Stage Whisper
Whisper in the Wings Episode 572
(upbeat music) - Welcome back and everyone to a fantastic new Whisper in the Wings from Stage Whisper. We are honored to have two incredible artists joining us today. Today, we have the screenwriter and playwright, Edemar Moses and the director, Michelle Tenembaum. They're here to talk to us about their great new film Idea, which is now available for streaming on YouTube. This is a fantastic story, a wonderful piece of art. And you know what, I can't wait to learn more about it and to share more about it with you. So let's just go ahead and welcome on our guests. Edemar, Michelle, welcome to Whisper in the Wings from Stage Whisper. - Hi, Andrew, how's it going? - Hey, wait to be here. - It's going great and I'm so excited that the two of you are here and joining us with this great new film Idea. This is amazing. So Edemar, let's start with you. You're the writer of this film. Can you tell us a little bit about what it's about? - Yeah, it's basically the story of a very long day in the life of a graduate student who is working as a TA for undergraduate essay writing classes. And the film covers five conferences he does on Zoom with the individual students of his helping them with their personal essays. So we get the sense that he's spending hours and hours and hours talking to five, 10, 15, 20 students, but we see five of them over the course of his day as he sort of delves deeper into, you know, the rough drafts of their essays that they've turned in and how he can help them with that. And over the course of that, you know, we learn about each of them 'cause they're writing a personal essay and then, you know, his sort of struggle to help each of them and the difficulty of that process. That's what it's about. - That is wonderful though, I love it. Now, what inspired you to pen this script? - There's a very direct answer to that, which is that when I was in graduate school for my MFA in dramatic writing, I worked as a TA for the freshman essay writing class for undergrads because it was a way to have free tuition for grad school and get a stipend, which seemed better to me than paying tuition, but it was fascinating, it was a fascinating job because you met, you know, 15, 30, 18 year olds at the beginning of every semester and the first essay you would have them write for that class was a personal essay. So then you would immediately learn something about them about their relationship to their family, about their, you know, their formative childhood experience, whatever it was, you would learn immediately about these 30 kids through the process of talking about this essay and that just seemed fascinating to me and I was shortly after finishing grad school and finishing that job that it occurred to me that there was a structure in that, in a series of conferences that had like a little, you know, arc of helping one student per scene and then the longer arc of the emotional journey that this takes the TA on over the course of his day. And I originally wrote it as a play and but it was sort of an odd length for a play, you know, it's 35, 40 minutes long, which is too long for a short play and too short for a long play. And I worked with Michelle Onich, she's directed a lot of my theater work and we've done workshops or little productions of this piece and then it was Michelle who suggested that I adapt it into a film which basically, you know, involved changing a handful of lines to make it make sense to be taking place on Zoom. So that was, that was where the script came from. - That is fantastic, amazing. And Michelle, that's a great way to bring you into this conversation 'cause I'd love to know how exactly did you come upon the piece? - Well, Edemar and I have known each other for an incredibly long time. - Momma, momma, momma, in years. (both laughing) - And we've-- - It was a sound glitch there, Michelle. - Yeah, I don't know, I mean, it's momma, momma, momma year. - Well, just leave it, let's just leave it. (both laughing) So he and I have been collaborators for a long time and admirers of one another and also very good friends. And he brought these two short plays to me. Each of them was about between 30 and 40 minutes and it was at, well, yeah, he brought them to me at a particular time in our careers where it was something that we could work on together. Partly because no one else was interested in them, I guess it's like the best way to put it. Like we could just sort of like make something together without a lot of producer opinions or producer interest at the time. And so we did, I fell in love with this play and the other play that it was partnered with, which is a play called Authorial Intent. And so we did a workshop of them and then we had the opportunity to do, I can't remember the exact way in which this progressed. But we worked on several short plays together. We did one with Naked Angels, we did in various festivals, we worked on short plays together. And then we had the opportunity to put them together in an evening at the flea and it was an evening that we called Love Stories and it ran for like five months. It was an amazing success. But this story idea