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Speaker 1: Pushkin Friday, the nineteenth of July two thousand and two

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Speaker 1: the Shubert Theater in Chicago. The curtain was about to

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Speaker 1: go up on the world premiere of a new show

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Speaker 1: trumpeted as the new Broadway Musical. Yes, I know it

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Speaker 1: wasn't on Broadway yet, but it was headed there. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't really a musical either. Creatively, the show broke down

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Speaker 1: barriers between art forms. It was innovative, a crossover between

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Speaker 1: a concert, a musical, and a ballet. The band was

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Speaker 1: on stage playing and singing while the cast danced and

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Speaker 1: didn't utter a word. But despite its boundary blurring nature,

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Speaker 1: its creators had high hopes that it would be a

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Speaker 1: commercial as well as critical success. Big name investors had

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Speaker 1: poured more than eight million dollars into the show. Stuart Malina,

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Speaker 1: a classical pianist and conductor who was on the show's

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Speaker 1: creative team, was giddy with excitement. Sometimes I have to

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Speaker 1: pinch myself well. Indeed, Melina was orchestrating the music of

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Speaker 1: a man who sold more records than Frank Sinatra or

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Speaker 1: the Beegs or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In fact,

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Speaker 1: he sold more records than all three of them put

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Speaker 1: together Billy Joel. But while Billy Joel was a huge star,

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Speaker 1: Joel was in no doubt as to who was in charge.

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Speaker 1: If you stand in Twiler's way, you die, he said.

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Speaker 1: Twiler Twiler Tharp, a giant of American choreography, a force

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Speaker 1: of nature in the nineteen seventies, should choreograph dances for

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Speaker 1: the Great Ballet principal Mikhail Barishnikov. In the nineteen eight is,

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Speaker 1: she'd worked with John Curry, the World and Olympic figure

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Speaker 1: skating champion, and on Amadeus, the Mozart movie that won

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Speaker 1: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and five other Oscars.

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Speaker 1: But now she wanted to put her sophisticated choreography right

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Speaker 1: at the heart of a blockbuster show. Her aim, she said,

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Speaker 1: was something that would finally make dancing pay for the dancers.

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Speaker 1: It had all started two years before, when Twiler decided

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Speaker 1: that she wanted to make a show out of Joel's music.

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Speaker 1: She didn't know him, but she got his phone number

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Speaker 1: and she called him when pitching the idea to him.

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Speaker 1: She made a twenty minute film of her choreography set

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Speaker 1: to his music. Then she invited him over to her

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Speaker 1: home on the Upper West side of Manhattan to play

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Speaker 1: him the video. I didn't know my stuff could look

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Speaker 1: so good, he said, And then she made the pitch.

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Speaker 1: I want to do a show using your song to

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Speaker 1: tell a story. I don't know what it is yet,

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Speaker 1: but first I need your permission. Okay, he said, you

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Speaker 1: have it. I'm also going to need access to your

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Speaker 1: entire song catalog. Fine, they shook hands. Twiler had the

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Speaker 1: creative freedom she wanted, but was it freedom to crown

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Speaker 1: her glorious career or freedom to wreck it. I'm Tim Harford,

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Speaker 1: you're listening to cautionary tales. A mere two years had

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Speaker 1: passed between Twiler Tharpe's Call to Billy Joel and that

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Speaker 1: summer evening at Chicago's Schubert Theater. It wasn't Broadway yet,

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Speaker 1: but it was a big moment. As preview audiences waited

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Speaker 1: for their first glimpse of moving out the new Broadway musical.

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Speaker 1: The lights went up right in the middle of the stage,

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Speaker 1: the musicians started to play. Thanks to some spectacular hydraulics,

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Speaker 1: the entire band was then lifted back and up to

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Speaker 1: a balcony at the rear of the stage. As the

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Speaker 1: dance has emerged and burst into motion to the tune

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Speaker 1: of scenes from an Italian restaurant. There was just one problem.

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Speaker 1: The critics, stupefyingly cliche and almost embarrassingly naive, leaves half

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Speaker 1: the audience asking the other half what just happened. They

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Speaker 1: were not impressed. Even the sympathetic ones thought the show

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Speaker 1: was flawed. Moving Out is a glorious mess. If the

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Speaker 1: theatrical jury acquits, so be it. If not, let it

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Speaker 1: live in memory as a magnificent failure. And for most

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Speaker 1: the word failure loomed much larger than the word magnificent.

