Stage Whisper
Whisper in the Wings Episode 539
(upbeat music) - Welcome back and everyone to a fabulous new Whisper in the Wings from Stage Whisper. We are joined today by two amazing artists who are here to talk to us about a great show that the name alone is impressive. You're gonna love this. But we're joined today by our playwright, Sophie McIntosh and our director Nina Goodhart, who are joining us to speak about Good Apple's Collective presentation of Kana Kalari. It's playing June 28th through July 13th at Al Chemical Studios, and you can get your tickets and more information by visiting goodapplescollective.com. We are so excited to be diving more into this great show, which again, the name alone, if you saw it, it's so awesome. And to have these wonderful artists to talk to us about that. So let's go ahead and welcome on our guest, Sophie, Nina. Welcome to Whisper in the Wings from Stage Whisper. - Hi, thanks for having us. Thank you so much. - I'm so excited that you're here. I'm so excited that we're talking about this piece, Kana Kalari, this is fantastic. I want to know everything and anything. So Sophie, let me start with you as a playwright. Can you tell us a little bit about this show? - Yes, absolutely. So Kana Kalari is a play about a woman who is very, very excited to be having her first baby. She has always dreamed of being a mother, her and dreamed of motherhood. And then she has this baby. And the baby is not quite as she expected because this baby is a rabbit. She gives birth to a rabbit. And then all of her expectations of motherhood are completely flipped on their head. And she ends up trying to navigate this strange situation and navigate why everybody in her life is like, "Oh my gosh, you have this cute baby." And she's like, "This is a creature, what is going on? "I can't connect with this baby." And she really struggles. And it's sort of tracking this mother character through that journey. - Oh, that is fascinating. So Sophie, how did you come up with the idea for the show? - Yeah, oh my gosh. This was sort of a multifaceted, perfect storm and collision of ideas and bits of inspiration. The very, very first thread actually began way, way back when I was in high school in Wisconsin. I was doing this thing called forensics, which is kind of like competitive speech and debate. It's not like cutting up dead bodies forensics. It's like a Midwestern thing. And there was, my category was moments in history. And so I would give, I would write and give speeches about like various areas of history. And one year it was 1700 to 1750. And I was writing about these like kind of cross-dressing pirates and Bonnie and Mary Reed, who, amazing. And someone else was giving this speech about this woman named Mary Toft, who was part of this hoax in England in I think it was the 1720s, where she sort of ended up convincing like the king and the king's royal doctor and like a large chunk of the country that she was actually giving birth to rabbits. And of course it was dismissed as a hoax. And it actually later came out that she was really sort of coerced into this situation by her husband and her mother-in-law. But I just found that story so evocative and bizarre and just like I know there was something there. And I held onto that for a really long time. And then so I during the summer of 2022, I had COVID not only during my birthday, but when the road decision came down. So I was very much trapped at home and I remember watching my friends sort of through social media like taking to the streets and screaming and I wanted nothing more than to be able to do that. But I was instead stuck at home in my room, just feeling like the worst kind of helpless. So I ended up, you know, that feeling was sitting with me for a while. And eventually I kind of ended up having the idea that I really wanted to combine this merry-tough story with a story about sort of reproductive autonomy. And this play is not, I would not say it is like a row play per se, but it's definitely the shape of it came out of that experience and that feeling of helplessness and wanting to do something about it. And I actually ended up making a personal decision for myself because of that, that I, because of the row choice and because of just some things that have happened to me in my life where I have not had full autonomy over my body, some incidents that happened to me in college. And I actually made the decision that I wanted to have my tubes tied to get tubal legation surgery. And I ended up going on this journey to make that happen and make that possible. And that was actually something that became like a huge keystone in my journey of writing this play, of writing this story about this woman who like has these expectations of pregnancy and like what motherhood is going to look like, sort of contrasting them with my own like fears and anxieties about that. And it ended up being like a really, really fruitful and meaningful exercise. And that is sort of the genesis of the play. And Nina has been here for all of it. I remember, oh my God, I was, she was in tech for a completely different show. This was so unhinged of me. She was in tech for a completely different show. And I had like rolled up to their tech and I was like, hey Nina, I had an idea for another play. And she was like, that's so great. Everything is on fire. Like it wasn't on fire. It's just, you know. - It was on fire. - A little bit. And so, you know, she was the first person that I talked to this idea about. And she was also actually kind of part of the other journey as well. I don't know if