didn't make it into that collection. And so for me and Edomart was this sort of unresolved, like what are we gonna do with that play? What are we gonna do with that play? Because I think, I don't know if I'm speaking out of turn, but I think secretly it was maybe both of our favorites of all of them. And so even though I love all the plays in Love Stories, this one had like just a special resonance. And I think for both of us, it was like, we can't let that one go. And then Edomart wrote many other short plays and we tried to combine this one into an evening and we workshopped it with the Drama League and we workshopped it with New York Theatre Workshop and we never felt like it was the right collection. And then everything shut down for COVID and of course we were all like you and creating this podcast. Like we were all trying to like find ways to continue to make work and make art and connect with ourselves as artists and connect with the world of theatre. And one of the things that I'm sure you remember was happening at the time was that a lot of theatres were like putting out Zoom events like art. You know, we were doing like Zoom Theatre. Only none of us knew what we were doing and it was all very sort of scrappy and you know, there were like famous, famous people were doing it but it was a little, you know, off the cuff. And I remembered this play and I said to Edomart, I think we can do this as a film on Zoom as if it, as if taking place on Zoom but it will, it will not be sort of slapdash because this story has been like with us for a really long time. It's not pandemic art and yet we can make it during the pandemic and it will resonate but it will still be primarily about like this, what it is to be a teacher and a student and all the themes that were present in the play. And so he was game and I think honestly, it is more at home in this format than it ever was on stage and that probably that is the reason that this play went on this journey because it is so much more immediate and powerful in the format of film than it ever was on stage and we loved it a lot on stage. So yeah, it sort of found its own proper medium, I think. - That is so wonderful. I love that journey. That is incredible. So you've kind of touched on this already but I would love to know, I mean, with this brilliant script, this brilliant idea that as you mentioned, it resonates with audiences. What was it like developing the film, putting it all together and getting it on its feet? - Or on its butt in a chair and it's your desk. - I mean, as Michelle said, like one of the things first, I was completely persuaded by her pitch to me which was that it would work comfortably in this format and she had already gone through the script and flagged like there's literally, you know, five or six lines you'd have to change which appealed to my laziness. Like, oh, I can change very little and it'll make sense in this format. But also, you know, as Michelle said, people were making Zoom theater but it wasn't for the most part, they weren't stories that were literally supposed to be taking place on Zoom. It was like readings or presentations of plays of all kinds of plays but we're just doing it on Zoom 'cause that's what we have. Whereas this was meant to be taking place literally on a Zoom like app. And so there was a formal coherence to the idea that really appealed to me. And it really appealed to, yeah, the desire, as Michelle said, to be doing something, you know, to be in contact with other people and to be working on something together during this period where we're also isolated. So it was sort of, it didn't require a ton of development in terms of the script but then there was a lot of stuff that Michelle took the lead on in terms of, in terms of kind of quote unquote producing. I don't know why I said quote unquote, it's what producing is. But it felt very sort of handmade but just reaching out to, for the most part, we were able to use actors that we'd used before in other readings or workshops of it occasionally that was like maybe one, I think, person who was new to us or role we had to audition for. But sort of just taking those steps and then, yeah, Michelle, maybe you can talk about sort of getting ready to be ready on the day because it's basically about prepping such that when we shot, when we actually shot, we could do the whole thing in two days, which we did. - So, yeah, the logistics were, you know, very interesting and challenging at the time, although I think we all sort of learned like this is how you do that. But we basically, we sent audio equipment to all the actors so they had good microphones. Everyone had an iPhone and so what they did was they filmed themselves with their iPhones, hooked up to this good microphone. And then meanwhile, we were connecting on Zoom. So we were all on a Zoom call with the two actors in each scene and, but then we were not, we were not using the Zoom audio or the Zoom video. So we were just using Zoom as a communication tool, but we used the video from their iPhones and we used the audio from our sound designers, like she used another app to like record their audio. I can't remember