WEBVTT - Oskar Eustis Makes Theater for the People 0:00:02.200 --> 0:00:05.120 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the 0:00:05.200 --> 0:00:10.800 Thing from iHeart Radio My guest today is the artistic 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:14.480 director of the renowned Public Theater in New York City. 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:18.119 He is also a theater director and dramaturge who is 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:22.400 responsible for bringing to life iconic productions such as Angels 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:27.040 in America and the Tony Award winning musical Hamilton. Oscar 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:31.280 Eustace has produced and directed countless productions across the United 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:35.839 States and overseas, notably the twenty seventeen Shakespeare in the 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:40.680 Park production of Julius Caesar. Eustace is an advocate for 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:44.360 making theater more accessible and is also a devoted professor 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:48.320 of dramatic writing and arts at universities such as UCLA, 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:54.320 Middleburg College and Brown University. Oscar Eustace is ironically a 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:58.280 college dropout and graduated from high school when he was fifteen. 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:02.120 I was struck by his independence at such a young 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:05.520 age and curious if he would characterize his younger self 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:06.680 as self. 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:12.760 Sufficient The friend in Minneapolis in Minneapolis, Yeah it actually. 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:16.640 I was part of Minneapolis's last ditch attempt to avoid 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:20.440 forced bussing in nineteen seventy two, they knew they had 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:24.679 to desegregate, So they had a basically all black school, 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:28.560 Central High School, in downtown Minneapolis, and they said to 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:32.120 any white kid who were in outlying districts that if 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:34.920 they would voluntarily bust themselves in, they had to have 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:38.479 a B plus or better average that they could participate 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:41.280 in Magnet school and get out a year earlier. I 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:44.720 had skipped a grade earlier in my academic career. So 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:49.880 what they did was take about fifty white hippies, bust 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:53.600 them into an all black school, and give them special privileges. 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:58.800 It didn't work very well, so I got out at fifteen, 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:01.919 but barely. I was actually in high school with Prince 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:04.680 Are you kidding me? No? Was he fifteen? Going with 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:06.440 you getting out of there? He was black, so yeah, 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:08.440 I was. I was older than him, and he was 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:11.440 just the weird, smaller kid with the guitar. I just 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:14.440 I can't claim that I recognized as genius. 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:18.080 Yeah, we didn't get it done. But when you say 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:21.200 fifty hippie kids, you're in what year? Is this the 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:24.399 U fifteen? So when you're fifteen, when you're seventy two? 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:27.040 No, actually seventy three is when I graduated that was 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:29.520 when I was fifteen or fifteen. But what was that 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:30.639 environment like back then? 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:35.239 Was it that nurturing of alternative kind of educational patterns 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:35.760 and things like that? 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:40.280 Was My high school experience was particularly rough, and I 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:44.000 wouldn't trade it for anything now, because I went in 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:47.320 there with a trajectory that was probably going to land 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:50.680 to me in the academy of perhaps in profession, and 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:53.600 I came out of there with a very different view 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:56.200 of what life was like. And it's a view that 0:02:56.360 --> 0:03:00.440 although it horrified certain of my relatives, it's turned out 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:01.360 very very well for me. 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:04.560 Now, your parents, you had a stepfather who based your 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:08.959 correct stepfather and my biological mother, but also after he 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:12.359 sobbed up my biological father and my stepmother. 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:14.200 So I have four parents. How old were you when 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:16.880 they got divorce? Your ten? You were ten? Yeah, but 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:19.120 they stayed in that general community in the Minneapolis. Well, 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:22.840 they actually went southern Minnesota, and when they remarried, everybody 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.000 moved up to Minneapolis. So I moved to Minneapolis. 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.040 And when did you you and the crew head over 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.200 to was the Netherlands? Where did you go? 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:33.120 Berlin? Well, I can't keep track of your travels. Yeah, no, no, 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:36.640 what actually happened. As soon as my mother and stepfather 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:40.120 had an empty nest, which was when I was fifteen, 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:44.000 when I went to New York, they promptly decamped and 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:47.680 moved to East Berlin, where they spent half of every 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:50.400 year for the next fifteen odd years. They were on 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:52.920 faculty at Humboldt University, both of them. Yeah, they were 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:56.920 committed communists, and so I for the next fifteen years. 0:03:57.080 --> 0:03:59.840 I moved to Zurich for a couple of years in 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:02.840 the late seventies to work at the Shaushpiel House there. 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:05.120 But I went and visited them right here. The what 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:07.960 house It's called the Schaushpiel House Zurich, and at that 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:10.720 time it was the largest theater in the whole German 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.280 speaking world, had about eighty actors full time year round 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:19.040 on and Yeah, to do what founded a experimental second 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:23.320 stage called us labor the laboratory which still exists. Howl. 