Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio My guest today is the artistic
Speaker 1: director of the renowned Public Theater in New York City.
Speaker 1: He is also a theater director and dramaturge who is
Speaker 1: responsible for bringing to life iconic productions such as Angels
Speaker 1: in America and the Tony Award winning musical Hamilton. Oscar
Speaker 1: Eustace has produced and directed countless productions across the United
Speaker 1: States and overseas, notably the twenty seventeen Shakespeare in the
Speaker 1: Park production of Julius Caesar. Eustace is an advocate for
Speaker 1: making theater more accessible and is also a devoted professor
Speaker 1: of dramatic writing and arts at universities such as UCLA,
Speaker 1: Middleburg College and Brown University. Oscar Eustace is ironically a
Speaker 1: college dropout and graduated from high school when he was fifteen.
Speaker 1: I was struck by his independence at such a young
Speaker 1: age and curious if he would characterize his younger self
Speaker 1: as self.
Speaker 2: Sufficient The friend in Minneapolis in Minneapolis, Yeah it actually.
Speaker 2: I was part of Minneapolis's last ditch attempt to avoid
Speaker 2: forced bussing in nineteen seventy two, they knew they had
Speaker 2: to desegregate, So they had a basically all black school,
Speaker 2: Central High School, in downtown Minneapolis, and they said to
Speaker 2: any white kid who were in outlying districts that if
Speaker 2: they would voluntarily bust themselves in, they had to have
Speaker 2: a B plus or better average that they could participate
Speaker 2: in Magnet school and get out a year earlier. I
Speaker 2: had skipped a grade earlier in my academic career. So
Speaker 2: what they did was take about fifty white hippies, bust
Speaker 2: them into an all black school, and give them special privileges.
Speaker 2: It didn't work very well, so I got out at fifteen,
Speaker 2: but barely. I was actually in high school with Prince
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me? No? Was he fifteen? Going with
Speaker 2: you getting out of there? He was black, so yeah,
Speaker 2: I was. I was older than him, and he was
Speaker 2: just the weird, smaller kid with the guitar. I just
Speaker 2: I can't claim that I recognized as genius.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't get it done. But when you say
Speaker 1: fifty hippie kids, you're in what year? Is this the
Speaker 1: U fifteen? So when you're fifteen, when you're seventy two?
Speaker 2: No, actually seventy three is when I graduated that was
Speaker 2: when I was fifteen or fifteen. But what was that
Speaker 2: environment like back then?
Speaker 1: Was it that nurturing of alternative kind of educational patterns
Speaker 1: and things like that?
Speaker 2: Was My high school experience was particularly rough, and I
Speaker 2: wouldn't trade it for anything now, because I went in
Speaker 2: there with a trajectory that was probably going to land
Speaker 2: to me in the academy of perhaps in profession, and
Speaker 2: I came out of there with a very different view
Speaker 2: of what life was like. And it's a view that
Speaker 2: although it horrified certain of my relatives, it's turned out
Speaker 2: very very well for me.
Speaker 1: Now, your parents, you had a stepfather who based your
Speaker 1: correct stepfather and my biological mother, but also after he
Speaker 1: sobbed up my biological father and my stepmother.
Speaker 2: So I have four parents. How old were you when
Speaker 2: they got divorce? Your ten? You were ten? Yeah, but
Speaker 2: they stayed in that general community in the Minneapolis. Well,
Speaker 2: they actually went southern Minnesota, and when they remarried, everybody
Speaker 2: moved up to Minneapolis. So I moved to Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: And when did you you and the crew head over
Speaker 1: to was the Netherlands? Where did you go?
Speaker 2: Berlin? Well, I can't keep track of your travels. Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 2: what actually happened. As soon as my mother and stepfather
Speaker 2: had an empty nest, which was when I was fifteen,
Speaker 2: when I went to New York, they promptly decamped and
Speaker 2: moved to East Berlin, where they spent half of every
Speaker 2: year for the next fifteen odd years. They were on
Speaker 2: faculty at Humboldt University, both of them. Yeah, they were
Speaker 2: committed communists, and so I for the next fifteen years.
Speaker 2: I moved to Zurich for a couple of years in
Speaker 2: the late seventies to work at the Shaushpiel House there.
Speaker 2: But I went and visited them right here. The what
Speaker 2: house It's called the Schaushpiel House Zurich, and at that
Speaker 2: time it was the largest theater in the whole German
Speaker 2: speaking world, had about eighty actors full time year round
Speaker 2: on and Yeah, to do what founded a experimental second
Speaker 2: stage called us labor the laboratory which still exists. Howl.
Speaker 2: Then at nineteen you say it still exists. To the
Speaker 2: program with Trinity and Brown still exist the insity, So
Speaker 2: they all lived on so far, right, the public still
Speaker 2: open too, Right, I haven't killed it yet, I have
Speaker 2: not yet. We're trying to keep we're trying to keep
Speaker 2: everything alive. The secondary was in Zurich, but I traveled
Speaker 2: throughout the German speaking world a lot, and of course
Speaker 2: took advantage of my parents being in the East to
Speaker 2: spend a lot of time there as well as in
Speaker 2: the West. And the that you tour London and Edinburgh
Speaker 2: when you were fourteen, Yeah, I went around a lot.
Speaker 2: My parents accepted my independence with a very good grace
Speaker 2: fought for They didn't encourage you were both. They never
Speaker 2: took legal action to prevent me from what I wanted.
Speaker 2: They occasionally disapproved of how wildly I was traveling and
Speaker 2: how much I wasn't pursuing my education, but I think
Speaker 2: they fundamentally trusted me, which they were right to do,
Speaker 2: and although they were worried about why were they right
Speaker 2: to do that? Well, because you made the most of them,
Speaker 2: I exactly I did not waste my life, and I'm
Speaker 2: happy to say that by the time I was about thirty,
Speaker 2: all of my parents recognized that fully and embraced what
Speaker 2: I had made out of my life, and so for
Speaker 2: the last thirty five years or so I had full
Speaker 2: par mental support. Most of them are dead now, afraid,
Speaker 2: but I was lucky enough to watch my mother glory
Speaker 2: in what I had done with my life, which is
Speaker 2: a feeling I cherish.