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Speaker 1: They did not like it condens's history to the point

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Speaker 1: of meaninglessness. They did not like it at all. If

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Speaker 1: Oliver Stone did a Broadway dance musical, and truly that's

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Speaker 1: not a suggestion, it might come out like the more

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Speaker 1: risible passages of Moving Out. Moving Out came with the

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Speaker 1: highest of hopes, the most talented of casts and the

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Speaker 1: most celebrated of celebrity creators, at least as silly as

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Speaker 1: anything in Reefer Madness, pile driving, and ill conceived. The

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Speaker 1: curtain came down on that opening night of the Chicago previews.

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Speaker 1: The audience and the critics alike were confused. What exactly

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Speaker 1: was this show trying to do? It wasn't clear. In

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Speaker 1: watching nearly two hours, a feeling of exhausting relentlessness sets in.

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Speaker 1: For those in search of a heart wrenching story. You

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Speaker 1: had better be moving on. One thing was clear, though,

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Speaker 1: in the opinion of the critics, the show just wasn't

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Speaker 1: good enough. You must realize by now that I'm fascinated

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Speaker 1: by failure. That's why cautionary tales exists. In fact, I've

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Speaker 1: been fascinated by failure for a long time. Back in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, I published a book titled adapt

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Speaker 1: Why Success Always Starts with Failure. I spoke about the

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Speaker 1: importance of learning through experimentation, using trial and error to

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Speaker 1: solve complex problems and produce great creative works. I argued

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Speaker 1: that each failure was a step on the road to success.

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Speaker 1: But ever since that book was published, I've had this

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Speaker 1: nagging sense of guilt because while there's no shortage of

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Speaker 1: people who'll sing the praises of learning from your mistakes,

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Speaker 1: the truth is failure hurts. It isn't as easy to

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Speaker 1: learn from failure as you might think. Twila Thorpe knows

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Speaker 1: that very well. If you read her book The Creative Habit,

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Speaker 1: and you should you quickly learn that Twila Thorpe is

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Speaker 1: as interested in failure as I am. I don't mean

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Speaker 1: to romanticize failure. Believe me, success is preferable to failure.

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Speaker 1: But while we all want success not failure, we don't

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Speaker 1: always get what we want. If we're doing something new,

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Speaker 1: doing something hard, then sometimes we will fail. And Twila

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Speaker 1: Thorpe knows it. Changing the work and how we work

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Speaker 1: is the unpleasant task of dealing with that which we

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Speaker 1: have been denying. It is probably the biggest test in

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Speaker 1: the creative process, demanding not only an admission that you've

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Speaker 1: made a mistake, but that you know how to fix it.

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Speaker 1: When we romanticize failure, it says that proverbial learning experience

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Speaker 1: a necessary step on the road to glory. But Tharp

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Speaker 1: just described two big obstacles on that road. The first

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Speaker 1: is denial. It's hard even to admit that there's a problem.

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Speaker 1: The second is that even once you have admitted there's

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Speaker 1: a problem, you still have to figure out the solution.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about denial first. You may remember an earlier

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Speaker 1: episode of Cautionary Tales, one in which we heard a

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Speaker 1: UFO cult predict that at midnight a few days before

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Speaker 1: Christmas nineteen fifty four, aliens would descend to rescue the

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Speaker 1: faithful and destroy the world. When the aliens didn't come

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Speaker 1: and the world was not destroyed, the cult took it

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Speaker 1: as evidence that their faith had been rewarded with salvation

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Speaker 1: for all. They even started issuing press releases spreading the

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Speaker 1: good news. We humans have an extraordinary capacity to deny

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Speaker 1: the obvious. For Tharp, it would have been much better

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Speaker 1: if she'd faced up to the show's problems early, early

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Speaker 1: problems for the easiest to fix. The best failures are

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Speaker 1: the private ones you committed the confines of your room,

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Speaker 1: alone with no strangers watching. Private failures are great. I

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Speaker 1: encourage you to fail as much as you want in private.

