Stage Whisper
Whisper in the Wings Episode 601
(upbeat music) - Hello everyone. Welcome back into a fantastic new whisper in the wings from stage whisper. It's all family on today's show. We are so excited about the two artists joining us once again with a fantastic new work that I can tell you right up the gate. We will be at, I cannot wait to see the show. The title alone is gonna make you wanna come out to see the show. Joining us today, we have the amazing playwright Courtney Taylor and the fantastic director, Abby Davis, who are here to talk to us about the Taylor Swift Unabomber play. It's part of Limefest and their production is playing August 12th and 20th at 9.30 p.m. All of this happening at the tank, which is also where you can get your tickets and more information by visiting the tank NYC.org. We are so excited to learn more about this. I don't wanna waste any more time. So Courtney, Abby, welcome back in to Whisper in the Wings from Stage Whisper. - Yes, we're so fun to be here. Thank you so much. - I'm so excited you're here. And a lot of show you are bringing us. I feel like every time we have YouTube back on, like the bar just keeps getting raised. I'm like, yes. Oh, yes, the Taylor Swift Unabomber play. Let's go. I'm excited. Courtney, let's start with you and have you tell us a bit about what the show is about? - Absolutely. So our full title name is Revelations from the first and last ever rehearsal of, they say I did something bad. An unauthorized Taylor Swift parody musical about the life of a Unabomber, Ted Kuzinski, presented by the Bridgebrook College Drama Club. It is a seven-day minute dramedy about college theater makers, true crime, rape culture. And then also in this array of things, also like queer romance, a fabulous character, eco-terrorist tailor, some musical performances, and just a lot of really fun, but also like raw and like tender explorations of sexual violence in schools and storytelling and just kind of, how do we move through this world with so much, so many systems of violence and power upon us? - I don't even know where to begin. The title, the fact that that's the full title, I'm like, yes, let's go. Let's just throw everything at the wall and let's just go. This is fantastic. I love the premise for the show. So I have to ask Courtney, what is the inspiration behind this piece? So at the end of college, me and my friends were obsessed with the show, Manhunt, The Search for the Unibomber. So that is just so like embedded in my brain. And one day I was listening to the song If This Was a Movie by Taylor Swift, and it just like jumped into my head the moment from the show where, you know, the Unibomber's brother is debating turning him into the FBI. And from there, it was like, oh, this could be an interesting play idea. It also just kind of crashed together with some other ideas about like college theater makers and like weird theater and like the weirdness of making theater with friends and people who have crushes on and all these different like elements. And so it all kind of like collage together in an exciting way. And, you know, sharing the script with Abby and like going through different developmental stages have made it even more like chaotic, but also like, you know, exploring things and deepen everything. So weird beginning, two weird places. - I love this so much. I love it. Abby, I have to ask, you know, she mentioned that she she passed the script on to you. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you came up on the previous? - Yeah. So my first introduction to the piece was sometime this past spring, when we were preparing for a reading of the entirety of the piece at the maker's ensemble, which is a company that we've done a couple of readings with before, they're wonderful. And they gave us time and space to be able to, you know, assemble a team. And it was a pretty quick rehearsal process, if I'm remembering correctly. But yeah, I mean, that was my first introduction to the piece, same with every other piece of Courtney's that I read for the first time. I am just like flabbergasted, positive, like connotation. I am, I think I've talked about this in the past, but maybe just kind of going back to like when I read, you know, some of the pieces that we've worked on in the past, I think I've killed Bigfoot and no entrance for the first time. I just like knew that there was something really special about Courtney and her work. And so I don't know, this was, you know, no exception. I'm really, really honored to be working on this again in a deeper capacity this time, just because we had a little bit of some more resources and a really cool platform to get to do it with. So yeah, it's been, I mean, it's been a couple of months now that I see a couple of months been like six months since we've been like working on this piece from start to now as a full team. And I'm just excited to see where we go from here. - That is so, so wonderful. I love it. So as we prepare for the show to open line Fest, which is just, I mean, oh, we're