you want to speak to that Nina. - Yeah, I was just going to say like, though he really generously brought me into the journey of this play super early on. I went back, actually before we got on this, I went back and looked at that original email, which was like so beautiful and abusive and was like fairly early in our friendship. A lot of the like events around the development of this play happened when we knew each other like a medium amount and really like brought us closer together. And she sent me this play that as soon as I was out of tech for that other show, I read it. And it was like one of the fastest yeses of my life. I pretty immediately said, you know, I'll basically do anything to direct this play. What do you need me to do? And it was actually before we had launched, we had before we had properly launched our company that we have together, which is Good Apple's Collective. And so when we launched the company, we always sort of knew that this was going to be one of the productions that we were really excited about. - Making happen. - And then the other bit that I think Sophie's alluding to is one sort of crucial stage in the development of the play, which is I haven't had this happen in any other development process, is that when Sophie was preparing for surgery, she had plans for who was going to take care of her and who was going to take her to the hospital and support her after and for, you know, scheduling reasons. Those plans sort of fell apart and she unexpectedly found herself in need of someone to take her to the hospital, that with her after the surgery, day at home with her for about a week afterward after she had this tuba legation surgery. And just like the fact that we'd only known each other a number of months, I ended up becoming that person. And it was this like very intense, bobbing experience. I also kept having to tell Sophie, like, this is a time for you to rest and take care of your body. Like this isn't a secret, like creative retreat that we're doing and she was like-- - It was a creative retreat. It was a creative retreat. We worked on this site, we worked on a bunch of other plays and I had to be like, "Please sit. "I'm going to go get a food. "You're not allowed to lift anything." But it was really, and like, you know, for folks who come see the play, the play deals with like the physical body in a really, I'm gonna use the word visceral in a really visceral way. And a lot of that just, I think, feels so much more grounded for me as a director, having sort of been able to go through that experience alongside Sophie. And, you know, felt really special to get to support her through that as she was making a decision around her own reproductive autonomy and her own body was really meaningful. - That is all so incredible. Wow, wow, what a journey. That's amazing. Nina, I kind of want to build on all this amazing journey that the show's gone on. I'm curious to know what has it been like developing the piece as we roll into the production in about a month? - Totally. Well, I'm very lucky that on projects with Sophie, she tends to invite me in really early. So we've had many, many conversations about this play over the last few years. And Sophie and I talk every day through the conversation is sort of incessant and designers and other folks who have joined the team recently have told me, you know, they're starting to experience the thing of, oh, they're working on a panakalari. So it's like, they see rabbits everywhere now. And I'm like, welcome to the team. That's been the last several years of my life. - So early on, you know, Sophie sent me the script and I loved it deeply. I would say of all the plays we've worked on together, this is probably the one that has been the most fully formed in its structure from the beginning. There have been rewrites and adjustments. But a lot of the development that we have done on the piece has been related to movement and staging, which has been really excited for me as a director. Sophie had an impulse pretty early on that there might be some kind of movement in the play. And after we did a little internal reading where, you know, we just read the text with a group of friends and trusted creative, we decided to do an internal movement workshop to just sort of mess around with the way that choreography and I don't even wanna say dance. But like, physical movement could operate in the world of the show. I'm also a bit of a transition nut. I love, love, love transition. - Not over this, I am also very, very much obsessed with making sure the transitions are part of telling the story as well. - Yeah, and folks who've worked with me know that I'm pretty intense about these and we'll often do like a transition through of a show 'cause I'm tracking the story through that as well. So I saw a lot of real estate in this play to explore Mary, the mother at the center of it, to explore her experience with her body, how she felt connected or disconnected from it, especially because she's often with other people on stage talking to them, feeling bare reactions to her circumstance. And I wanted to see what it was like for her to be alone with her body and check in with it. Sophie had beaded this in many beautiful stage directions and we were both sort of curious about expanding it. So we did a movement workshop with the wonderful Willow Funkhauser, who's our movement director on the production as well, where we just started to explore sort of human movements that could be abstracted into something larger and airier and weirder. And that led us to, this is completely on