Michael Barbaro (4:31)
Thank you, thank you, thank you. But the way the play is done, it's this kind of amazing communal experience, like it should feel every night, like me and the audience are kind of making the play together. Right. So let's talk about that communal experience because on. Audience participation is a huge part of this show. It's improvised, but also kind of not entirely improvised before the show even begins, you are out there in the audience, you're walking around, you're talking with people, you're assigning them roles. You're looking for audience members to be in this play with you. So talk to me about that. Yeah. So there are sort of two levels to the audience participation in this show. There's one sort of quite a light lift for people where I give people a card that has a number on it and some words. And when I shout out the number, they shout out those words. Five roller coasters, six Super Mario, seven people falling over. And then there is five people who play very significant roles. The heavy lifts. The heavy lifts. And I. They are people that do not know that they will be doing that when they come into the theater that night. And I have to try and suss out who I would like to use and then if they would like to be used. We do, we do get you. Generally speaking, people are sort of fairly amenable to it. But we do get some absolute hard nos from people sometimes. I mean, it's fascinating that you decided to put yourself in the position of being rejected by members of the audience of having these kind of interactions at all. I mean, you're obviously a very well known actor, both from your movie work, famously waving the wand as a young boy, to your stage work. You won a Tony for your performance in Merrily We Roll along the musical. In my mind, you've got your pick of the letter. You can do anything you want. So what made you take on such an unusual play? Well, you know, I read the script and I from the moment that it said, you know, the actor starts the show in the audience greeting people as they come in and assigning roles, I was immediately like, wait, what is this? You know, there's nothing else that I've ever read that requires me to have this sort of relationship with an audience that I, you know, if anyone comes in with any preconceived notions of me or being sort of starstruck or whatever, I feel like that first half hour kind of breaks that down because you see me running around sweating like you see, you know, it takes any sort of illusion or romance out of me, I think, in any way. One of the barometers for me of the whole show was just how much moisture was on your sweater. Yeah, no, my dresser, Sandy said to me the other day, she was like, do you want an undershirt? And I was like, no, then I'll sweat more. I was like, I don't mind people seeing me sweat. It's very evident that I'm running around. People know why it's happening. It strikes me that the kind of interactions you have to go have in the audience every night, they may not be the thing that most famous actors would relish. I have to say, I think there's something incredibly liberating for me being able to do this. I don't get to be in a room in the way I am in the room for the half hour before the show ever. I don't get to walk into a huge crowded room of people with my hat off and no glasses and not trying to, you know, not trying to hide, which is normally my M.O. when I go through the rest. And actually being able to go into a room and just go out to people and say, hi, I'm Dan, so nice to meet you, thank you for coming. Here's what the show's about is it's just something I don't get to Do. There's a line actually in the show which one of the many lines that I relate to where I say I was not shy. I've been trying to stay constant level and there is something about. I think people think of me as being quite shy, but actually like, I'm really not. I love talking to people. It's just that talking to people and being not shy, you know, could have a different knock on effect in the rest of my life. Whereas actually this is an environment which is like I can be both myself and quite voluble and just running around. But also there's a certain amount like. Yeah, I don't know, it's hard to. No, I think. I think I hear you saying that you're getting as much out of these interactions as we are. 100%. Yeah, absolutely. And because sometimes people will amaze you. Just they genuinely say something that is so moving and so real and so unexpected that it moves me to the exact point where the character needs to be without me trying to have to work to get there. And now that you've been doing the show for a couple of months, do you have a single favorite interaction with an audience member so far? Yeah, I think, you know, we had. There's one of the characters in the show who is generally played by an older woman and Mrs. Patterson. Yes. That's the role that I think everybody who sees the play probably fixes on to a degree. And just to explain without giving away too, too much, Mrs. Patterson is a school counselor. Gives you in your darker, younger days some really important advice. And it requires you to go into the audience and ask someone to take off their shoe, remove their sock and use it as a sock puppet. Yeah. And they have to make some real editorial decisions. Yeah. I mean, what's. The first scene with Mrs. Patterson is quite structured and follows, you know, I generally. We hit pretty much all the same beats in it every night. The last scene is truly one of the joys of the show is that a lot of different things can happen. So there is a final scene with Mrs. Patterson where having grown up, I then call on her again to like, essentially comfort me in a moment of real despair. And that we had a woman the other day and she was. Was incredible. And I, you know, when I said to her, I asked Mrs. Patson, do you remember what I was like when I was a kid? And she said, you were happy sometimes, but you were sad sometimes. And when you were sad, you used to work on your list. And then she said, and when I'm sad, I Still work on my list. And I just, like, started crying. It was so beautiful and so generous of her to like, reach into her actual experience and talk to me that sort of honestly. And the joy of