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Speaker 1: Private failures are the first drafts that get tossed in

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Speaker 1: the waste basket, the sketches crumple up on the floor,

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Speaker 1: the manuscripts that stay in the drawer. Good advice. But

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Speaker 1: it was hard to imagine a less private failure than

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Speaker 1: the reviews of Moving Out the New Broadway musical. How

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Speaker 1: had that public failure happened? Tharp reflected with hindsight that

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Speaker 1: the fundraising for the show had been too easy. With Twiler,

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Speaker 1: Tharpe and Billy Joel at the wheel, investors scrambled to

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Speaker 1: fund the show. Things moved from concept to stripped down

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Speaker 1: version to fully funded Broadway bound production so quickly that

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Speaker 1: there was barely time to think. It went so smoothly.

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Speaker 1: I had to pinch myself too smoothly. She ruefully admitted

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Speaker 1: there were seeds of doubt already present about some aspects

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Speaker 1: of the show, and the logic of the schedule kept

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Speaker 1: us from looking at a few basic problems. In a word, denial,

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Speaker 1: It's understandable. Billy Joel had given Twiler his unconditional backing

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Speaker 1: and total freedom before stepping back. Investors had thrown money

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Speaker 1: at her. The show was hurtling towards Broadway. Didn't feel

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Speaker 1: like quite the moment to pay attention to those seeds

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Speaker 1: of doubt. It must have seemed better to ride the

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Speaker 1: wave and hope for the best. But every wave breaks eventually.

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Speaker 1: Tharp was losing her opportunity to do something. She was

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Speaker 1: ignoring her own advice. The more you fail in private,

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Speaker 1: the less will fail in public. If you forget this,

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Speaker 1: if you let down your guard or lower your standards

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Speaker 1: or compromised too quickly, or leaven something that should be rejected.

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Speaker 1: You'll have to deal with the other, more painful kind

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Speaker 1: of failure, the public kind. After the Chicago previews opened

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Speaker 1: and the blistering reviews came in, the painful kind of

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Speaker 1: failure had just happened. Now she'd have to deal with it.

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Speaker 1: It seemed that everyone in Chicago was talking about the

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Speaker 1: problems with moving out the New Broadway musical. Twiler described

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Speaker 1: hanging out in a restaurant across the street from the

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Speaker 1: Schubert Theater during intermission, hearing one patron complaining about the

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Speaker 1: show to her waiter. Don't worry, the waiter replied, The

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Speaker 1: second act is much better. The second act is better.

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Speaker 1: That's good. On the other hand, if even the waiters

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Speaker 1: know that your first act stinks, you have a problem.

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Speaker 1: And it wasn't just the waiters in Chicago, Twiler's troubles

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Speaker 1: were about to get much bigger. Traditionally, the New York

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Speaker 1: media don't comment on the regional previews. They wait until

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Speaker 1: the show arrives in Manhattan. What happens in Chicago stays

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Speaker 1: in Chicago. That's the tradition. But not this time. Perhaps

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Speaker 1: it was because Billy Joel was so famous. Perhaps it

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Speaker 1: was because he was a local boy from Long Island,

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Speaker 1: New York. Perhaps the show was simply too terrible to ignore.

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Speaker 1: Whatever the reason, Long Island's newspaper, Newsday, broke with long

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Speaker 1: standing custom, Newsday reprinted one of the Chicago reviews, where

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Speaker 1: it would be widely read in New York City. It

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Speaker 1: was an act that triggered a storm of debate among

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Speaker 1: theater producers and journalists. Not cool a show is in

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Speaker 1: such a vulnerable situation when it opens out of town.

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Speaker 1: But that debate didn't help Twila Thorpe. In fact, the

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Speaker 1: controversy just made for more column inches and more awareness

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Speaker 1: of her show's problems. The fact was that now everyone

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Speaker 1: with any interest in New York musical theater knew that

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Speaker 1: Twila Thorpe had unveiled a colossal turkey in Chicago and

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Speaker 1: it was about to flap its way down to Broadway.

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Speaker 1: This might just be deliciously bad. Twila Thorpe's oldest collaborator

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Speaker 1: was Jennifer Tipton, a lighting designer. Jennifer had flown in

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Speaker 1: from New York to watch the opening night in Chicago.

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Speaker 1: The next morning, the two old friends had met for

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Speaker 1: breakfast together to read the reviews. I can just imagine

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Speaker 1: the scene an ice hotel, Chris white tablecloth, coffee, orange juice,

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Speaker 1: Clisson and the newspapers embarrassingly naive, ill conceived magnificent failure.