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:26.400 Then at nineteen you say it still exists. To the 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:29.159 program with Trinity and Brown still exist the insity, So 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:34.040 they all lived on so far, right, the public still 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:36.359 open too, Right, I haven't killed it yet, I have 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:38.480 not yet. We're trying to keep we're trying to keep 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:41.680 everything alive. The secondary was in Zurich, but I traveled 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:44.320 throughout the German speaking world a lot, and of course 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:46.960 took advantage of my parents being in the East to 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:48.719 spend a lot of time there as well as in 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:52.479 the West. And the that you tour London and Edinburgh 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:55.279 when you were fourteen, Yeah, I went around a lot. 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:59.480 My parents accepted my independence with a very good grace 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.080 fought for They didn't encourage you were both. They never 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:06.840 took legal action to prevent me from what I wanted. 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:12.359 They occasionally disapproved of how wildly I was traveling and 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:16.560 how much I wasn't pursuing my education, but I think 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:20.200 they fundamentally trusted me, which they were right to do, 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.320 and although they were worried about why were they right 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:26.120 to do that? Well, because you made the most of them, 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:30.240 I exactly I did not waste my life, and I'm 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:33.440 happy to say that by the time I was about thirty, 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:37.000 all of my parents recognized that fully and embraced what 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:39.040 I had made out of my life, and so for 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.760 the last thirty five years or so I had full 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:45.000 par mental support. Most of them are dead now, afraid, 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:49.560 but I was lucky enough to watch my mother glory 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:51.800 in what I had done with my life, which is 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:53.440 a feeling I cherish. 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:55.760 When do you come back to the United States after 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:57.800 the Zurich I moved back. 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.760 Full time in nineteen eighty one twenty two, and I 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:04.880 moved back to San Francisco. Actually, and you were involved 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:06.800 in the theater out there for quite a while. Oh yeah, 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:09.280 And I say, San Francisco is where I grew up. 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:10.920 That's where I spent my twenty days. 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:13.560 You at the Yureka Theater for quite a while, ten 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:15.320 years and ten years, ten years. 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:18.520 Why where became well, you know when there was a 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:21.279 not for profit theater. Oh yeah, tiny out for profit 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:24.760 theater in ninety nine seats. It's where I became the 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:27.320 artist that I've tried to become. Where I became the 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:31.080 person that I've tried to way two ways, very specifically. 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:35.760 I had been a committed experimental theater guy. I didn't 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.640 believe that the playwright had any place in the theater anymore. 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:43.000 When I'd come to New York, I'd lived downtown in Soho. 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:46.800 I never went above fourteenth Street. I was fully immersed 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:50.320 in the experimental theater scene, and at that point in 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:55.240 the seventies, you may remember, the counterculture didn't distinguish between 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:59.800 politically radical and esthetically radical, and it was all sort 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:04.200 of messivecounterculture, and I moved sort of freely in that. 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:07.960 But about nineteen eighty, after a couple of years of 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:10.680 living in Europe, I began to recognize that there was 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:15.880 a dichotomy between my politics, which were quite left, and 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:18.480 the work I was doing, and that the work I 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:22.080 was doing was appealing only to a tiny fraction of 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:27.560 international art audience that I didn't want to talk to. 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:29.560 I didn't really have anything to say to them. And 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:33.920 I had a real crisis of conscience, you know, Christmas 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:39.200 of nineteen eighty weeping in Zurich, listening to Patty Smith's 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:42.560 Easter album and realizing that I had to come back 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:44.400 to the United States, I had to try to speak 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:48.040 to Americans and not be an expat, and that I 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:52.080 had to try to make my work reflect the content 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:55.240 of my politics, which both meant that it had to 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:58.680 carry ideas in a different way. And I had to 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:01.560 speak to an audience that I had something to say to. 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:06.360 And that is what impelled me to San Francisco, impelled 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:10.000 me into the Eureka Theater, where for the first time 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:12.880 I'd ripped up my passport to the avant garde, as 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:15.960 I say, and for the first semester to do with plays, 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.440 because I recognized that you needed playwrights to do what 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:20.720 I wanted to do, both in terms of. 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:22.600 The opposite of what you were doing in that exactly 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:24.960 in the seventies, exactly in the Mama. 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:26.760 And I have not regretted it for a moment. It 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:28.840 was the big shift of my life. 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:30.880 I remember coming here, and I always say to people 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:34.160 in terms of actors' careers, when I came to New York, 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:41.439 Glenn Close, Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Klein, Bill hurt Raoul, Julia Cazal, 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:43.679 all of them was like merrill. Of course, you made 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:45.160 your bones in the theater. You flow out to LA 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:48.120 to get a paycheck, and movies were like some fantasy 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:49.640 land where you just went out there and if they 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:51.400 hired you, great, that's exciting. 