Speaker 1: When do you come back to the United States after
Speaker 1: the Zurich I moved back.
Speaker 2: Full time in nineteen eighty one twenty two, and I
Speaker 2: moved back to San Francisco. Actually, and you were involved
Speaker 2: in the theater out there for quite a while. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: And I say, San Francisco is where I grew up.
Speaker 2: That's where I spent my twenty days.
Speaker 1: You at the Yureka Theater for quite a while, ten
Speaker 1: years and ten years, ten years.
Speaker 2: Why where became well, you know when there was a
Speaker 2: not for profit theater. Oh yeah, tiny out for profit
Speaker 2: theater in ninety nine seats. It's where I became the
Speaker 2: artist that I've tried to become. Where I became the
Speaker 2: person that I've tried to way two ways, very specifically.
Speaker 2: I had been a committed experimental theater guy. I didn't
Speaker 2: believe that the playwright had any place in the theater anymore.
Speaker 2: When I'd come to New York, I'd lived downtown in Soho.
Speaker 2: I never went above fourteenth Street. I was fully immersed
Speaker 2: in the experimental theater scene, and at that point in
Speaker 2: the seventies, you may remember, the counterculture didn't distinguish between
Speaker 2: politically radical and esthetically radical, and it was all sort
Speaker 2: of messivecounterculture, and I moved sort of freely in that.
Speaker 2: But about nineteen eighty, after a couple of years of
Speaker 2: living in Europe, I began to recognize that there was
Speaker 2: a dichotomy between my politics, which were quite left, and
Speaker 2: the work I was doing, and that the work I
Speaker 2: was doing was appealing only to a tiny fraction of
Speaker 2: international art audience that I didn't want to talk to.
Speaker 2: I didn't really have anything to say to them. And
Speaker 2: I had a real crisis of conscience, you know, Christmas
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty weeping in Zurich, listening to Patty Smith's
Speaker 2: Easter album and realizing that I had to come back
Speaker 2: to the United States, I had to try to speak
Speaker 2: to Americans and not be an expat, and that I
Speaker 2: had to try to make my work reflect the content
Speaker 2: of my politics, which both meant that it had to
Speaker 2: carry ideas in a different way. And I had to
Speaker 2: speak to an audience that I had something to say to.
Speaker 2: And that is what impelled me to San Francisco, impelled
Speaker 2: me into the Eureka Theater, where for the first time
Speaker 2: I'd ripped up my passport to the avant garde, as
Speaker 2: I say, and for the first semester to do with plays,
Speaker 2: because I recognized that you needed playwrights to do what
Speaker 2: I wanted to do, both in terms of.
Speaker 1: The opposite of what you were doing in that exactly
Speaker 1: in the seventies, exactly in the Mama.
Speaker 2: And I have not regretted it for a moment. It
Speaker 2: was the big shift of my life.
Speaker 1: I remember coming here, and I always say to people
Speaker 1: in terms of actors' careers, when I came to New York,
Speaker 1: Glenn Close, Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Klein, Bill hurt Raoul, Julia Cazal,
Speaker 1: all of them was like merrill. Of course, you made
Speaker 1: your bones in the theater. You flow out to LA
Speaker 1: to get a paycheck, and movies were like some fantasy
Speaker 1: land where you just went out there and if they
Speaker 1: hired you, great, that's exciting.
Speaker 2: I'll take the money. It's fun.
Speaker 1: But I come right back here to do something else.
Speaker 1: I told Sam Waterston, I said, every fucking guy I
Speaker 1: knew in New York.
Speaker 2: Had that Hamlet poster on the wall of their apartment
Speaker 2: and now I have it on my wall right now.
Speaker 1: When I read this about you, I to see this guy.
Speaker 1: Independence is the key. This is what I want to
Speaker 1: do now. Now it seems like there's a shelf life.
Speaker 2: Do anything you do. I mean, then you go from
Speaker 2: San Francisco to La Music Center and then to wrote
Speaker 2: Istan and the Engineer. In a way that's right now.
Speaker 2: But something happened to me when I was a teenager
Speaker 2: and first running away to Soho which is there was
Speaker 2: and is a great experimental theater called Mabo Minds, which
Speaker 2: at that time I was a groupie of Lee Brewer
Speaker 2: and Joanne Accliis. I followed them around the country. I
Speaker 2: love them, and they were in residence at this theater
Speaker 2: i'd never heard of, called the Public Theater. And I
Speaker 2: walked into the Public Theater as a Moble Minds groupie.
Speaker 2: But I was sixteen years old, and I got imprinted
Speaker 2: like one of Conrad Lorenzo's little baby ducks, who you know,
Speaker 2: think the first big moving object they see as their parent.
Speaker 2: And the Public Theater imprinted me with the idea of
Speaker 2: what a theater should be. And it didn't really blossom
Speaker 2: in me till seven or eight years later. But when
Speaker 2: it did, I feel like I spent the rest of
Speaker 2: my career going around the country trying to recreate the
Speaker 2: public theater until I finally got a chance to come
Speaker 2: back here and run the mothership itself. This has always
Speaker 2: been my dream job. This has always been my idea,
Speaker 2: not almost, but since then it's my idea of what
Speaker 2: a great theater should be. So in that way, I
Speaker 2: feel like I've been incredibly consistent and not all that independent,
Speaker 2: faithful to an idea that existed before I was around.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to get into the public for quite
Speaker 1: a bit later in a minute, but I'll just hopscotch too. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I want to ask you the difference
Speaker 1: route in San Francisco and LA in terms of theater audience.
