and so. And for the actors to feel like it's an opportunity rather than a source of anxiety.
- [11:03]
A
Well, no doubt your sensitivity to that, for them is so much about what makes you a director in demand. And I'm so grateful that you've spent this time with us. The play, of course, is about a family.
- [11:17]
B
Indeed.
- [11:17]
A
I have a question about your family. Sure. I've read about your grandparents having a more than casual relationship with the famous Peter Luger steakhouse in Brooklyn. It sounds like a family filled with colorful characters.
- [11:31]
B
And that's my maternal side of the family. And, yes, they are.
- [11:34]
A
And. Well, does it inform your work as a director?
- [11:39]
B
Absolutely. I mean, I think if you look at the way that Joanna's performance is crafted, it's obviously very much influenced not only by Joshua's actual. Joshua Harmon's actual grandmother, but also by. By my own. And so there are mannerisms and little quirks and idiosyncrasies of behavior and the way how she's dressed, et cetera, that are absolutely inspired by my own family.
- [12:09]
A
Well, Trip, this has been great. Thank you again.
- [12:12]
B
Oh, my absolute pleasure.
- [12:14]
A
I'm Lauren Klaus Schneider with Tripp Coleman, the director of We Had a World, presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center Stage two. Thank you.