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:52.720 I'll take the money. It's fun. 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.240 But I come right back here to do something else. 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:58.719 I told Sam Waterston, I said, every fucking guy I 0:08:58.800 --> 0:08:59.760 knew in New York. 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:02.559 Had that Hamlet poster on the wall of their apartment 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:04.200 and now I have it on my wall right now. 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:07.320 When I read this about you, I to see this guy. 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:10.760 Independence is the key. This is what I want to 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:13.120 do now. Now it seems like there's a shelf life. 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:14.839 Do anything you do. I mean, then you go from 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:18.720 San Francisco to La Music Center and then to wrote 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:21.640 Istan and the Engineer. In a way that's right now. 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:25.120 But something happened to me when I was a teenager 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:28.880 and first running away to Soho which is there was 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:32.040 and is a great experimental theater called Mabo Minds, which 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:34.640 at that time I was a groupie of Lee Brewer 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:37.640 and Joanne Accliis. I followed them around the country. I 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:40.840 love them, and they were in residence at this theater 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:43.760 i'd never heard of, called the Public Theater. And I 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:47.640 walked into the Public Theater as a Moble Minds groupie. 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:52.320 But I was sixteen years old, and I got imprinted 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:56.080 like one of Conrad Lorenzo's little baby ducks, who you know, 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:59.320 think the first big moving object they see as their parent. 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.360 And the Public Theater imprinted me with the idea of 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.760 what a theater should be. And it didn't really blossom 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.560 in me till seven or eight years later. But when 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:12.160 it did, I feel like I spent the rest of 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:16.120 my career going around the country trying to recreate the 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:19.000 public theater until I finally got a chance to come 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:22.240 back here and run the mothership itself. This has always 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:25.079 been my dream job. This has always been my idea, 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:28.760 not almost, but since then it's my idea of what 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:31.360 a great theater should be. So in that way, I 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:35.720 feel like I've been incredibly consistent and not all that independent, 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:40.079 faithful to an idea that existed before I was around. 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:42.319 Now we're going to get into the public for quite 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:45.679 a bit later in a minute, but I'll just hopscotch too. Well, 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:47.040 first of all, I want to ask you the difference 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.360 route in San Francisco and LA in terms of theater audience. 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.800 Well, in San Francisco it was a cocoon. It was 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:56.160 a little blue bubble for me, which is why it 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:59.040 was the perfect place to grow. Because I at Theoreka 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:02.520 I was in San Francisco. You know, I'd been so 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.280 in the margins everywhere I had been been San Francisco. 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:07.680 You know, I got to know city government officials and 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:10.440 they treated me like an adult. I you know, I 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:12.959 met Harvey Milk I got to know his success or 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:16.239 the first the work you were doing was important exactly, 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:21.720 and this crazy red diaper baby hippie kid was sort 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:26.079 of mainstream, you know. I wasn't marginalized there. So it 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:29.600 gave me this again blue bubble within which to grow 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:33.880 up and develop my work and become a man. And 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:37.480 I will always love San Francisco for that. But then 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:41.200 came the time when I needed to start to try 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.480 to have an impact beyond the blue bubble. And the 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:47.400 actual specific thing that took me to La is when 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:50.679 a play that I'd been working on for three years 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:55.199 was too big for the Erika Theater, and that was Angela. 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:57.080 You were working with him, I was working with them. 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:01.120 Oh my god, I produced Tony. How did you meet him? Well, no, 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:03.480 I'm when I was at Eureka. But I was here 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:07.120 in New York and I missed a curtain at the 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.000 public theater of a Lenn Jenkin play and I was 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.080 furious because I was poor and my trips to New 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:15.320 York were few and far between, and I couldn't waste 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.280 a night. And my friend said, Hey, I've been telling 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:20.600 you about this NYU kid, who I think is so 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:24.960 tacited and exactly, and he's got a stage reading going on. 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:27.880 This said eight thirty, let's go see that up in Chelsea. 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:30.480 I was like, oh yeah, christ, I'm going to waste 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:34.400 an evening on an NYT read through. Oh so I 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:36.840 go up and it was a bright room called Day 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:41.000 And within twenty minutes I had one of those moments 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:44.280 you dream of, which is I knew not only was 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:46.600 I in the presence of a great writer, I was 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:49.760 in the presence of somebody who cared about all the 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:52.920 things I cared about. I didn't think there was anybody 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:54.880 else in the American theater who cared about those things. 