Speaker 2: Well, in San Francisco it was a cocoon. It was
Speaker 2: a little blue bubble for me, which is why it
Speaker 2: was the perfect place to grow. Because I at Theoreka
Speaker 2: I was in San Francisco. You know, I'd been so
Speaker 2: in the margins everywhere I had been been San Francisco.
Speaker 2: You know, I got to know city government officials and
Speaker 2: they treated me like an adult. I you know, I
Speaker 2: met Harvey Milk I got to know his success or
Speaker 2: the first the work you were doing was important exactly,
Speaker 2: and this crazy red diaper baby hippie kid was sort
Speaker 2: of mainstream, you know. I wasn't marginalized there. So it
Speaker 2: gave me this again blue bubble within which to grow
Speaker 2: up and develop my work and become a man. And
Speaker 2: I will always love San Francisco for that. But then
Speaker 2: came the time when I needed to start to try
Speaker 2: to have an impact beyond the blue bubble. And the
Speaker 2: actual specific thing that took me to La is when
Speaker 2: a play that I'd been working on for three years
Speaker 2: was too big for the Erika Theater, and that was Angela.
Speaker 2: You were working with him, I was working with them.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I produced Tony. How did you meet him? Well, no,
Speaker 2: I'm when I was at Eureka. But I was here
Speaker 2: in New York and I missed a curtain at the
Speaker 2: public theater of a Lenn Jenkin play and I was
Speaker 2: furious because I was poor and my trips to New
Speaker 2: York were few and far between, and I couldn't waste
Speaker 2: a night. And my friend said, Hey, I've been telling
Speaker 2: you about this NYU kid, who I think is so
Speaker 2: tacited and exactly, and he's got a stage reading going on.
Speaker 2: This said eight thirty, let's go see that up in Chelsea.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh yeah, christ, I'm going to waste
Speaker 2: an evening on an NYT read through. Oh so I
Speaker 2: go up and it was a bright room called Day
Speaker 2: And within twenty minutes I had one of those moments
Speaker 2: you dream of, which is I knew not only was
Speaker 2: I in the presence of a great writer, I was
Speaker 2: in the presence of somebody who cared about all the
Speaker 2: things I cared about. I didn't think there was anybody
Speaker 2: else in the American theater who cared about those things.
Speaker 2: And the first act of My Room ended at that
Speaker 2: time with the acts on stage singing the International Communist
Speaker 2: him the International Ally. And later I heard the backstage
Speaker 2: and intermission the actors turned to Tony and said, who
Speaker 2: the fuck is singing along in the audience? And that
Speaker 2: was me. Sony and I met that night within a
Speaker 2: few never knew him, never knew him. That was that's
Speaker 2: where we met. I became and he was in NYU
Speaker 2: at the times, generally in the directing program, and he'd
Speaker 2: started writing plays so he'd have something to direct. Then
Speaker 2: we will let him direct it. He had to write
Speaker 2: him to direct it. And you know now about a
Speaker 2: year later, a year and a half later, I did his
Speaker 2: first professional production. I directed that play Broakroom called a
Speaker 2: and by that point I commissioned Angels. We'd become the
Speaker 2: very very close friends.
Speaker 3: Were commissioned through Mark Tables, through the Eureka, through Eureka,
Speaker 3: and we worked on in San Francisco until it became
Speaker 3: clear that this play was getting too big and the
Speaker 3: Eureka would never be able.
Speaker 2: To afford it. So Gordon Davidson, who was artistic director
Speaker 2: of the Market perform offered me a job and I
Speaker 2: sent him the first two acts of Angels and I said,
Speaker 2: this is nineteen eighty nine, and I said, Gordon, the
Speaker 2: Berlin Wall is down, Communism is dead. My girlfriend has
Speaker 2: left me. I think my theater company is falling apart.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I believe in, but I believe
Speaker 2: in this play. If you'll agree to produce it, I'll
Speaker 2: come work for you. And to Gordon's immense credit, the
Speaker 2: next day he called me up and said, this is genius.
Speaker 2: Of course I'll produce it. And I moved to la
Speaker 2: and worked for Gordon He's the only man I've ever
Speaker 2: called boss. I worked from for five years and we
Speaker 2: did Angels there nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: I'm going to the final performance of the final weekends
Speaker 1: of Angels in America at the Forum. Oh and you
Speaker 1: had to walk through a gauntlet of gay men with
Speaker 1: signs that said, I have aids, will you sell me
Speaker 1: your ticket? Oh my god. They thought they would die
Speaker 1: and never see the show because they had no been announced.
Speaker 1: As I recall, that wasn't as wired into the theatrical
Speaker 1: world as I was. But but I had not been
Speaker 1: announced that was going to go to Broadway. So I'm
Speaker 1: going there, going walking through this gartland of like a
Speaker 1: dozen men to go. And it was also the time
Speaker 1: when there was like the one decent restaurant downtown where
Speaker 1: every movie star that went to go see Angels. That
Speaker 1: was the last weekend. You can see both parts, that's right,
Speaker 1: and in the after and in the evening the same
Speaker 1: day they both sections of Perastroika and Millennium first, so
Speaker 1: we see Millennium, then we see Pastrica. And he went
Speaker 1: to this restaurant was Jody Foster and the Shell final
Speaker 1: It's like it's like the Commissary at Warner Brothers.
Speaker 2: It was every single it was unbelievable, packed with movie
Speaker 2: stars and we were kids and this just was you know,
Speaker 2: it was just unbelieved.
Speaker 1: Saw that last weekend that the show was there when
Speaker 1: you know, obviously the public has a legacy where they
Speaker 1: printed a lot of money on the Courseline course line
Speaker 1: is something that's developed there and they cash in.
Speaker 2: I know that to Hamilton. I'm not quite sure they
Speaker 2: had the same deal as they had not exactly the
Speaker 2: same deal, but good Enough has given us a lot
Speaker 2: of support. Yeah, yeah, question, that's great.
Speaker 1: And my question is when someone wants to do a play,
Speaker 1: how do you decide what plays you're going to do?