almost two weeks away, what has it been like developing it and getting it up on its feet? - Yeah, I mean, so out of all transparency at the time of us speaking right now, we're just about to go into rehearsals again. It's gonna be another quick process. But I think that's kind of just a testament to, you know, we've already laid such a really strong foundation and our entire cast of it just, you know, they're actors that we've worked with before and they have such, they have such a strong understanding of not only their characters, but you know, it's so the nuances of the text that, you know, normally you'd have to work with actors on for some time. And so that was kind of another piece of like us reading this together for the first time in the spring while we were just preparing for one, you know, kind of one off reading. It was really an exciting opportunity to see, you know, if we were to develop this further, like what would it, you know, be like, what would it sound like? So we're, you know, we're, we're hunkering down over the next couple of weeks before we open. And at this, it's funny kind of having, you know, as a director having to split, you know, your attention between rehearsal time and also like the production side of things. So entering both of those processes at the same time is like always a little chaotic, but I'm really excited for it. And I cannot believe it's only in a couple of weeks. - Yes. And we had a little bit of like a summer engagement with it with our friends at PaperCrain Productions. We shared a like 15-minute excerpt of the play at their "Do You Queer What I Queer" event. So it was fun to get a little rehearsal in, get back in the piece a little bit, has like a gear up to this next round. - I love that. That is amazing. By the way, I love the name of that festival. That I want more about it. Next year when that happens, I need to go see that 'cause that is a brilliant name. Now, Courtney, let me ask you with this piece that you've written, this fabulous piece. Is there a message or a thought? You hope audiences take away from it? - Yeah. So one of the big questions of the play that the characters are grappling with in their "Kelersek Unibomber Show", they're trying to get together is what do we do about sexual violence and academia? And how do we represent experiences that feel so illegible, that feel like, you know, using serious things that kind of spread out, you know, across, say like a grooming process, that are hard to just say, okay, now we're gonna dramatize something and, you know, show something that shows all the complexity of it and how difficult that is. The other kind of side of it that I hope audiences take away is through this crazy journey we go on in the play. So in addition to the college theater makers and the romance between Riley and Cheyenne, the college theater makers doing the show, we also get into this kind of surreal world with the arrival of the Unibomber and eco-taris tailor and through all of these different ways of exploring, you know, responses to systemic sexual violence, the takeaway I hope people, you know, come away with is just thinking about how tenderness and connection and solidarity can be really important tools in terms of supporting survivors in your life, in terms of being empowered as a survivor and in terms of trying to imagine new ways of confronting and dismantling systemic violence. - That's wonderful. Abby, anything you'd like to add to that? - Courtney Taylor is a genius and so well said, as always, something that I think we just kind of going to the tenderness piece that Courtney mentioned. I feel like that's such a theme in our work together, like not only like textually, but, you know, other themes, themes that we've found in the material that we're working on, but then also just like how we approach, how we approach each other as collaborators, how we approach our other collaborators and also just like that being like the basis of friendship and relationship. So it's just really lovely to get to work on a piece that really values that at its core. - That is so wonderful. And it leads to my final question for the first part, which I'm gonna ask both of you. And that of course is, who are you hoping have access to this work? Abby, I'd like to kick that off with you if I could. - Yeah, this is, I am never ever prepared, like truly to answer this question whenever I was stage whisperer, which is funny because I should expect it. I think my general answer to any of the work that, you know, I've talked about in the past couple of months on stage whisperer is just, you know, we as indie theater makers are, it's important to us to be able to connect with other, you know, other collaborators at this level just because that is how we are. That's how we do more work in the future. That's how we nurture the projects that we're putting up right now. And that's how we sort of propel their development. So being able to welcome other indie artists into the space is a really cool, you know, tool for connection and community