Sophie, by the way. Sophie came to me one day and was like, "Mina, "I feel so sure that what this play need "is an original harp score." And I said, "Oh, what?" - You were so brave. You were so brave. - I was very brave. I was like, "Oh, what?" And Sophie was like, "Whatever you're thinking, "the harp sounds like not that." And Sophie, actually, I can finish it up, but do you want to talk about the music that you were listening to? - Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so I am a huge, huge nut about. My favorite musician is this harpist named Joanna Newsom. I'm actually, actually, I'm wearing the shirt right now. That's funny. And she, I would listen to her music while I was, so I just started my first semester of grad school when I wrote this play. I wrote it like September, October of my first semester and I was really supposed to be doing other things, but I was like, this play is so deeply in my body and I need to get it out. And so I would walk to class in the mornings and I would listen to this specific song by Joanna Newsom called "Baby Birch." And it's this beautiful haunting song about this mother kind of speaking to her, like unborn and potentially lost child. And it's just so gorgeous. And I would just be walking down from like 137th, like weeping openly, like holding that big, big backpack, just like so lost in my own world. And like that had always been a big part of the show's DNA and my conception of the show because of that. And then I ended up just poking my head into the music office one day at my school. I was like, hey, do any students here play the harp and the woman working in the office was very nice? You're like, yeah, you know, like there's this, the student over at Barnard named Maria Shaughnessy. She could- - That how you found Maria? - Yes, I didn't tell you that. I literally just marched myself into the office and was like, hey, are there any harpists here? And she was so nice. She gave me Maria's email. I reached out to Maria and I was like, hey, we're doing this play about a woman who gives birth to a rabbit and obviously we need a harp for that. Are you down? And Maria was down. So. (laughs) - So, I mean, you can sort of see how that happened. And I was like, okay, cool. Guess I'm going to have to learn how to speak harp. And I'm a fairly, I'm a fairly musical person, but that was new territory for me. And we've just had, as the development process has continued, we've continued to have these sort of like experimental movement hang out where we sort of noodle on what Mary's body does over the course of the play and how that interacts with music. And we just had like a really joyful one a couple of weeks ago, which was the first time that Camille Umoff, who's the actor playing Mary was in a room with Maria, our harpist, and with Willow and the two of us. And just getting to see everyone's bounce ideas off of each other was so rewarding. And I remember Sophie. I remember Sophie, you saying you were like moved by how well clearly everyone knew the material. And I have to say like as a director, my favorite part of the job is collaborating with other people. Like I think of myself as an editor and someone who's sculpting and shaping the work, but I am not a solitary artist. I'm not generating a loan. And I'm deeply envious to the people who have that capacity, but I'm not one of them. So for me to be in a rehearsal room with people who have skills that I don't have, we're creating art that I have an immediate emotional reaction to is hugely satisfying. And it's been a really lovely development process overall because I have felt really secure in that I have a deep, deep confidence in the quality of the writing and in my collaborators. And also that security is balanced with a slight, but I think healthy feeling of terror, which I usually get on projects that I care about a lot because I feel like I really have to hit it out of the park to do their contributions and justice everyone else I'm working with. So pretty constantly working on the show in my mind, even if we're not actively in a rehearsal together. - Yeah, and Nina has been a huge part of one thing that's like, I really really value about my collaboration with Nina and we have worked together on how many please? - Wow, we should count, it's a lot of plays. - I have the list somewhere. But our collaboration grew over time more and more collaborative until we actually co-wrote a play last year, which was really exciting and not something that I had ever done with anyone before. And because of that, Nina and I have a very, very tight rapport about the script itself and revisions on the script. I sent her such a bonkers voice memo the other day because I was doing revisions and I was like, I had this new moment I wanted to add and I was like, I think it's this. And then Nina read it and fired back like, yes, this is so close, but what if it's spare and we strip away this? And then I tried it and I was like, oh my God, this is exactly what I was trying to do. And I didn't even know that this is exactly what I was trying to do and I sent her this like funny voice memo. I was like, you're the best. I love you, brains in sync, pee, pee, pee, pee. So yeah. - It's a beautiful artifact that I will treasure forever. - That is also amazing. I love that, I love that. Sophie, coming back to you, I would love to know, is there a message or a thought? You're hoping the audiences take away from your piece? - Well, yeah. I mean, I really, really hope that everybody who comes kind of like takes away their own perspective on it. But as far as what I'm