what, Zencaster, something like that. - And so, and so we had rehearsals with for each scene and one of the rehearsals was disrupted when one of the actors, no, maybe, no, maybe it was one, no, that was like a shoot day or rehearsal day, one of the actors lost power. So we, we just like, that was the end of that rehearsal or filming session, I can't even remember now. And so all of us who are working on the production would be on the Zoom call as well. And we did do it because we cast all theater people, basically because in this sort of act of creative desperation, we just wanted to like make stuff with people we cared about and who were our friends and who we also wanted to be working. So it was all these theater people making this film. And so we did like long takes of the entire, these entire 10 to 12 minute scenes, eight to 12 minute scenes. And so, and so they're theater actors so they were able to do that. And so we would, you know, in the course of, we had rehearsals and then in the course of two days, we filmed all the scenes in like these two hour sessions. And there were things like, I remember one of the actors, like his roommates had sort of made a big mess of his apartment. And so he had to like, he sort of got up in the morning of the day we were shooting and he was in California. So it was very early for him when we were shooting and he had to like clean up, you know, he had to like put all this stuff away in his apartment. And we're all sitting there on the Zoom and like, we can't help him, right? Like if we were in a theater or whatever, we'd all be up and like putting stuff away, like we'd all be pitching in. And instead we're like sitting there and all I wanted to do was like hop up and like clean stuff up with him. So there were like crazy things like that that felt so bizarre and also like visceral and immediate. And then one of our actors accidentally deleted all of the footage from one of the scenes because he was trying to clear out space on his phone and he didn't realize like he hadn't uploaded it yet. And it was gone. I mean, it was completely gone. And so we had to schedule him for another filming session but not with the actor, the other actor whose footage was great. And so he did, he filmed a scene with him playing against the video of her. So she wasn't even there and he was just playing with a video of his scene partner. And it was like beautiful and amazing. Like I'm not even gonna tell you which scene it is 'cause you won't be able to tell because both of them are delivering such performances, you know that you would really feel like they had, that they had to have done the scene together but they didn't. So yeah, and then post-production I think was more average, you know, like a conventional film. It went to the editor, my husband is a composer, he wrote the score and you know, all of that was, I think, you know, the way you make a film. - Yeah. That's incredible. Oh my God. My stomach turned a minute and you said it. And then they deleted it without realizing it. I was like, no, I don't know what a person says. Well, Edemar, let me come to you for this next question. I would love to know, is there a message or a thought you hope that audiences take away from this film? - It's a good question because when I, there's a couple layers to it 'cause when I first wrote it, I was just very interested having taught personal essay writing for this class I was a TA for. It makes you, there's that old, I don't know, peer care, vote, tell music, saying like I learned much from my teachers, more from my friends and from my students most of all, right? And it's just sort of a truism that teaching something is what forces you to learn it in the deepest possible way. And so I was really interested teaching personal essay writing makes you very aware of the way in which kind of every impactful experience you have, like even if it's small, but somebody that sticks with you that you remember, you start to narrativize it in your head, you're doing it because you're trying to extract some meaning from it. And like shaping something as a story or telling it as a story, it contains as like the title of the piece suggests, it contains an idea that you're trying to get across any express shaped scene of experience. And so I was interested in talking about that explicitly and the way that you could in a scene where a teacher is teaching that to students, but then inevitably each scene itself and the whole piece itself is therefore also expressing an idea. So I was interested in like the confusing way that all this stuff happens to us in life and some of it's painful and some of it's joyous and we're trying to figure out what it means and kind of what it means is sort of the true thing that we find when we try to tell it honestly or something. So I was just very interested in that idea and I still am and I think that it's part of what I hope the film is getting across that connecting with other people, telling our stories to other people is kind of how we make meaning of our lives in a certain way, even the bad or maybe especially the bad things that happen. There's this other layer that has to do with COVID specifically