specifically in New York where it's hard to do this thing. So that, you know, on the most sort of like general level, but I just, what I love so much about this piece is that it's so, it's so niche in many different facets. And like, obviously just like kind of talking about the full title itself, like there's a mention of Taylor Swift, there's a mention of the Unabomber, there's a mention of like a college like trauma program. So it's like, we've got the theater kids, we've got the Swifties, we've got the, dare I say, like anti-billionaires as well because that is what really what this piece is about. So I'm sorry, Swifties in advance. And also people, you know, I'm not gonna say like Unabomber but like true crime. So there's just truly something for everyone. And it's just, it's funny as hell. It's a great, it's a great comedy that's also super like touching and moving. So I don't know if you like any of those things come out. - I love that. That's a great, that's a great demographic to be reaching. Yes. Courtney, what about you? Anything you'd like to add to that? - I mean, as ever, I'm so obsessed with everything Abby says. That is exactly the vibe for the show. There's a lot of fun stuff for theater kids since it's kind of, it starts as a show about theater kids. A lot of like riffs on like movie musicals and Fosse Verdon and like popular shows and whatever. But yeah, I think there is something for everyone and something that I've really appreciated in the two times we've worked on this and the two times we've presented it so far has been the amount of people who, you know, working on the show or seeing the show have said like, you know, there were so many stories like this at my high school with like misconduct from teachers or, you know, teachers grooming students and, you know, everyone kind of having a story within this realm. So there's like this niche element and then there's also this element of how, you know, universal the, you know, the pain and struggle part of the play is. But then as Abby said, like moments for the, the Swifties moments for the true crime head, niche and universal, I think. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Well, on the second part of our shows, we love giving our listeners a chance to get to our guests a little bit better. Pull the curtain back, if you will. And of course, we've had you both on our show before. So I want to change the questions up a little bit. And Courtney, what is up with you and I'd love to know, how did you come into the performing arts? - So I have always been doing theater throughout like school and everything. I was a bird in Cinderella in first grade. I was originally assigned to be a mouse, but I'm very afraid of myself. So I asked to be a bird. I just have loved theater since then. And then, you know, doing it all through school and in college, I became really focused on playwriting after I had written a play about like, guys looking for UFOs. And then I was like, oh my God, I love doing this. And so that was kind of the way that, you know, kept me going into it and going into it more seriously, I guess. - I love that. What a way to get into the theater. Abby, I want to ask you, you know, like I said, we've had you two on our show several times before. What changes would you like to see be made in theater, either now or in the near future? - That's a very good question. I think there are different changes that are necessary at different levels of theater making. So it's hard to sort of give a catch-all answer to this question. But at least I can speak to sort of, you know, indie theater making at kind of where we're at right now. And we're kind of bridging the gap between, you know, like obviously like there's a self-producing element in all of this, when we're working with like organizations, but we're now kind of at our point in collaborating with one another that, you know, working with an organization like the tank, like they have the resources to be able to give, give this sort of, you know, platform, such as like rehearsal space and also just like the big theater spaces, bigger theater spaces, then, you know, I'm sure a lot of their indie artists that come through their doors have, you know, worked in before. And so it's, you know, organizations like the tank that make access to those really important resources, you know, just more accessible is just a game changer. And so it's, you know, it's seeing more organizations like that pop up and flourish. And I honestly, out of full transparency, I don't really know much about the history of the tank, but I'm very curious to kind of like read about, you know, how it came to be and, you know, how they're able to offer those kinds of resources to artists because I think it's really important work that they're doing. So, I mean, that kind of kind of speaks to like just the accessibility of different, you know, arts organizations around New York specifically, but a lot of, you know, a lot of their practices come from independent theater making that is, you know, is