Speaker 1: Do people pitch you like a movie studio you developed
Speaker 1: all yourself in house?
Speaker 2: Well, overwhelmingly, we don't pick plays. We are in relationships
Speaker 2: to writers, and sometimes those relationships are at the very
Speaker 2: beginning of a writer's career. For instance, we're going to
Speaker 2: be producing this brilliant play next fall called Initiative by
Speaker 2: a writer named else Went who this is going to
Speaker 2: be her first professional production. She's been with us in
Speaker 2: the Emerging Writers Group for a couple of years. We've
Speaker 2: gotten to know her I think she is absolutely remarkable.
Speaker 2: She's never had a production before. It's going to be great.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, we're also producing this spring Carol Churchill,
Speaker 2: who is in her mid eighties and we've been producing
Speaker 2: her for forty five years. We produce Serious Money with You,
Speaker 2: Joe Joe Force feeding the Broadway world. I was an
Speaker 2: opening night watching you in Serious Money. I went out
Speaker 2: with my friend two I think with Joe Allen's and
Speaker 2: I sat there and I said, I have just seen
Speaker 2: what I want my life to be. I want to
Speaker 2: take a radical play, develop it at my theater, the
Speaker 2: Serious Money I had been at the Royal Court in London,
Speaker 2: then move it to the public theater and then move
Speaker 2: it to Broadway. That's my dream for my life.
Speaker 1: Theater director Oscar Eustace. If you enjoy conversations about theater
Speaker 1: and the performing arts, check out my interview with internationally
Speaker 1: acclaimed conductor Pavel Yrvey.
Speaker 4: I have two girls right now who they're very talented,
Speaker 4: but they don't know what am I going to do
Speaker 4: in life. I never had ever that question because I
Speaker 4: wanted to not only to be a musician, I wanted
Speaker 4: to be a conductor. Why because my father was a conductor.
Speaker 2: I loved my father.
Speaker 4: I think he was having a lot of fun, and
Speaker 4: we're very close to this day, so it was a
Speaker 4: done deal. I wanted to be a conductor and I
Speaker 4: never ever wanted to be anything else.
Speaker 2: Ever.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Pavo YERVI go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Oscar
Speaker 1: Eustace talks about the struggles facing the public theater when
Speaker 1: he first started as artistic director in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Oscar
Speaker 1: Eustace's career could have taken a more commercial path, but
Speaker 1: he has always stayed true to the nonprofit world. I
Speaker 1: was curious about this choice and whether Eustace found he
Speaker 1: had more creative freedom in that space.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's actually very simple, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: you talk about my independence, and it's certainly true that
Speaker 2: all four of my parents had doctorates, and all of them,
Speaker 2: at various points were tenured professors at universities, and I
Speaker 2: never went to college. So there's a certain amount of
Speaker 2: rebellion there. But there's another part that isn't a rebellion
Speaker 2: at all, because I went into the nonprofit theater. I
Speaker 2: actually took my family's values and applied them to a
Speaker 2: field that was not the same as their field, but
Speaker 2: was within a handshake distance. Because the values of the
Speaker 2: nonprofit theater are not that different from the values that
Speaker 2: my family spent their lives pursuing, and not only the
Speaker 2: values of the academy, but their political values. And what
Speaker 2: I felt comfortable in the nonprofit world because in the
Speaker 2: nonprofit world, in a way, what you're always asking yourself
Speaker 2: or trying to find the right answer, is how can
Speaker 2: I be most of service? What can I do that
Speaker 2: will help the most? And that's help your society, help
Speaker 2: your audience, help your city, help the artists you're working with,
Speaker 2: help the instant And that is so much easier for
Speaker 2: me to do than to think about how do I
Speaker 2: help myself? How do I get ahead? I just can't
Speaker 2: think that wasn't raised that way. And you know, many
Speaker 2: years ago, my friend Burke Walker gave me that question.
Speaker 2: He said, ask yourself, where can you be of the
Speaker 2: most use? And what I loved about that was it
Speaker 2: allowed me to think about my career without being a careerist.
Speaker 2: So that question has just guided me and when I
Speaker 2: spent my five years in LA and I moved there
Speaker 2: when I was thirty, and you know, among other things,
Speaker 2: I thought, okay, well film television or in LA and
Speaker 2: I'll see if I want to do that. Five years
Speaker 2: in La, I couldn't motivate myself to walk across the
Speaker 2: room associate artistic director of the taper I could have met.
Speaker 2: I just had no interest. And after five years there,
Speaker 2: I just sort of looked at my own actions and well,
Speaker 2: I guess I'm a theater rat. Better move back to
Speaker 2: these ghosts. And so I did, because it's funny you
Speaker 2: use that phase.
Speaker 1: Because we were talking in our prep and I said,
Speaker 1: this guy's the theater rat.
Speaker 2: Absolutely theater rats.
Speaker 1: But the payton sets, making costumes, handling the parking whatever.
Speaker 1: Very few of them get to be the head guy
Speaker 1: at the public theater. Now you're at Trinity, you're only
Speaker 1: academic or the full time is it? Was it your
Speaker 1: only academic appointment?
Speaker 2: Well, Trinity is a Trinity rep. Theater is. Simultaneously, they
Speaker 2: gave me a courtesy appointment at Brown, which I did
Speaker 2: not treat as a courtesy. I treated it as a
Speaker 2: full time job. And I'm very happy to say that
Speaker 2: in my last three years there, I was able to
Speaker 2: form a consortium between the Theater and Brown for graduate
Speaker 2: training that offered MFAs and PhDs. And it still exists,
Speaker 2: and I'm incredibly proud of.
Speaker 1: What do you think about people going to degree granting
Speaker 1: expensive degree granting universities for acting degrees?
Speaker 2: What do you think about that? I am very happy
Speaker 2: to say that the Brown program went tuition free a
Speaker 2: number of years ago, and so people graduate with no
Speaker 2: debt whatsoever. It's a crime to saddle young artists with
Speaker 2: enormous debt coming out of school. It makes no sense.