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.320 And the first act of My Room ended at that 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:03.239 time with the acts on stage singing the International Communist 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:07.600 him the International Ally. And later I heard the backstage 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:10.160 and intermission the actors turned to Tony and said, who 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:12.960 the fuck is singing along in the audience? And that 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:17.439 was me. Sony and I met that night within a 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:19.680 few never knew him, never knew him. That was that's 0:13:19.679 --> 0:13:22.320 where we met. I became and he was in NYU 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.440 at the times, generally in the directing program, and he'd 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:28.840 started writing plays so he'd have something to direct. Then 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:31.240 we will let him direct it. He had to write 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:34.280 him to direct it. And you know now about a 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:36.240 year later, a year and a half later, I did his 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:39.000 first professional production. I directed that play Broakroom called a 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:43.200 and by that point I commissioned Angels. We'd become the 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:44.520 very very close friends. 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:48.800 Were commissioned through Mark Tables, through the Eureka, through Eureka, 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:51.800 and we worked on in San Francisco until it became 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:54.640 clear that this play was getting too big and the 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:55.920 Eureka would never be able. 0:13:55.800 --> 0:14:00.560 To afford it. So Gordon Davidson, who was artistic director 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:05.080 of the Market perform offered me a job and I 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:08.800 sent him the first two acts of Angels and I said, 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:12.400 this is nineteen eighty nine, and I said, Gordon, the 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:17.040 Berlin Wall is down, Communism is dead. My girlfriend has 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:20.360 left me. I think my theater company is falling apart. 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:23.240 I don't know what I believe in, but I believe 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.680 in this play. If you'll agree to produce it, I'll 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.560 come work for you. And to Gordon's immense credit, the 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:33.760 next day he called me up and said, this is genius. 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:37.440 Of course I'll produce it. And I moved to la 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:40.320 and worked for Gordon He's the only man I've ever 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:42.320 called boss. I worked from for five years and we 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:44.720 did Angels there nineteen ninety two. 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:47.800 I'm going to the final performance of the final weekends 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:51.040 of Angels in America at the Forum. Oh and you 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:53.520 had to walk through a gauntlet of gay men with 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:56.000 signs that said, I have aids, will you sell me 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.720 your ticket? Oh my god. They thought they would die 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:00.600 and never see the show because they had no been announced. 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:03.280 As I recall, that wasn't as wired into the theatrical 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:05.600 world as I was. But but I had not been 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:07.640 announced that was going to go to Broadway. So I'm 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:09.600 going there, going walking through this gartland of like a 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:11.440 dozen men to go. And it was also the time 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:14.520 when there was like the one decent restaurant downtown where 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:17.160 every movie star that went to go see Angels. That 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:19.360 was the last weekend. You can see both parts, that's right, 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:21.040 and in the after and in the evening the same 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:25.320 day they both sections of Perastroika and Millennium first, so 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:27.160 we see Millennium, then we see Pastrica. And he went 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:29.240 to this restaurant was Jody Foster and the Shell final 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:31.440 It's like it's like the Commissary at Warner Brothers. 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:34.240 It was every single it was unbelievable, packed with movie 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.640 stars and we were kids and this just was you know, 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:38.920 it was just unbelieved. 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:42.000 Saw that last weekend that the show was there when 0:15:42.080 --> 0:15:45.200 you know, obviously the public has a legacy where they 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:48.080 printed a lot of money on the Courseline course line 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:50.920 is something that's developed there and they cash in. 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:53.000 I know that to Hamilton. I'm not quite sure they 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:54.920 had the same deal as they had not exactly the 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:57.320 same deal, but good Enough has given us a lot 0:15:57.360 --> 0:15:59.520 of support. Yeah, yeah, question, that's great. 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:02.680 And my question is when someone wants to do a play, 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:05.120 how do you decide what plays you're going to do? 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:07.720 Do people pitch you like a movie studio you developed 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:08.720 all yourself in house? 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:15.240 Well, overwhelmingly, we don't pick plays. We are in relationships 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:19.560 to writers, and sometimes those relationships are at the very 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:21.880 beginning of a writer's career. For instance, we're going to 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:26.520 be producing this brilliant play next fall called Initiative by 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:30.360 a writer named else Went who this is going to 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:32.880 be her first professional production. She's been with us in 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:35.560 the Emerging Writers Group for a couple of years. We've 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:38.840 gotten to know her I think she is absolutely remarkable. 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:40.920 She's never had a production before. It's going to be great. 