and with the fact that it's on Zoom and the implication in the film that it's taking place during the lockdown, which is maybe just sort of a heightening of that same idea that that is extra true, right? When we're isolated and cut off from one another and stories are like a means of communication. We all watched everything on Netflix during the lockdown partly just to kill time, but partly because there are kinds of things we could have done, but what we did was consume stories, right? And so I think all of that ramble sort of contains what I'm hoping to get across that it's kind of what all art and specifically storytelling art forms like playwriting or like screenwriting and filmmaking are four, which is like the shaping of narrative that hopefully contains some truth to convey meaning, you know? And that we can find that meaning in painful experiences like the one some of these characters go through or in like the one we all collectively went through during a global pandemic. - Yes, I love that. That's a brilliant idea. Michelle, I wanna ask you the final question for this first part and that is who do you hope have access to idea? - You know, it's, I hope first of all, I think it's brilliant and everyone will love it. But I think for college students, graduate students, teachers, especially at universities, but also teachers, all kinds of teachers, I think. And then I've also heard like some parents who have watched it have there's a sort of theme of like parenting as it relates to the, as it relates to sort of teaching and teaching your children. And so it's resonated a lot with some parents that I know in a way that's really powerful. And we actually just had this amazing screening and talk back last week, which actually, was it last week or the week before? And Edomard wasn't able to attend, but I, you know, sent him all these like very energized texts after. But it was a group of faculty advisors, like 50 of them who all their full time job is to advise undergrads on their, you know, academic process. And so what it was was we showed the film and then the, there was a panel and on the panel was the director of the Wellness Center at this university. And also the person who oversaw all of these faculty advisors who pass, I'm sure a fancy title that I don't remember. And then the moderator and me. And so it was amazing to hear these faculty advisors like have a, first of all, it was amazing to hear the well, the director of the Wellness Center like respond to this film and talk about like what, what the main character, the TA did that was great. And the challenges that he faced in faces in the story, what he did that like maybe wasn't so great, you know, and like to use it as this like, you know, educational tool for all these faculty members. And then hearing the faculty members talk about their response and how it like related to their own experience as, as teachers to college students. And so it was like this amazing, just this amazing experience of connection, really, between a character and an audience. And I guess that's all that I want this art to do. You know, we made it when it was impossible to connect in person. It was so hard to connect in any fashion. And then, you know, to, to be there with 50 people talking about their connection to this story on this very personal level was incredibly powerful. So I think if you are at a college as either a student or on the faculty or in some other capacity, like this film is absolutely for you. So, and then other people will love it as well. If you're either, if you're either a parent or the child of a parent, you also like it. Well, for the second part of our interview, we love giving our listeners a chance to get to know our guests a little bit better, pull the curtain back, if you will. And I would love to know what are who inspires you, what playwrights, composers or shows have inspired you in the past or are just some of your favorites. And Michelle, can I kick the second half off with you? Is that all right? Yeah, sure. Just such a big question. OK, I'll start with, I think the show that most, so I'm here to talk about my work as a filmmaker, but primarily I'm a theater director and I direct plays and musicals, primarily new plays and musicals, which is part of how Edomard and I have the work that we've done together over the years. And so I feel like I want to talk about some musicals that really inspire me. And so one of them is a chorus line, which was a show I saw many, many, many times through my adolescence, more than any other show I've ever seen. And one of the things that was fascinating was I watched it like so many times in the space of like five or six years and then didn't see it for an awfully long time and then got the chance to see it again when I was like a mature-ish artist and had sort of found my aesthetic as a director. And I watched it and I thought, oh my God, so much of what I love about staging and about what musicals can do is in a chorus line. Like it shaped so much about me as an artist without me. You know, I'm not a dancer, I'm not a choreographer. And yet the way that Michael Bennett told this story was just captivated me