Speaker 1: Well, the issue from me, I taught a semester, a
Speaker 1: real semester with a teaching partner, one of their staff,
Speaker 1: and did this with me in twenty thirteen. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to do Thursday afternoon for like three hours, one
Speaker 1: to four or whatever it was with my teaching fellow.
Speaker 1: And I remember leaving there and we did a little postmarting,
Speaker 1: which you could tell they were kind of wiggling in
Speaker 1: their seats. They didn't really want to hear what I
Speaker 1: had to say, which was I said, you need to
Speaker 1: have somebody you throw in here as like, you know,
Speaker 1: the you know the seat we have for Elijah at
Speaker 1: the meal, I said, because you need somebody who forget
Speaker 1: the cube to a degree. They can't be below a
Speaker 1: three to zero, they can't be low a certain set.
Speaker 1: But let them in as a completely skill based audition.
Speaker 1: The other kids need to see what good acting is.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of the people that showed up for
Speaker 1: my class, they were smart kids, the cubes, they had
Speaker 1: the SATs, they had everything. They just weren't that talented
Speaker 1: and they were willing to pull their pants down to
Speaker 1: take a chance. So you've got a lot of bright kids,
Speaker 1: but I'm not what you're Any of them were going
Speaker 1: to be actors and you're giving this this very expensive education.
Speaker 1: So I said, let some people in, like three or
Speaker 1: four of them. You know, gender, race, everything mixed in.
Speaker 1: Make all those considerations as you need to, but I said,
Speaker 1: let them come in. The other kids going to see
Speaker 1: it as a model. And they just looked at me
Speaker 1: and said thank you. You know, they walked up. The
Speaker 1: college educations help people become an actor, which make them
Speaker 1: better than they already are.
Speaker 2: Listen, I really good masters programs. Graduate programs are worth
Speaker 2: their weight in gold. You learn things at the graduate
Speaker 2: level at NYU, at Yale, at Juilliard, at Brown, any
Speaker 2: of the really good programs that you can't learn anywhere.
Speaker 2: So there's a certain set of skills, particularly in terms
Speaker 2: of verse speaking and working with you and smooth you're
Speaker 2: I can learn anywhere else undergraduate. I don't think you
Speaker 2: need professional training in the same way. What I really
Speaker 2: think young actors, young artists in general should be doing
Speaker 2: is learning as much about the world as they can,
Speaker 2: because the last thing the theater needs is more uneducated people.
Speaker 2: We have way too many people in the theater who
Speaker 2: don't know about anything except the theater, and that's not
Speaker 2: what any art form needs. We need people who are
Speaker 2: genuinely doesn't matter to me if they go to the university,
Speaker 2: but they have to genuinely be curious, ravenously curious about
Speaker 2: how the world works, who wags it, who runs it,
Speaker 2: who suffers in it, How does this work your place?
Speaker 2: What's your place in it? And how can that place
Speaker 2: change not just for you but for other people. And
Speaker 2: that broad education, whether again it's you're an autodi dictor
Speaker 2: you went to the university, I think it is terribly
Speaker 2: important for young people. You got to have something to
Speaker 2: bring to the theater. Not just yourself hoping to be
Speaker 2: a star, but you got to make yourself into a person.
Speaker 1: Well, when I was in I had a job on
Speaker 1: a daytime TV show. I was in the infancy. They
Speaker 1: gave me one show a week. The more they thought
Speaker 1: your character was working in the storyline and popular with
Speaker 1: the audience and the other cast members, the more they
Speaker 1: gave you. But when I'm working one day a week,
Speaker 1: I went down and did a showcase theater at the
Speaker 1: old Van Damn Theater the town of Seventh Avenue. I
Speaker 1: did student films, corkboard at the film school. The Index
Speaker 1: card wanted twenty two year old bartender, you know, wacky comedy.
Speaker 2: And I say to people, you guys got to keep
Speaker 2: putting it out there. To stay home and just do readings.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of friends about they stay home
Speaker 1: and they just read plays, and I'm like, no, go
Speaker 1: out there and just take any job.
Speaker 2: You can get any job. You know. The other thing
Speaker 2: that I say is I've hired many, many thousands of
Speaker 2: people in my life at this point, and I have
Speaker 2: never hired anybody because they can do a lot of
Speaker 2: different things. They can do everything. Oh he could convincingly
Speaker 2: be anything. I hire everybody because they're a specific thing,
Speaker 2: because I get a sense that they're a person that
Speaker 2: I want, whether it's a playwright, a director, an actor.
Speaker 2: You have to become yourself because yourself is ultimately what
Speaker 2: gets hired in the theater. And that doesn't mean you
Speaker 2: become narrow or specialized. It means you become fully who
Speaker 2: you are. And by being fully who you are, you
Speaker 2: become somebody that other people are interested in working with,
Speaker 2: and who's interested in working with, somebody who's Bland's somebody
Speaker 2: who could you know, sort of could fade into the
Speaker 2: woodwork you're interested in. They're not very anything, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: You know. It's why like in movies or television you'll
Speaker 2: have writers' rooms. In the theater, you have a writer
Speaker 2: because we're interested in individual voices. We're not interested in
Speaker 2: something that sounds like it was written by a room
Speaker 2: full of people. And that individual specificity of self is
Speaker 2: one of the things I love the theater so much.
Speaker 1: Now, when you leave Trinity and you come to the
Speaker 1: big town here in two thousand and five, yeah, you
Speaker 1: come here, and what's the financial condition of the place,
Speaker 1: Because that's I'm always looking at everybody ampon this film festival,
Speaker 1: everybody I worked with, what's the financial condition of what
Speaker 1: they're inheriting?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it wasn't great. The public had been
Speaker 2: through a really sort of calamitous reduction in the early
Speaker 2: two thousands. After nine to eleven, we were stable, but
Speaker 2: we were down to about a twelve million dollar a
Speaker 2: year operation. We were having to scrape to get two
Speaker 2: shows in the park every summer, and we had very
Speaker 2: little money to produce downtown. As a matter of facturer
Speaker 2: spaces were empty a lot. And when I arrived, this
Speaker 2: was a signed to me of what trouble we were in.