hoping for, I'm really, really hoping that people go in and leave feeling, I don't know, like feeling like I don't have to get everything perfect, especially people who are in a role where they are like responsible as a caretaker of a child or a caretaker of any kind, I think there is such pressure to be the perfect parent and to like, what is it that we owe our children? Do we owe them everything? And if we don't want to owe them everything, does that make us bad people? And like, I think that was something that like I struggled with a lot in terms of, I don't know, thinking about my own views of parenthood and even just thinking about like the mothers I know in my life and just like the intense, intense responsibility and almost like guilt they feel when even like something that is completely out of their control goes wrong. Like I think that there's a great societal expectation, you know, like if there's anything wrong with the kid, it is like, it is the parents fault, you know, anything wrong with air quotes. It is the parents fault. And I think that like a lot of parents, that can just be so crushing. And it's something that it's very hard to talk about because it's so isolating as well. And I think that I'm also thinking a lot about the people I know who have lived with postpartum depression or who have struggled with feelings like that after giving birth and like how isolated they have felt and how they have really struggled with this idea that, oh, you know, like I am not loving my child the quote unquote right way. And so I am a quote unquote bad mother, a bad person, you know, what is wrong with me. And I think I just want people who come to be able to give, you know, like the mother figures or the parental figures in their lives and also themselves more grace about that. - And I answer that too. I think that's so, Sophie, I think that's so well put and so beautiful. And I echo all of that. I mean, the way I think about it in my mind is like, I hope people will come through the show and leave with a more expansive understanding of what it is or can be to be a parent or a mother or a child. And I hope people will see the resonances with the fight for reproductive rights everywhere. And I also just kind of hope people will go home after the show and call their moms. Like that's kind of my wish. - And then one of the things I was gonna say that is maybe more form than content is also, you know, we are two young emerging artists who run our own company. And part of the reason that we started this company is a really deep belief that making really high quality art and treating people really well are not antithetical to each other that they actually go hand in hand. And so I also sort of have this wish that audiences will walk away. Hopefully being struck by the quality and the craft of the work because it feels really important to me to show that young emerging artists are doing work at a really high level of imagination and rigor. So that's part of my wish as well. - That's brilliantly put. I completely support those ideas. That's amazing. Nina, I wanna ask our final question for this first part to you. And that of course is who do you hope have access to Kani Kalari? - Great question. And related to what I was just saying, a couple different types of people. Definitely I would say that other emerging artists are a huge part of our target audience because of the way that the company is structured. We have tiered ticketing on all of our shows that we use in order to keep the work as affordable and accessible as possible. And we also do want it to be seen by organizations and individuals who believe in the kind of work that we're doing and also would be excited about helping bring a show like Kani Kalari to a larger stage or a longer run. And then personally, Nina would feel really gratified of folks who have gone through the experiences of being pregnant, giving birth and raising children or able to see the show and maybe find some solace in it. And I also think it has something for, you know, anyone who has ever been a parent or a child, which is literally all of us because we all exist in connection with each other. So those are the main groups that I sort of hope have access to it, but it's also for everyone. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Well, for the second part of our show, we love giving our listeners a chance to get to know our guests a little bit better. Pick your brains, if you will. And I would love to start with our regular first question, which is what or who inspires you? What playwrights, composers or shows have inspired you in the past? Or just some of your favorites? And Sophie, can I start with you first on that, please? - Sure, please. Definitely for this one, Joanna Newsom, huge, huge inspiration. As far as playwrights go, I really, really, I see myself as sort of like a deeply indebted to Annie Baker is a huge influence of mine and also Sarah Kane were sort of like the two massive formative influences that really, really shaped my view and my love of theater. And I am also really, really grateful to have had mentorship from other playwrights over the years from a playwright named Jeff Talbot was the first playwright he was ever, I was sending him plays when I was in high school. And he was like, so, so helpful. And I'm actually getting to see a new musical of his workshop of it tomorrow that I'm so excited for. And then my professors that I have have also been like really, really wonderful nurturing influences, especially for this one, Leslie Evasian, who hosted the very first