in my artistic imagination. I also, let's see, really inspired. I am really inspired by Tom Stofford, which is the playwright who brought Edomard and I together for the first time. And maybe I'll let him talk about that a little bit 'cause I think he probably has more to say about Stofford than I do. Although last night we did a rewatch of Shakespeare in Love and I was just like, God, this is like the greatest movie ever. I mean, it's so good. It's like no matter how many times you see it, you're just like, God, this is so freaking amazing. And yeah, I think that's, I think that's probably good. That's a good start to what inspires me artistically. - I love that list, that's a wonderful list though. Edomard, what who inspires you? - Well, first I wanted something struck me that had never occurred to me before when Michelle was talking about a chorus line before I get into my own inspirations, which is how much a chorus line has in common with the movie that we've made. - Yes, for sure. - Because it's also a series of like individual deep dives into individual characters, personal stories with like a single interlocutor. And chorus line was sort of famously drawn from like interviews and experiences with actual, you know, chorus people whose stories were stolen. And likewise, I didn't, I obviously fictionalized, you know, many things, but like drew very directly from my experience, like having these kinds of conferences with these kinds of essays. But what is part, you know, the thing that got me started as a writer or being interested in being a writer when I was really small was actually like fantasy novels. I was a big fantasy nerd and I love "The Dark is Rising" by Susan Cooper and books like that. And I thought I wanted to grow up to write fantasy novels. And maybe I still do. Maybe that'll be my second act when I'm 50, which is really soon. - Shut up, you tomorrow. It's not. - You can't say that. I can't say that anymore. It's only a few years away, but in any case, playwriting came a little bit later. When I was a senior in high school, it was when Tony Kushner's Angels in America had sort of triumphed on Broadway a year or two earlier and then it was going back out into the revisions. And there was a big production at ACT in San Francisco. It was the big regional theater in San Francisco and I'm from Berkeley right across the Bay. So I saw that and I read that play and that was sort of an early inspiration just in terms of the scope and the power and the... I was tricked into thinking theater could have cultural importance because that play was so... It turned out nothing ever would again until Hamilton, but that's fine. That it was really just sort of his theatrical imagination and the inventiveness and just the amazing power of that play. And then, soppered to, as Michelle said, was it was a big deal? Arcadia and Rosenkranzen Guildenstern are dead. We're big early sort of inspirations to me. And yeah, Michelle and I met on an undergrad production of Arcadia that she directed and that I was in in the nearly silent role of Gus that had to stand on stage and listen to other people, which was great. And then, you know, so those were the sort of the early influences, but these days, it's really... I think the longer you are, at least my experiences, the longer I do this, the more sort of omnivorous I become. And then it can be anything, you know, plays, movies, novels, non-fiction. I just for the first, just last week, I read for the first time any Dillard's book writing life, her sort of memoir of... It's undersells it to say that it's like a self-help book about writing or it's like it is. It's like a book about writing and how to write and what writing is like by a genius poet, you know? So like the book itself is sort of a work of art, but I found that very inspiring in a very direct way, something incredibly comforting about someone just accurately describing the experience of trying to create and why it's hard and what the obstacles are. So yeah, I think now I just try to remain in a state of like openness to learning. I feel like that becomes increasingly important because I think almost physiologically and then certainly experientially, you can harden or close off or get set in your ways and that danger gets greater and greater. The longer you do this or the older you get. So yeah, I just try to fight actively against that with some success sometimes. I love that listen, wow, what a wonderful answer. Some great lit names thrown around in this inspiration question. Thank you for those. I wanna go ahead and jump to my favorite question to ask guests and that of course is what is your favorite theater memory? - Go ahead. - I have a quick one, but I don't, I want it to be like a sort of, I wanna be able to come in with another one, but the thing that popped into my head was the first Broadway show I ever saw was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And I was, this will, for nerds, this will absolutely date me, but I'm still gonna use ages and years because I just, the story doesn't work otherwise. So I was maybe five or six years old and I have an identical twin sister. So you need to know that