Speaker 2: There was a faction of the board who thought we
Speaker 2: should start charging for free Shakespeare in the park, and
Speaker 2: that was the way out of our alma And I'm
Speaker 2: very glad to say we turned that around pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: Why doesn't the public have a Broadway House? Because oh yeah,
Speaker 2: because if we had a Broadway House, then we'd have
Speaker 2: to be programming for a Broadway House. And I have
Speaker 2: no desire to change how we program what has worked
Speaker 2: much better for us. And I have to say I
Speaker 2: put our track record against any other theater in the
Speaker 2: country or the world is we make shows downtown, and
Speaker 2: we make them in an environment where we have no
Speaker 2: commercial pressures. We have three hundred seats in our largest theater.
Speaker 2: If I do anything well, it'll sell out. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just I mean literally, there's no economic pressure downtown.
Speaker 2: But what there is is the pressure to let each
Speaker 2: show become the best version of itself. And you know what,
Speaker 2: that turns out to be a pretty great way of
Speaker 2: unleashing the commercial potential of shows. So fun Home, a
Speaker 2: show about a lesbian cartoonist whose gay dad commits suicide,
Speaker 2: turns into this extraordinarily beautiful show. We opened it in
Speaker 2: our ninety nine Sea theater, we move it to our
Speaker 2: biggest theater, we move it to Broadwood based one is
Speaker 2: which one? Now? The Newman three? How much is the Lewester?
Speaker 2: The rest of one hundred and seventy five? That's right?
Speaker 2: Didcottish play? Yeah? Yeah, that's right. It's a great It's
Speaker 2: a great poster too. But Funhoe ends up winning the
Speaker 2: Tony Ward for Best Play, Hamilton. I mean, you name it.
Speaker 2: These unlikely shows can take on a life downtown because
Speaker 2: you're not trying to make them commercial. You're trying to
Speaker 2: let them become themselves, and you know what, people actually
Speaker 2: want to see shows that are not cookie cutter, that
Speaker 2: are not like last year's here, They're not based on
Speaker 2: a movie title. It tends it to be a better
Speaker 2: way of making commercial successes than aiming for commercial success.
Speaker 2: That's funny you said that about the description you had
Speaker 2: the character. Remember saying to George back in ninety eight
Speaker 2: when we did the passage. You know, the emblem of
Speaker 2: the public theater is like a you know, a black
Speaker 2: transgender woman in a wheelchair who's eighty years old is
Speaker 2: like the lead character, and will assume we get like
Speaker 2: that sounds really good to me. It sounds great to me,
Speaker 2: you know, like don't don't, don't bring your shit into
Speaker 2: my theater. You know.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, we we do whatever, we do what
Speaker 1: we deal as a great storytelling. But the public does
Speaker 1: have an emblem. The public has a hood ornament of
Speaker 1: all this diversity and all this eclusivity. And is it
Speaker 1: tough to maintain that? What a material that is the
Speaker 1: dna U crave in that area. That's that's really open
Speaker 1: minded that way, but it's just not very good, That's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Great submissions, Well, no, No, it's not that. It's scroll
Speaker 2: back to what I said. It's relationships. We don't wait
Speaker 2: for material to come to us. We form relationships. I'll
Speaker 2: give you a beautiful example this. When I arrived at
Speaker 2: the theater. One of the things I says is, Okay,
Speaker 2: we get a thousand plus submissions a year from players.
Speaker 2: We've got this great. So who's not getting to us?
Speaker 2: And we said, okay, folks who don't have an agent,
Speaker 2: who didn't go to an MFA program, who I've never
Speaker 2: had a New York production, and who actually have to
Speaker 2: work for a living, so they have a hard time,
Speaker 2: you know, joining writers' groups or you know sometimes even
Speaker 2: going to the graduate problems at universities. So let's form
Speaker 2: a group that's just those people that people without MFAs,
Speaker 2: without agents, without productions, and you're just to make it easy,
Speaker 2: will pay them to be in this group rather than
Speaker 2: charge them. So we formed the Emerging Writers Group, which
Speaker 2: was is now eighteen nineteen years old and has been
Speaker 2: extraordinarily successful. Brandon Jacob Jenkins came out of that group.
Speaker 2: Dominique morrisso Mona Mansour, I could keep going and going
Speaker 2: else went to I just mentioned that we're premiary next year.
Speaker 2: Came out of that group. And when you start working
Speaker 2: with writers that early in their careers, when we start
Speaker 2: supporting them, the work comes, and not just out of
Speaker 2: the EWG group, but just you form the relationships you can.
Speaker 2: There is no problem with our work being incredible diverse.
Speaker 2: There's no I'm of really high quality work being incredibly diverse.
Speaker 2: You just have to go out and develop the relationships
Speaker 2: with the artists who make that work.
Speaker 1: In the way that I mentioned that canon of those
Speaker 1: actors who were the theater was something that they just
Speaker 1: needed to come back to in order to play the parts.
Speaker 2: And that this is something Julie Ard wherever they went Yale,
Speaker 2: highly trained and highly skilled, and you know the most
Speaker 2: famous actors, many of them went on to become stars
Speaker 2: obviously in that way. Isn't like that now?
Speaker 1: Do you think the generations of actors now who are
Speaker 1: succeeding in film and television feel the poll to come
Speaker 1: back to the not for profit thee I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about Broadway.