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:44.520 On the other hand, we're also producing this spring Carol Churchill, 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:47.600 who is in her mid eighties and we've been producing 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.720 her for forty five years. We produce Serious Money with You, 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:56.080 Joe Joe Force feeding the Broadway world. I was an 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:59.640 opening night watching you in Serious Money. I went out 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.320 with my friend two I think with Joe Allen's and 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:05.800 I sat there and I said, I have just seen 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:09.919 what I want my life to be. I want to 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:15.159 take a radical play, develop it at my theater, the 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:17.359 Serious Money I had been at the Royal Court in London, 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:21.400 then move it to the public theater and then move 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:27.840 it to Broadway. That's my dream for my life. 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:33.280 Theater director Oscar Eustace. If you enjoy conversations about theater 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:37.160 and the performing arts, check out my interview with internationally 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:39.119 acclaimed conductor Pavel Yrvey. 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:42.640 I have two girls right now who they're very talented, 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:44.840 but they don't know what am I going to do 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.520 in life. I never had ever that question because I 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:52.000 wanted to not only to be a musician, I wanted 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:54.960 to be a conductor. Why because my father was a conductor. 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:55.720 I loved my father. 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:57.800 I think he was having a lot of fun, and 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:01.040 we're very close to this day, so it was a 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:04.199 done deal. I wanted to be a conductor and I 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:06.920 never ever wanted to be anything else. 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:07.680 Ever. 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.760 To hear more of my conversation with Pavo YERVI go 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:17.240 to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Oscar 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.840 Eustace talks about the struggles facing the public theater when 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:24.320 he first started as artistic director in two thousand and five. 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:39.880 I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Oscar 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:43.840 Eustace's career could have taken a more commercial path, but 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:47.000 he has always stayed true to the nonprofit world. I 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:50.600 was curious about this choice and whether Eustace found he 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:53.160 had more creative freedom in that space. 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:58.520 Well, I think it's actually very simple, which is, you know, 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:03.040 you talk about my independence, and it's certainly true that 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:08.640 all four of my parents had doctorates, and all of them, 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:12.760 at various points were tenured professors at universities, and I 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.639 never went to college. So there's a certain amount of 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:19.080 rebellion there. But there's another part that isn't a rebellion 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:22.560 at all, because I went into the nonprofit theater. I 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:29.000 actually took my family's values and applied them to a 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:33.439 field that was not the same as their field, but 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:37.439 was within a handshake distance. Because the values of the 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:41.720 nonprofit theater are not that different from the values that 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.840 my family spent their lives pursuing, and not only the 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:50.600 values of the academy, but their political values. And what 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:55.600 I felt comfortable in the nonprofit world because in the 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:59.280 nonprofit world, in a way, what you're always asking yourself 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:02.680 or trying to find the right answer, is how can 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:06.520 I be most of service? What can I do that 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:12.000 will help the most? And that's help your society, help 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:16.359 your audience, help your city, help the artists you're working with, 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:20.159 help the instant And that is so much easier for 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:23.280 me to do than to think about how do I 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:25.639 help myself? How do I get ahead? I just can't 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:29.360 think that wasn't raised that way. And you know, many 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:33.040 years ago, my friend Burke Walker gave me that question. 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:35.560 He said, ask yourself, where can you be of the 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:38.879 most use? And what I loved about that was it 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:42.960 allowed me to think about my career without being a careerist. 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:45.600 So that question has just guided me and when I 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:47.840 spent my five years in LA and I moved there 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:50.400 when I was thirty, and you know, among other things, 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:52.840 I thought, okay, well film television or in LA and 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:55.520 I'll see if I want to do that. Five years 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:58.480 in La, I couldn't motivate myself to walk across the 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:03.200 room associate artistic director of the taper I could have met. 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:06.520 I just had no interest. And after five years there, 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:08.800 I just sort of looked at my own actions and well, 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:11.159 I guess I'm a theater rat. Better move back to 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:14.600 these ghosts. And so I did, because it's funny you 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:15.120 use that phase. 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:17.160 Because we were talking in our prep and I said, 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:18.240 this guy's the theater rat. 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:20.159 Absolutely theater rats. 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:24.520 But the payton sets, making costumes, handling the parking whatever. 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:26.680 Very few of them get to be the head guy 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:31.119 at the public theater. Now you're at Trinity, you're only 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:33.600 academic or the full time is it? Was it your 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:34.640 only academic appointment? 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:41.040 Well, Trinity is a Trinity rep. Theater is. Simultaneously, they 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:43.600 gave me a courtesy appointment at Brown, which I did 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:45.760