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Speaker 1: And then Twiler had looked up at her old friend Jennifer,

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Speaker 1: and Jennifer had looked back at her. You know they're right.

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Speaker 1: And this was the pivotal moment. By her own admission,

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Speaker 1: Twyla Tharp had been in denial about the problems with

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Speaker 1: her show, now which she doubled down like a member

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Speaker 1: of the UFO cult, insisting that she knew best and

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Speaker 1: that the more sophisticated critics in New York would perceive

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Speaker 1: the show's brilliance or would she moved from denial to acceptance.

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Speaker 1: You know they're right, Jennifer had said, and Twyla Tharp

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Speaker 1: had nodded, Yes, I know. With the help of an

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Speaker 1: honest friend, Tharp had finally accepted that she had a problem.

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Speaker 1: The show urgently needed to change, but time was running out.

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Speaker 1: Twila Tharp has thought a lot about failure, but thinking

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Speaker 1: and doing and never quite the same thing. And as

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Speaker 1: I've pondered the challenge facing Tharp, I find myself thinking

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Speaker 1: about another bold innovator who's truly mastered the art of

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Speaker 1: good mistakes. His name was Paul McCready, and while Twila

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Speaker 1: Tharpe's goal was to produce a hit that would finally

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Speaker 1: make dancing pay for the dancers, Paul McCready's goal was

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Speaker 1: to win the Kramer Prize. The Cramer Prize was a

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Speaker 1: large cash award for the first human powered aircraft capable

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Speaker 1: of taking off without aid and flying a one mile

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Speaker 1: figure eight course with a ten foot hurdle at the

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Speaker 1: start and finish. Doesn't sound so hard, but it is.

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Speaker 1: The Power for such a player could come from, say

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Speaker 1: a professional cyclist whirring legs spinning a propeller. But even

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Speaker 1: a cycling bro can only produce just over half a

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Speaker 1: horsepower for a sustained burst. That's not a lot if

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Speaker 1: you want to fly a plane. The Wright Brothers put

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Speaker 1: twenty times that power into their plane. A modern light

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Speaker 1: aircraft is at least three hundred times more powerful than

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Speaker 1: a cyclist. That may be why the Cramer Prize, first

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Speaker 1: offered in nineteen fifty nine by the Royal Aeronautical Society

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Speaker 1: in London, lay unclaimed In nineteen seventy three, the Society

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Speaker 1: increased the prize to attempting fifty thousand pounds in today's

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Speaker 1: money more than half a million dollars. That sparked a

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Speaker 1: new surgeon interest, but still nobody came close to building

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Speaker 1: a working plane. The early attempts were just too heavy

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Speaker 1: for the furiously cycling pilot. Even a minute of flight

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Speaker 1: was exhausting. But the competitors for the prize were also

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Speaker 1: doomed in a much more subtle way, and will come

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Speaker 1: to that subtle floor in a moment. Fix it and

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Speaker 1: you could win the Cramer Prize. It was in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy six that Paul McCready took an interest. Mccreedy was

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Speaker 1: an aeronautical engineer and a glider pilot. He was also

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Speaker 1: in financial trouble, having guaranteed a loan for a friend's

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Speaker 1: failed business venture. Suddenly the Cramer prize seemed rather attractive.

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Speaker 1: Mccredy's knowledge of hand gliders suggested that a super light

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Speaker 1: plane might work. If you tripled a hand glider wingspan

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Speaker 1: to almost a hundred feet, you could get the power

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Speaker 1: required down below half a horse power. Months of experimentation ensued,

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Speaker 1: first with Paul's teenage son Tyler, as a pilot and

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Speaker 1: later with pro cyclists. But to get it right, there

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Speaker 1: was so much to learn, so many miss stakes to make.

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Speaker 1: And here is where that subtle floor that I mentioned

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Speaker 1: comes in, the one that kept dooming McCready's rivals. Every

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Speaker 1: time they crashed, their planes were destroying. The pilots were fine.

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Speaker 1: These were crashes from a height of ten feet at

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Speaker 1: a speed of ten miles an hour, but the planes

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Speaker 1: were wrecks. The crashes of McCready's planes seemed just as spectacular,

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Speaker 1: with aluminum poles shearing off the struts, splintering, a tough

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Speaker 1: transparent film that makes the wing surfaces crumpling. Start peddling,

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Speaker 1: start peddling. Pull out the pilot. Greg Miller is being

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Speaker 1: pulled out of the wreckage of the slow motion crash.