Speaker 2: They might get a paycheck. Let me put it this way,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of great actors who do. But
Speaker 2: it's not a coincidence that I'm now on faculty at NYU,
Speaker 2: and I teach in their graduate acting program every year,
Speaker 2: and I'm happy to say some of those actors end
Speaker 2: up on our stages. We need to keep making that
Speaker 2: pipeline solid because right now the commercial industries film television
Speaker 2: are plucking our talent while they're still in school. They
Speaker 2: are plucking them right at the beginning of our careers,
Speaker 2: whether it's play rights or actors, and pulling them right
Speaker 2: into a digital life. And if an actor doesn't get
Speaker 2: a chance, they may be really well trained, but if
Speaker 2: they don't get a chance to do Shakespeare professionally at
Speaker 2: least a few times early in their career, it gets
Speaker 2: very hard to come back and do it again later.
Speaker 2: You've got to have that feel of it when you're
Speaker 2: a young person, you're just finished your training. You go it,
Speaker 2: you do Shakespeare in the park, a couple of you,
Speaker 2: understudy a lead, you play a supporting character. Then maybe
Speaker 2: ten years later you can come back and do it again.
Speaker 2: But if you don't get that grounding right at the
Speaker 2: end of it's hard. Same with writers young play rights.
Speaker 2: If they get pulled into TV writers' rooms the second
Speaker 2: they graduate, they don't have the muscle of writing the plays.
Speaker 2: And if you don't get that muscle when you're young,
Speaker 2: it's harder to develop in your orders. So a lot
Speaker 2: of what and when I say I, I really mean
Speaker 2: the whole field is trying to do is make sure
Speaker 2: that young people know not that they're going to spend
Speaker 2: their whole life monks in the theater. The world works
Speaker 2: the way it works, and people are going to work
Speaker 2: in film and television, and should be able to work
Speaker 2: in film and television, but you got to also have
Speaker 2: a home in the theater. You got to know that
Speaker 2: that's a place you can return to. And so you
Speaker 2: take a writer like Susan Lauri Parks, who we've given
Speaker 2: her a salary for the last fifteen years. She's got
Speaker 2: a salary and healthcare and benefits, and you know what
Speaker 2: her duties are to right place, not even the right
Speaker 2: place for us, just the right place. And it was
Speaker 2: sort of an experiment what happens to a master writer
Speaker 2: in her early fifties when you actually give her a
Speaker 2: chair at the theater, give that relationship with a handful
Speaker 2: of people. Soon as the when we have that food
Speaker 2: issue that we're working to get more happened since she
Speaker 2: keeps turning out great plays and Dog Underdog my favorite.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, but you know, Father comes Home from the Wars.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic that the Plaquear place that she just did
Speaker 2: Sally and Tom, or her play about Sally Havings and
Speaker 2: Tom Jefferson just a year and a half ago, was wonderful.
Speaker 2: And that's not been the norm. American players don't keep
Speaker 2: producing great work into their fifties and sixties. But that's
Speaker 2: because the theater hasn't made a home for them, and
Speaker 2: we need to do that. We need to make sure
Speaker 2: that we've got a place for writers not only at
Speaker 2: the beginning of their careers, but as they reach seniority
Speaker 2: to keep coming back to theater.
Speaker 1: Director Oscar Eustace, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
Speaker 1: friend and be sure to follow Here's the thing on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio apps, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Oscar used to shares why he
Speaker 1: is passionate about uplifting new voices in playwriting. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and this is here's the thing. The Public Theater
Speaker 1: was founded by Joseph Papp in nineteen fifty four and
Speaker 1: originated as a Shakespeare workshop. Since then, the public theater
Speaker 1: continues its tradition of staging productions like they are free
Speaker 1: Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.
Speaker 1: I was curious as to whether or not there was
Speaker 1: a requirement for Oscar Eustace to fill a quota of
Speaker 1: Shakespeare productions per year, and how he upheld this tradition.
Speaker 2: Heck, now, now, now, are there some years you don't
Speaker 2: do any or do you always rot say? Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 2: we always have tigiation. And here's when I say have to,
Speaker 2: I mean for mission purposes. And there's two reasons. One
Speaker 2: is he is the greatest playwright who ever wrought an
Speaker 2: English language. So he's a stunning role model for every
Speaker 2: other playwright we do. You see, this is what play
Speaker 2: roight at its greatest can be, and aspire to be
Speaker 2: that big, aspire to combine what Shakespeare reminds. But it's
Speaker 2: also true that in addition to being the greatest writer
Speaker 2: and the history of the planet, the English speaking peoples
Speaker 2: conquered the world and as a result, their greatest writer, Shakespeare,
Speaker 2: has become the entry point into the world's culture. Now
Speaker 2: that's a fact which you can abhor or applaud, but
Speaker 2: it is a fact. And if that's going to be
Speaker 2: the entry point into the world's culture, it's our job
Speaker 2: to make sure that he belongs to everybody, that everybody
Speaker 2: has access to him, not just the educated, not just
Speaker 2: the elite, not just the moneyed people, not just the
Speaker 2: European people, not just the people of European ancestry. But
Speaker 2: everybody gets to own him. And that's part of why
Speaker 2: we're committed to producing Shakespeare over and over, to make
Speaker 2: sure that he belongs to people of all classes and
Speaker 2: raises and ethnicities in New York City, and that to me,
Speaker 2: is a huge pillar of how we democratize our culture.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you're familiar with my friend Dan Wexler, who's an
Speaker 1: antiquarian book You know Dan dan Wexler, who's an antiquarian
Speaker 1: book dealer. I'll say this from my listeners. And I
Speaker 1: met Dan who he and his partner with this antiquarian
Speaker 1: book company. They came upon a book that they recognized
Speaker 1: and was probably undervalued and not a very significant number
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars. They bought his copy of Barrett's Alvieri.
Speaker 1: You're familiar with Barrett's Salvieri. So this book, which was
Speaker 1: a writing book of writing, a book of writing instruction
Speaker 1: or whatever. But they get it, and over the course
Speaker 1: of a couple of years they're showing it around the
Speaker 1: world and no one will say they say, I think
Speaker 1: it is what you think it is.
Speaker 2: It's Shakespeare's copy of Barrett's Aalvieri.
Speaker 1: And everybody around the world, Folgers, Oxford, all over the world.