because my parents were like walking around with these, you know, these two five or six year old twins. And we, there was some sort of talk back after so we were leaving the theater a little later and we passed by the stage door and Laurie Beachman was coming out of the stage door and she was the narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And my parents stopped her and said to us, do you know who that is? And of course I, you know, absolutely remembered and knew who she was, but she said, she looked down at us and she said, I was the one in the hat and she like, did this gesture around like the fez hat that you wore in the show and, and yeah, it was like this, I don't know, it's like my first theater memory, but it has stayed with me a lot. She was so nice, you know, like what a generous, generous moment for her, of her. - I mentioned seeing angels in America at 80T in the 90s which obviously had an impact and that it got me started writing place. But yeah, to go back earlier, I have this memory. I mean, first of all, my older sister was in a lot of shows at the Bay Area Youth Theater when we were little kids. So my first theater memories are seeing her in like by By Birdie and Annie and Fiddler. And nothing, I don't know that anything specific about those other than both the magic of the inherent magic of theater, like seeing a musical when you're seven years old being performed by kids who are like five or six years older than you, who are of course the coolest people in the world when you're a little kid or slightly older kids who are doing a cool thing that everyone's clapping for. So like the magic of a show and then also getting to be behind the scenes a little and like the camaraderie of putting it all together. I think an awareness of that really stuck with me. And I remember, I'm sure if I saw it now, I'd be like, okay, but I remember the first time I ever saw Cabaret was when I went to Berkeley High School for High School. And when I think I was a maybe a sophomore, freshman or a sophomore, Berkeley High did it as like their big spring musical. So seeing this high school production of Cabaret, which was a musical I didn't know until then, I was like, the idea that you could tackle subject matter so dark and also for it to be so fun and have such an edge, that really, I was like, I remember being incredibly moved and sort of blown away at age 15 or whenever I saw that. And then the last one I'll say is, I mean, this is probably a popular answer for people who were in New York 10 years ago. But when the big reveal happened in David Krummer's "Our Town" and this to which it's not a spoiler because this show is 15 years ago, but like when it went from like a black box with no crops and no set and nothing and he pulls back a curtain and you have a fully realized naturalistic set with bacon cooking on the stove that you can smell. And suddenly you're in the most immersive theatrical environment you can imagine only when she gets brought back to see it again as a ghost. And I sort of, I mean, this is why our town is so powerful but it landed that for me in a way that like what art is for, it's for making us see our own actual lives with the vividness that we can't see them while we're living them. And it was such a, such a powerful way of landing that idea that that was a really, that was a really good moment. - Okay, I have my second one now. - Please. - Okay. So this was when I was a directing intern at Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey and they did this production of "Henry V" and they did it on a football field. And what they did was they built this wooden O so they had a round wooden platform that had like wooden walls on the upstage half of it. And all the actors were wearing gray sweatsuits and they would put on red jerseys when they were English and red and blue jerseys when they were French. And they, like the whole thing was sort of used the metaphor of like a sporting event. And it was so much fun. It was, there were like the chorus was this like tall, blonde man who wore this like white linen suit. And he like looked so sort of like glamorous in the sunshine. And then the actor who played Henry was small, like a small, angsty kind of guy. So he was, there was like this beautiful contrast between the two of them. Okay, so amazing production. There was this moment where the English were all sort of like huddled under their army blankets, like shivering. And then three of them tossed off their army blankets and they were wearing blue costumes underneath. And they were like fancy French officers. So they went from being like huddled, desperate English soldiers to like the top of the heap French, French officers. And so there were these theatrical moments like that that stuck with me. But the most fun part was that during half hour, the actors would like just be out on the football field. Tossing a football around and kicking a soccer ball. And so while the audience was coming in, there were like all these like guys out there in their sweatpants like playing sports. And it turned out that had sort of evolved organically during tech, you know that during downtime that the actors