doing this show is that you were exposed on a. On a daily basis to people's brilliance and their kindness. And actually, that's what I say to people a lot when I'm asking people to join in the show. I say, you don't have to be funny, you don't have to be clever. If you are those things, that's a great bonus. The only thing you have to be to make the show work is kind. And if you're kind, the show flies. That's beautiful. It's a really. It's a beautiful thing to be on the receiving end of. A lot of the show is genuinely funny at its core. The show is quite serious. It's a quite serious exploration of depression and of suicide. And I wonder how you get the quotients, right, the quotient that needs to be serious and sober and honor that weighty subject and the frequent amount of. Of joy and laughter and comedy that's happening. Yeah, I mean, there is something about trying to model the behavior of somebody who has been through something very traumatic and has dealt with depression, talking about it from a place of now being okay, or have certainly, you know, have worked on themself enough to be able to talk about it and laugh and see the funny side, even in these dark moments, that I think there's something kind of hopefully healing about it. I think that's the beauty of the play, is that those things do sit in alongside each other and that there is hopefully something really cathartic, hopefully in this show. It occurs to me that to be a very young actor living a life in the spotlight, needing to disguise yourself as you go about your life, could make a person sad from time to time. And your industry is filled with people who, having lived in the public light as much as you have, really struggle to make it through to adulthood. And so as I watched this role, I did wonder how much any of this at all feels relatable to you. I don't think there's anybody that could get to 36 years old without having either felt that kind of profound sadness themself or known people who have experienced that. And actually, in some ways, like the helplessness of not being able to lift someone that you love out of their depression is, you know, just as hard as being depressed yourself in a lot of ways. It's always very hard for Me to figure out how much of what I have felt in my life is directly because of fame or without it. I've only ever lived this one way, so I can't separate where what's inherent within me is separate from the facts of my life. There's a line in the show which says, one of the brilliant things on the list is reading something which articulates exactly how you feel about something, but lack the words to express yourself. Whenever you do find something like that, that says something about the world that you would like to have said yourself, but would never have been smart enough or brilliant enough to. That's. So there's this. There's Swiss Army Man. There's a couple of things that I've done that truly are that to me, and this is one of them. So there's a kind of existentialism about the show, which is that, like, you know, maybe there's no inherent meaning in life, but the meaning we pick up along the way about where we find joy and where we find connection and love, that that is the meaning that we create in it ourselves, is something that I think, I believe a kind of religiosity of everyday joy. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. And being like that is that being its own reward and the finding of those things being meaning in and of itself. This show draws a very. A very direct line between happiness and the ability to notice new, wonderful things. And I do think that it's sort of a practice that we all. When we were in rehearsal, Duncan encouraged us all to, like, write new, brilliant things down on the wall in case we saw something that, in fact, one of them has ended up as one of the last ones we read in the show. Maddy, our head of our props department, wrote down when the windshield wipers wipe to the beat of the song, which is just like a brilliant. It is a brillian. And I think that it has become sort of a practice of if you just have this frame of sort of seeing the world through the brilliant things that you kind of touch on a daily basis. It has, you know, for me at least, it's been something that I have found a real positive way of sort of moving through the world. Daniel, this show, I'm not breaking any news to you, has been a big hit on Broadway with you in it, but it's been a big hit a lot of places, all over the United States, all over the United Kingdom, South America, Korea, Bangladesh, Kenya. As a person who's lived inside the show, why do you think it has been able to have the kind of impact it has in so many different places. No, I mean, I think it's one of the kind of brilliant. God, it's so hard. Sorry. It's so hard to describe the show without using that word. I had the same thing when I was promoting Weird Al the movie. I just kept saying the word weird all the time. Anyway, so it is one of the. I think the extraordinary things this show manages to do is it finds the universal in the incredibly specific. There is something beautiful about how actually similar we all are and how we all want basically the same things, which is connection, love, and joy. Yeah. You know, I'm in the show until late May, and then it's carrying on with Mariska Hargitay. And I'm so happy that the versatility of the monologue will be able. I hope it has a long life here in New York, and I hope it continues to have a life around the world as it has up until this point. And hopefully, you know, the visibility of it being on Broadway can sort of extend that further and further. Yeah. I mean, the thing that I experienced is that everybody who left that theater was in a state of joy, however ephemeral. I was in a state of joy that makes them happy. That kind of face hurt. Smiling. Oh, my God. Amazing thing. And. And for that, I want to thank you. You're more than welcome. Thank you for coming and watching it. Thank you for coming into the studio and having this conversation. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. After the break, we're going to hear from people from around the world who helped make this show the sensation that it's now become. We'll be right back.