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Speaker 1: That wasn't your fault. You did everything right. He's fine,

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Speaker 1: just shaken and frustrated, as though had fallen off his bike.

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Speaker 1: Mccreedy is calm. He's already explaining to Miller and the

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Speaker 1: team what happened. The right wing was going down a bit.

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Speaker 1: There wasn't enough left control. It just wouldn't goal left.

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Speaker 1: I had it pulled left. Yeah, I know you had

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Speaker 1: it pulled left. The plane looks shattered emotionally speaking, so

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Speaker 1: does poor Greg Miller. What a day. McCready, though, is

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Speaker 1: as cool as a cucumber. He knows that he and

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Speaker 1: his little team can fix the plane in just twenty

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Speaker 1: four hours. The plane is called the Gossamer Condor. It's

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Speaker 1: simple design makes the Condor easy to repair and easy

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Speaker 1: to take apart and reassemble. This particular crash, for example,

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Speaker 1: teaches McCready how to solve a problem that's been bothering

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Speaker 1: him how to get such a vast, lightweight, slow moving

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Speaker 1: plane to turn. The crash happened when the plane turns

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Speaker 1: sharply to the right that was caused by a small

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Speaker 1: twist in the right wing tip. All McCready has to

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Speaker 1: do is figure out how to twist or untwist the

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Speaker 1: tips on command. After previous crashes, he's made tiny alterations,

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Speaker 1: such as taping a Manila folder to the propeller to

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Speaker 1: increase its size or cutting an air vent to keep

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Speaker 1: the pilot cool. But he's also rebuilt the plane from

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Speaker 1: scratch to a new design. Even when nothing works, McCready's

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Speaker 1: learning flightwise, we didn't do any better than we did

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Speaker 1: two weeks ago. The fact that we made changes in

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Speaker 1: between times has let us see that those changes didn't help.

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Speaker 1: By August nineteen seventy seven, they're ready for another attempt

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Speaker 1: on the record, and the Gossamer Condor has been evolving

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Speaker 1: at furious speed for a year. It's already flown about

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Speaker 1: four hundred test flights. The wingtip twist system is working.

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Speaker 1: Glider pilot and pro cyclist Brian Allen is both pilot

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Speaker 1: and engine for this attempt. Plane lifts gracefully, turns more

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Speaker 1: stead and then a gust of wind tears a wire

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00:21:14,770 --> 00:21:21,410
Speaker 1: free a plane goes down half. Brian Allen lies motionless

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Speaker 1: on the runway, but after a moment he starts moving again.

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Speaker 1: He's fine, just winded and McCready. McCready is under pressure.

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Speaker 1: He's heard that another team over in Japan is close

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Speaker 1: to winning the prize. Nevertheless, he decides to take advantage

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Speaker 1: of the crash to rebuild the plane again from scratch,

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Speaker 1: shaving off a little extra weight wherever he can. It

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Speaker 1: takes just two weeks, and on August the twenty third,

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, Brian Allen climbs into the latest incarnation

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Speaker 1: of the gossamer Condor pedals furiously down the airstrip, and

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Speaker 1: after two long sweeping turns, six minutes and more than

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Speaker 1: a mile flight, he clears the final hurdle on the

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Speaker 1: course and gently touches down. The Cramer Prize is won

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Speaker 1: not just by a brilliant team of inventive minds, but

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Speaker 1: by the ability to test, to crash, to learn, and

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00:22:27,050 --> 00:22:31,570
Speaker 1: to adapt quickly and safely. Over a period of just

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00:22:31,650 --> 00:22:35,530
Speaker 1: a few months, McCready was able to pick his pilot

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Speaker 1: and his plane off the runway and completely rebuild after

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Speaker 1: a demoralizing crash in a matter of days. Could Twila

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Speaker 1: Tharp do the same for moving out? Stay with Us?

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Speaker 1: Twila Tharp remember talked about the two difficulties of change.