already happening on a, on shoestring budgets. And like there, I could, I could just like rattle off a list of like the amount of the number of like theater companies that I know or just like collectives that I know that, you know, you may have access to affordable space that they will rent out to independent artists and just like, there's, I'm gonna give a shout out to Good Apple's Collective. The Iraq, they have a big spreadsheet of just affordable space or anybody to look at. It's, so it's like the opposite of gatekeeping that information is sharing it widely. And so it's, I guess, my point is I have had such a good experience working with other sort of community focused and oriented independent theater groups and artists who offer that information and those resources with, you know, with no ulterior motive. It's just for the sake of uplifting peers and potential collaborators. And it just kind of, I think what it all points to is just like, the biggest change that I would like to see is more of a focus on community building because that's how we're gonna be able to, you know, accomplish the bigger changes that need to happen at institutional and systemic levels. It all kind of starts with individuals coming together. So if we can do that at a smaller level and then kind of, you know, go from there, I just, I think that would be a really important grassroots effort, if you will. I love that, though. That's a great, great answer. Now I want to ask the two of you, of course, my favorite question to ask guests. I always get to hear such great memories from the two of you. And so, of course, I'd love to know what is another of your favorite theater memories? Yeah, I was thinking about it after I saw this question. And one that's recent but made such an impact was while we were working on no entrance in March, as part of the neurodivergent new play series. There was the day where it was like the first time I was in person with Abby in the cast at that cool project rehearsing. And I was watching, you know, these scenes that I've worked on in my computer alone for five, six years, happening in real life and then happening under the direction, you know, of Abby who is so such a visionary and also so kind and makes it such a warm rehearsal space where people feel like they can be honest and feel like they can experiment and take bold swings. And so, sitting there in the Bethel studio watching some of these scenes, especially like there's a big chaotic dream sequence in no entrance. And just watching Abby direct that, I was so like amazed that so much of being a playwright is your alone writing. So for it to be this thing in person, in community with others, you know, 3D live coming to life was just extraordinary. One of my favorite favorite moments as a playwright so far. - That's amazing. I love hearing stories like that. So thank you for that. Abby, how about you? - Oh my God. Ah, thank you so much. You're so sweet. I feel like I've talked about, I think I talked about no entrance my like second. I don't know how many times I've been on, but it was towards the beginning. And I don't know that I talked about that specific rehearsal, but now that I'm thinking about it, I do want to kind of elaborate on just like what that was, what that experience was like 'cause it was just a really special, it was a special moment for everyone. It was just like, I don't know that I had the context at the time that Courtney had been working on that piece for as long as she had. I think I may have learned that like kind of later on in the process actually. And it just really sort of illuminated like how, like it's just a brilliant script. It's so, it has so much depth. And I think that we had a lot of material to work with and a really condensed rehearsal process, but that was one of few rehearsals that we were all together in the room, together in, you know, in person. And it was just kind of, it was kind of magical. Like I think I said something about this kind of recently about, you know, I don't even, I'm not sure what it was, but I feel like recently I was talking about sort of like what is like the magic piece of theatre? Like what makes theatre magical? And it, to me, is like discovery. And like being able to like watch discovery happen in real time and like an actor will do something a specific way and be like, oh, wait, that felt right, that's cool. And then we all just kind of like look around the room and we're like, did everybody like feel that too? Did that feel right? And everyone's like, yeah. And you're like, okay, let's keep doing that then. That happened so many times in that specific rehearsal. And it was just a really, it was a really cool reminder of how important this work is and how lucky we are to get to do it together. So yeah, that was just kind of reiterating that was a very cool experience for me as well. - That's a wonderful memory as well. You two never disappoint. These were fantastic. Thank you so much for those. As we wrap things up, I would love to know, do either of you have any other