were like, let's toss this football around. And then at the first preview, the stage managers like took all the balls away. And the director was like, no, no, no, give those bags. Like let the actors do this thing that came so naturally to them and is so evocative in terms of priming the audience for this production. And then last of all, the final moment when the chorus explains what happened to Henry V, the walls, the wooden walls of the stage dropped down while they were lowered by the actors. And you saw the whole football field now, like all behind it, the whole football field. And they were planting wooden crosses in the football field so that they like this graveyard, like a rose behind the stage. Yeah, it was an extraordinary production. I feel compelled to tell you directed by Scott Wentworth because I'm such a huge fan of this production. It really stayed with me as you can tell. - Those are amazing. Oh my God, those are amazing. Thank you so much for sharing those. As we wrap things up, I would love to know, do even of you have any other projects or productions coming on the pipeline that we might be able to plug for you? - I mean, I have a lot of things that are in the development stage. So none of those are things you can watch right now. And of course, because we've made a lot of theater together and made a lot of theater ourselves, none of that is available. (laughing) So watch, but I can share one thing, which we have a social media campaign going for this film that is super fun. It's a series of, we basically took the main character of Idea and it's like his TikTok channel and like what he would, what the social media stuff that he would be putting out into the world. So the handle for that is Ideas Plural. Ideas of a TA is the TikTok handle. And it's also, the videos are also being released on our Instagram feed and the handle for Instagram is Idea the Film. So it's almost like Edomarr and I and the actor who actor, the actor, Aaron Gann, who plays the lead in Idea sort of riffing on the character and the play in like, instead of Hamlet, if it were like happening in the Real Housewives of Orange County, it's like, what would Idea be if it were happening in TikTok land? So yeah, they're really fun. We had a lot of fun making them. - Yeah, it felt like a more, like we were like, oh, how do we bring more attention to the film? And it felt almost like a way of doing it that that was a creative and interesting sort of creative endeavor in its own, right? Like the idea really appealed to me of like, oh, you know, let's playing around with TikTok or with these short form internet videos, like as a form, as like a form of content creation or storytelling and it's in its own right that then sort of subtly links to the film in this other way that that seemed really fun. And it has been, it has been kind of fun. And it excused for us to get together and make more stuff. - That is so cool. Well, that leads to my final question, which is if our listeners would like more information about Idea or about either of you, maybe they'd like to reach out to you. How can they do so? - Well, I have a website and it's michelletattenbaum.com. So it's not hard to find. And if you Google me, it's like one of the first search results. So, and you can contact me by my website and find out pretty much everything about me, I guess, everything professional, at least. Yeah. - Yeah. - And I don't have a website and I have no social media presence at all and I'm impossible. - He's a permit. - You know what, send me an email and be like, can you pass this along to you tomorrow? Just kidding. - Bye, bye. - Please don't do that. - But you can find Idea the Film on YouTube and we have a Facebook page for the film that has a lot of information and the other thing. - I feel compelled to tell you that you need to search on YouTube for Idea and then one of our names because it is a word that like, you're never gonna find our film by searching for the word Idea on YouTube. But also, there's a link, if you go to my website, there is a link directly to the film. So, that's another way to get there. - Or to the TikTok, there is a link to the film or it's a Facebook page or other places. - Well, you tomorrow, Michelle, thank you both so much for taking the time to speak with me today, for sharing this wonderful film. I'm truly excited to see it. This has been such a great time. So, thank you both for your time today. - Thank you, Andrew. - Thank you, Andrew. It's been an absolute pleasure. - Thank you. My guests today have been the amazing screenwriter and playwright, Edomar Moses and the director, Michelle Tatumbaum, who joined us to talk about their new film, Idea. It's now available for streaming on YouTube. Make sure you search Idea and then one of their names. We'll also have a link to this in our social media posts as well as on our episode description, which is also where you can find some contact information from the film and our guests. But join us head over to YouTube. Let's all watch together this fabulous new film, entitled Idea. 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. 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