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Speaker 1: It is probably the biggest test in the creative process,

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Speaker 1: demanding not only an admission that you've made a mistake,

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Speaker 1: but that you know how to fix it well. Should

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Speaker 1: pass the first test Over coffee and croisson with her

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Speaker 1: friend Jennifer Tipton, she had admitted the problem, but the

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Speaker 1: second test was even harder. How could she fix the

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Speaker 1: show so late in the day. Paul McCready's big insight

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Speaker 1: was that you could learn a lot if failures were

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Speaker 1: survivable and repairs were quick and cheap to make, and

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Speaker 1: the out of town previews gave Twilight Thape an opening

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Speaker 1: an opportunity to fix moving out before the New York

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Speaker 1: reviewers tore the show to shreds, She'd hesitated until almost

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Speaker 1: too late. It hadn't helped when one of the damning

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Speaker 1: Chicago reviews had been republished in New York. That ran

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Speaker 1: against the spirit of allowing the out of town show

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Speaker 1: to serve as a kind of prototype. Even without that problem,

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00:24:07,130 --> 00:24:10,250
Speaker 1: the show needed much more than the trade tweaks before

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Speaker 1: hitting Broadway. The low cost opportunities to radically reshape the show,

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Speaker 1: or the time for that had been in workshops and rehearsals.

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Speaker 1: They were long passed. It was perilous to change the

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Speaker 1: show while the previews in Chicago were still running, but

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Speaker 1: Tharpe couldn't wait until the show moved to Broadway. There

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Speaker 1: were only three New York rehearsal days before the previews opened,

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Speaker 1: and Thorpe still didn't quite seem to know what she

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Speaker 1: wanted the show to be. In a publicity interview on TV,

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Speaker 1: she was challenged to explain, was it a pop ballet,

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Speaker 1: a musical, a dance cicle. I don't think of it

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Speaker 1: as any of those things. I think of it as

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Speaker 1: a thing, Okay. I mean one of the challenges with

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Speaker 1: this was to formulate the genre. It's not dance, it's

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Speaker 1: not up bra it's not straight drama. It's not poetry,

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Speaker 1: it's not recital, it's not of vaudeville, it's not a review.

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Speaker 1: You can see why the audience was confused. Even Twila

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Speaker 1: Tharpe was tying herself up in knots. But there was

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Speaker 1: a way forward. Just as Paul McCready had turned every

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Speaker 1: crash into a source of information, Twila Tharpe found her

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00:25:21,730 --> 00:25:26,810
Speaker 1: own strategy for turning failure into success. There was, after all,

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00:25:27,130 --> 00:25:31,130
Speaker 1: a convenient way to spot every floor with the show.

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Speaker 1: Bless their cold, black little hearts, The critics turned out

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00:25:34,730 --> 00:25:39,930
Speaker 1: to be enormously useful. Of course, those reviews expressed vividly

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Speaker 1: and concisely everything that was wrong with Moving Out. The

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00:25:43,770 --> 00:25:47,570
Speaker 1: only problem was I couldn't stomach reading the reviews too closely,

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Speaker 1: but that wasn't hard to solve. Jesse Hewitt, who was

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Speaker 1: both Twilitharpe's son and her business manager, took it upon

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Speaker 1: himself to closely read all the reviews, strip out the barbs,

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Speaker 1: and summarize the substance. What he did was to scientifically

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00:26:03,090 --> 00:26:06,970
Speaker 1: apply every single review and make a grid. When we

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00:26:07,050 --> 00:26:10,530
Speaker 1: saw more than two or three critics saying the same thing,

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Speaker 1: we said, let's look at this. The dancing and the

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00:26:14,010 --> 00:26:17,090
Speaker 1: music had both been spectacular, said the critics, but the

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Speaker 1: show's first half had been visually confusing, emotionally shallow, and overcomplicated.

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Speaker 1: The second half had been simpler and much better for it.

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Speaker 1: As one friend a director had told her, you're doing

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00:26:29,090 --> 00:26:33,930
Speaker 1: too much, trying too hard. Make each scene about one thing,

365
00:26:34,050 --> 00:26:38,930
Speaker 1: that three things. So she began to simplify as quickly

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Speaker 1: and as efficiently as she could. The audience were confused. Fine,

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00:26:43,850 --> 00:26:46,530
Speaker 1: move the band out of the spotlight and find a

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Speaker 1: way to focus on the five principal dancers. These are

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Speaker 1: the folks you have to watch. The only thing you

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Speaker 1: have to do is bring these five people forward so

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Speaker 1: that by Italian restaurant you know who they are. Tharpe's

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00:26:58,650 --> 00:27:02,810
Speaker 1: production designer realized that Tharp had once choreographed a dance