projects or productions in the pipeline that we might be able to plug for you? - I will say as just kind of like a general to be announced there will be more, no entrance things in the future with support from the Bechtel Project where I'm a feminismist for everybody fellow. They are so, so amazing, so more, more news on that. But I'm also so excited about another play out line fest that Abby's directing, if you wanna put the input on that. - I so do. - Oh, I actually have another plug while Abby is looking. This is so, so new, but I'm gonna be doing my solo show The Night the Bar played a polka cover of "I'm on Fire" by Bruce Springsteen as a pop-up show at Cannonball Fest at Philly Fringe on September 16th? On September 16th, I believe, and I am very, very excited about that truly like found out the other day. Peace of God. - Congrats, oh my God. It is a wonderful piece. Go, I see it. The holy crap, Kourtney is a force. I have found all of the information. I was afraid I was gonna mess up the dates. Yes, I do have another piece that I'm directing as a part of line fest at the tank. With the playwright, Sarah Groustra, who is also a force, this piece is called "The Third Hunger" or "The Donner Party Play", which, funnily, funnily, I think that's a word, I don't know, funny enough, is also opening the same night as revelations at the tank. However, the second performance does not take place on the second performance night of "Revelation", so you can go see both of you feel compelled to do so when you should. "The Third Hunger" opens on August 12th at 9.30 p.m. and then has another 9.30 p.m. performance on August 16th. - That is fantastic. Well, finally, I wanna ask, you know, if our listeners want more information about the Taylor Swift, "Unabomber Play" or about either of you, maybe they'll like to reach out to you. How can they do so? - So there is an Instagram page for the Taylor Swift, "Unabomber Play". It's just at the Taylor Swift, "Unabomber Play". You'll look it up, it'll pop up and there'll be a lot of fun content there, so definitely give it a follow. And then, otherwise, I'm on Instagram 24/7, far too much at Kourtney C. Taylor_. So give me a follow, always excited to connect with indie theater makers, always online. - Love as you should be, as you should be. - I am also on Instagram 24/7. We'll start a group chat with you if you wanna follow us both and we'll send you memes. Kourtney and I will. I'm on Instagram at the worst possibly spelled version of my name ever at, it's Abi Divas, but it's spelled A-B-B-E-H-D-E-E-U-H-S. As always, I hope it will be in the podcast notes, but you can also just go to my website, which is abi-divas.com and drop me a line. - Wonderful, well, Kourtney and Abi, it's always a joy having the two of you here. I have so much fun. So thank you most so much for joining us today, for sharing this amazing work and just being awesome. Thank you most so much. - Thank you. Thank you, such a blast. - My guests today have been the incredible playwright Kourtney Taylor and the amazing director, Abi Davis, who joined us to talk about their new show, the Taylor Swift Unibomber Play. It's part of Line Fest and their show is playing August 12th and 20th at 9.30 p.m. at The Tank. You can get your tickets and more information by visiting thetanknyc.org. We also will have some contact information for our guests, which we'll be posting in the episode description, as well as on the social media posts, but run, don't walk. Get your tickets now, thetanknyc.org. Join us, we will be in attendance at this show. This is such a fun show, I can't wait to see it. Again, the show is the Taylor Swift Unibomber Play happening August 12th and 20th at 9.30 p.m. And we want to add for our American listeners that election day is November 5th. Make sure you are registered to vote and do your democratic duty. You can find out how and where you can register to vote by visiting vote.gov. The future demands that we fight for it now. So until next time, I'm Andrew Cortez, reminding you to turn off your cell phones, unwrap your candies. And keep talking about the theater. In a stage whisper. Thank you. (upbeat music) If you like what you hear, please leave a five-star review, like and subscribe. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at stagewhisperpod. And feel free to reach out to us with your comments and personal stories at stagewhisperpod@gmail.com. And be sure to check out our website for all things stage whisper and theater. You'll be able to find merchandise, tours, tickets and more. Simply visit stagewhisperpod.com. Our theme song is Maniac by Jazzar. Other music on this episode provided by Jazzar and Billy Murray. You can also become a patron of our show by logging on to patreon.com/stagewhisperpod. There you will find all the information about our backstage pass as well as our tip jar. Thank you so much for your generosity. We could not do this show without you. ♪ All the way from there I'll swear ♪ ♪ I don't care anywhere near your town ♪ ♪ Makes me there ♪ [BLANK_AUDIO]