Speaker 1: They go get someone else to say it is, and
Speaker 1: I'll concur it. I'm not gonna say it is. Stick
Speaker 1: my neck because if I'm wrong right then, and and
Speaker 1: they think they got his copy notes in there, I
Speaker 1: think you can imagine.
Speaker 2: Well, just to say, you know that, that leads my
Speaker 2: mind to the whole Shakespeare controversy, that there's this you
Speaker 2: know strain, which I'm sure many of your listeners have
Speaker 2: heard of people who for the last two hundred or
Speaker 2: so years have been claiming that Shakespeare didn't write the
Speaker 2: plays that somebody else did. That is entirely a class
Speaker 2: based argument, and starting the early nineteenth century, a wealthy
Speaker 2: englishwoman was the first to start it. Couldn't believe that
Speaker 2: the greatest writer in the history of the English language
Speaker 2: was a working class kid, a Tanner's son who only
Speaker 2: had a seventh grade education, and so because of that,
Speaker 2: decided that maybe Sir Francis Drake actually wrote the works.
Speaker 2: And you'll find in all of the you know, the
Speaker 2: Earl of Oxford, all of these theories, it's desperately trying
Speaker 2: to prove that it was the nobility. It was the
Speaker 2: massively educated person who wrote Shakespeare, not a Canner son
Speaker 2: with the seventh grade education. And so it's why I
Speaker 2: don't just disagree with the authorship controversy. I despise it
Speaker 2: because it's an attempt to re establish the very kind
Speaker 2: of class distinctions that we're devoted to tearing down.
Speaker 1: If people want to submit to people submit plays to you,
Speaker 1: Yeah they do, and I mean you must be you
Speaker 1: must have a lot of submissions.
Speaker 2: Yeah we will. Well, we we ask people to send
Speaker 2: a synopsis and a sample because we simply don't have
Speaker 2: the manpower person two to read everything your movie. So
Speaker 2: you know, if we are intrigued, we then request the
Speaker 2: full script. Have you found any pieces you like that
Speaker 2: you've done for that, I'm over the transom as we
Speaker 2: call it. I'm not sure. We certainly have found people
Speaker 2: that we've developed relationships with that. We've then produced pieces,
Speaker 2: but it's very rare that we'll actually get a script
Speaker 2: and go, oh my gosh, we've got to produce this
Speaker 2: play that happens once in a blow mown. It did
Speaker 2: happen a few years ago with a wonderful writer named
Speaker 2: Sarah Burgess who is still just adore. She wrote a
Speaker 2: play called dry Powder about Wall Street, and I read
Speaker 2: it and I just said, we've got to do this,
Speaker 2: and we did. Tommy Klee directed it in Hanka's area,
Speaker 2: and John Krasinski and Claire Danes were and Sanja de
Speaker 2: Silva was a fantastic cast, amazing, And you know, she
Speaker 2: turned out to have just studied Wall Street. She didn't.
Speaker 2: I mean I read like it was written by an insider.
Speaker 2: So every once in a while you'll get these just
Speaker 2: missiles that shoot across the sky and you pull it
Speaker 2: out and there it is. But people respond to both
Speaker 2: of the plane. Oh here was going on? Yes, Sarah
Speaker 2: now has more work than she knows what to do with.
Speaker 2: And Sarah, come back to the theater. We're waiting for you.
Speaker 2: What are you working on now? Well, what's coming up
Speaker 2: this summer? You can't say you don't know. No, No, actually,
Speaker 2: I can tell you we have This summer. Was especially
Speaker 2: excited because we're reopening the Delacorte. We have spent two
Speaker 2: years remodeling it. It is going to be absolutely gorgeous,
Speaker 2: unbelievably accessible, much safer and drier, and friendly to raccoons
Speaker 2: without necessarily inviting them backstage on stage. On stage, they
Speaker 2: they are going to do what they want, but we
Speaker 2: need them to not be backstage grisly. So we're going
Speaker 2: to reopen with the production of Twelfth Night that Sahim Ali,
Speaker 2: my associate logistics director, is directing. I couldn't be more
Speaker 2: excited about it. We've got a great cast of public
Speaker 2: theater veterans, the petere Nango, Sandra Oh, Jesse Tyner, Ferguson,
Speaker 2: Peter Dinkledge, Daphney Rubin Vega. I mean, it's an embarrassed
Speaker 2: bill camp of riches. It's just Elizabeth Day. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: you're going to do that Shakespeare and then one TBD. No,
Speaker 2: we're actually only doing one because we were worried about
Speaker 2: construction getting behind. So one the going to start performing
Speaker 2: in the first week of August, and then next summer,
Speaker 2: the summer of twenty six two shows. Yeah, we'll do
Speaker 2: the full nine yards, and then we've got a spring
Speaker 2: season coming up which is full of shows that I love.
Speaker 2: There's a beautiful show called Sumo which we're doing as
Speaker 2: a coproduction of my E Theater, which is about sumo wrestling,
Speaker 2: Japanese wrestling, and it's both a fascinating introduction to the
Speaker 2: world of sumo and a sort of deep exploration of
Speaker 2: Japanese culture and perhaps the most insightful play about masculinity
Speaker 2: that I've ever seen. It's going to be just displayful. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's really well.
Speaker 1: I just want to say the most exciting and interesting
Speaker 1: here lies love. I want all, I want it odd,
Speaker 1: I want it different that I want something I can't
Speaker 1: see you know where.
Speaker 2: And I love to hear lies love. I love everything.
Speaker 2: When I come there, when I have the time, you
Speaker 2: can't leave, you know that, right, Well, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to leave for a while. I don't leave for a
Speaker 2: while for a while, and make sure the theaters in
Speaker 2: very good hands when I do.
Speaker 1: My thanks to the Public Theater's artistic director, Oscar Eustace.
Speaker 1: This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Victoria de Martin.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Speaker 1: Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
Speaker 1: to you by iHeart Radio