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Speaker 1: to a Chuck Berry song. Billy Joels deliberately retro hit

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00:27:07,210 --> 00:27:09,650
Speaker 1: It's still rock and roll to me had the same

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00:27:09,810 --> 00:27:14,450
Speaker 1: thumping four four beaters Chuck Berry perfect. Tharpe taught the

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00:27:14,530 --> 00:27:18,450
Speaker 1: old dance to her five leading dancers in three hours,

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00:27:18,890 --> 00:27:22,050
Speaker 1: and the show had a simple, crowd pleasing prolog that

378
00:27:22,250 --> 00:27:26,890
Speaker 1: told the audience who to pay attention to. It wasn't

379
00:27:26,930 --> 00:27:30,970
Speaker 1: the highest of concepts, but it was a fast, practical fix,

380
00:27:31,410 --> 00:27:34,770
Speaker 1: like Paul McCready taping a Manila folder onto a propeller,

381
00:27:35,170 --> 00:27:39,090
Speaker 1: and so she continued to look for the quickest, simplest improvements.

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00:27:39,570 --> 00:27:42,290
Speaker 1: It didn't have to be high art, it just had

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00:27:42,330 --> 00:27:46,450
Speaker 1: to be better. And just as Paul McCready occasionally had

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00:27:46,490 --> 00:27:49,370
Speaker 1: to pick his pilots up off the runway and reassure

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00:27:49,410 --> 00:27:52,770
Speaker 1: them that the disaster wasn't their fault, Twilight Tharpe had

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00:27:52,810 --> 00:27:57,490
Speaker 1: to cope with the bruised, confused, and exhausted cast. The

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00:27:57,610 --> 00:28:00,290
Speaker 1: band howled when she moved them out of the spotlight.

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00:28:00,650 --> 00:28:03,930
Speaker 1: She cut prized solos for the dancers in an attempt

389
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Speaker 1: to simplify. That didn't go down well, and learning the

390
00:28:08,370 --> 00:28:11,090
Speaker 1: new version of the show while performing the old one

391
00:28:11,130 --> 00:28:15,850
Speaker 1: to perplexed audiences in Chicago was a grim experience. The

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00:28:15,970 --> 00:28:20,610
Speaker 1: leading dancer Elizabeth Parkinson froze on stage one night. She

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00:28:20,730 --> 00:28:23,650
Speaker 1: just got lost. She couldn't remember which was the old

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00:28:23,690 --> 00:28:27,650
Speaker 1: and which was the new. But they persisted, and in

395
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Speaker 1: October two thousand and two, as the big opening night approached,

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00:28:32,210 --> 00:28:35,370
Speaker 1: Billy Joel swept back in to lend his support and

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00:28:35,490 --> 00:28:38,370
Speaker 1: his enthusiasm. I don't know what you call it, said

398
00:28:38,370 --> 00:28:41,650
Speaker 1: Billy Joel, but it's audacious, and it's different, and it's adventurous,

399
00:28:41,650 --> 00:28:47,450
Speaker 1: and it's risky, and let's do it. Was it a dancecole?

400
00:28:47,490 --> 00:28:49,890
Speaker 1: By the way, Billy Joel, with his rock and roll

401
00:28:49,930 --> 00:28:53,930
Speaker 1: gift for simplicity, realized, just didn't matter. It didn't need

402
00:28:54,010 --> 00:28:56,930
Speaker 1: to try to explain it. Just call it Moving Out

403
00:28:57,450 --> 00:28:59,810
Speaker 1: and stick Billy Joel's name up in lights, and if

404
00:28:59,810 --> 00:29:03,210
Speaker 1: it was any good, nobody would care about anything else.

405
00:29:06,170 --> 00:29:09,970
Speaker 1: And so in October two thousand and two, the show

406
00:29:10,170 --> 00:29:14,530
Speaker 1: formerly known as Moving Out the New Broadway Musical opened

407
00:29:14,570 --> 00:29:20,370
Speaker 1: on Broadway. Now the Marquis simply said Moving Out a simpler,

408
00:29:20,490 --> 00:29:25,170
Speaker 1: more direct title for a simpler, more direct show. But

409
00:29:25,650 --> 00:29:29,370
Speaker 1: would the critics be convinced Miss Tharpe and her vivid

410
00:29:29,410 --> 00:29:34,410
Speaker 1: team of dancers on Earth? The reasons certain cliches keep resonating,

411
00:29:34,610 --> 00:29:38,490
Speaker 1: and more important, makes them gleam as if they had

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00:29:38,570 --> 00:29:41,810
Speaker 1: just been minted. This review, by the way, is from

413
00:29:41,810 --> 00:29:45,330
Speaker 1: the New York Times itself. Let's hear a bit more?

414
00:29:45,650 --> 00:29:51,050
Speaker 1: A shimmering portrait of an American generation. Oh that's good.

415
00:29:51,690 --> 00:29:54,850
Speaker 1: As a dance critic, I am perfectly willing to call

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Speaker 1: Moving Out a show, and a terrific one at debt.

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00:29:58,890 --> 00:30:03,130
Speaker 1: Moving Out gives Broadway the jolt of genuine energy it

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00:30:03,490 --> 00:30:08,170
Speaker 1: needed this season. In a word, the shows are blast.

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00:30:09,170 --> 00:30:12,490
Speaker 1: The most striking was an article published back in Chicago

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00:30:12,650 --> 00:30:15,890
Speaker 1: by the critic Michael Phillips. He was the one whose

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00:30:15,930 --> 00:30:20,170
Speaker 1: review of the Chicago Preview had controversially been republished in

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00:30:20,210 --> 00:30:22,530
Speaker 1: New York, and he was flown down to give his

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00:30:22,570 --> 00:30:26,410
Speaker 1: opinion on the Broadway version of the show. He saw it,

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00:30:26,570 --> 00:30:29,730
Speaker 1: and especially the dancers, in a new light. I don't

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Speaker 1: think I fully appreciated how good the five Principles really

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Speaker 1: were and are. In Chicago, you couldn't always find them

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Speaker 1: amid Thorpe's visual esthetic. Now on Broadway, each of the

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Speaker 1: five pops out with a kind of glorious confidence. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't perfect, he said, but it was much much better

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Speaker 1: than he could have imagined. Any director can learn a

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Speaker 1: lesson from how thoroughly Thorpe revisited the show, and he

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Speaker 1: asked an important question, how did this happen? That's a

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Speaker 1: question we should ask more often. It's easy to focus

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Speaker 1: obsessive either on failure or on success, without considering how

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Speaker 1: one becomes the other. For Twila Tharpe, she simply avoided

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Speaker 1: two of the big obstacles. After denying there was a

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Speaker 1: problem during rehearsals, she finally acknowledged the need to make

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Speaker 1: big changes. Then she didn't flounder about unsure what to do. Instead,

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Speaker 1: like Paul McCready, she focused intensely on learning quick lessons,

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Speaker 1: and she made the simplest, most practical fixes. Moving Out

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Speaker 1: ran for years, toured repeatedly, and earned a Tony Award

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Speaker 1: for Billy Joel and Stuart Malina, the classical conductor who

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Speaker 1: had been pinching himself at the start of the project.

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Speaker 1: It also earned a Tony nomination for Twiler Tharpe's direction,

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Speaker 1: and she won a Tony for her choreography. But perhaps

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Speaker 1: the awards should have been given instead for the most

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Speaker 1: adaptable leader of any team on Broadway. Of course, there

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Speaker 1: is no such award, but maybe there should be. For

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Speaker 1: a full list of our sources, please see the show

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Speaker 1: notes at Tim Harford dot com. Portionary Tales is written

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00:32:39,810 --> 00:32:43,650
Speaker 1: by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by

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Speaker 1: Ryan Dilley with support from Courtney Guarino and Emily Vaughan.

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Speaker 1: The sound design and original music is the work of

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Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts. It features the

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Speaker 1: voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Gutridge, Mastella Harford, Cobner,

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Speaker 1: Holbrook Smith, Greg Lockett, mass Siam Munroe, and Rufus Wright.

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Speaker 1: The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work

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Speaker 1: of Mere LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, John Schnaz, Carlie Migliori,

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Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Royston Berserv, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Daniellow, Lakhan,

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Speaker 1: and Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.

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Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to share, rate

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Speaker 1: and review, and if you want to hear the show,

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00:33:32,450 --> 00:33:36,690
Speaker 1: add free and listen to four exclusive Cautionary Tale shorts.

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00:33:37,050 --> 00:33:39,770
Speaker 1: Then sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show page

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Speaker 1: in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot FM, Slash Plus,