reading of it in her apartment has been such a supporter and a greatly inspirational to me. - That is a fantastic list. I love that. Well, Nina, what about you? I wonder who inspires you? - Oh, many people. Honestly, I think about my family a lot. I grew up listening to show tunes on road trips because of my father, like listening to Man of Lamontia and Fiddler on the Roof. And so that was like a huge part of what got me into theater in the first place. And, you know, some time and just like a really, I was very lucky that I grew up in a family that really valued the arts, both of my parents and also my sisters. My sister Naomi is also a playwright and a performer. And so I think about them a lot and talked to them about the work that I'm doing a lot. And I also have to shout out, like, I am often really inspired by other directors and find it extraordinarily generous when they are open about their experiences in the field, both the successes and the challenges. So, you know, I've been really, really lucky to learn from people, like Lila Noika Bauer and Whitney White and Lonnie Price and Diane Paulus and the experiences of getting to be in those rehearsal rooms and watching them deal with the prizes and crises as they arose was pretty invaluable training. And I'm also a pretty intense note taker by a notebook from basically every production I've ever worked on. And when I find myself either getting stuck or looking for a new inspiration, I often return to that and just try and put myself in someone else's shoes. I'm often that this is super cheesy, but Sophie McIntosh is a hugely inspiring playwright to me. Not just because I work with her, though that is true, but Sophie is extraordinarily prolific and hardworking and approaches the creation of plays with an extremely high level of rigor that has also better occurred to me as an artist. Oh, Sophie, don't cry. And so I just tend to find like anyone who is passionate about theater and works incredibly hard at it is someone I enjoy having conversations with. I feel lucky that the person I run a company with is someone like that. - I wanna echo that, ditto that 1 million percent. I am deeply, deeply grateful for and inspired by one Nina Goodhart has completely changed the way I approached my craft for the better in a massive, massive way. And, you know, I love the, and this is also something that Nina introduced me to. I love the dichotomy of swamp driver versus diamond polisher. It's a thing, believe me. - I have to cite, I have to cite Anne Fateman for this. Anne Fateman is an extraordinary writer and a professor at Yale College. And she divides writers into basically two categories. Sophie, please explain. - So the idea is you are either a swamp driver and that you are just constantly, constantly generating material and like throwing spaghetti at the wall and moving ahead or, and it is like fast and messy. And like, you know, and then you are a diamond polisher if you are very much like, I cannot move on from this sentence or this phrase until I have every word right and it is perfect and then I can move on. And I love to throw me some spaghetti and I am really, really grateful to have someone who's really, really good at figuring out which of the spaghettis look aesthetically pleasing. And I'm really grateful for Nina and. - That's the professional spaghetti arranger. - Yes, spaghetti wrangler. And I will also shout out, I do love that we kind of both came to theater in the same way. I got into theater because my dad would play music in the car growing up on the way to soccer practice and on the way like dropping off at school. But for him, it was Les Mis and Jesus Christ superstar. So those are my formative influences. - Shout out to dads who played show tunes in the car. You have no idea what you're beginning when you do that. - I love those inspirations. Those are so wonderful. Thank you for those. Well, now we've arrived at my favorite question to ask guests and that of course is what is your favorite theater memory? - I have one that has been coming to mind recently. I had the opportunity a couple years ago to direct a production of The Wolves. And that was a play that was hugely meaningful to a lot of people. It was very meaningful to me. I first thought when they were workshopping it at Powerhouse, one was pretty early in its development and it fully changed my life. I was like, oh, you can do that? I guess you can. And I had the opportunity to direct it at a summer camp. And this was one of the first in-person directing gigs I'd had since COVID began. And we did it outside on a soccer field with teenagers, with kids who were the same age as the characters. So I was just hugely rewarding to work with young performers who felt so seen by the material and were really excited to be trusted with something that felt edgy and funny and serious and also athletic and challenging. But the really specific favorite memory I have from it is when you do theater outdoors in Maine, sometimes it pours. Sometimes there is a sudden rainstorm from out of nowhere and we had one of the day before performances. So it was our final dress rehearsal and spoke to the heads of camp and basically gave the cast an option of, look, we can either, we can do an indoor run in costumes in the cafeteria or we can do it on the fields in the rain, but we can't wear the costumes 'cause we need them for tomorrow. So you'll have to wear a rehearsal clothes. You don't mind getting dirty. And did I mention it's pouring rain and the field is a pile of mud. You know, and I had them all close their eyes that we voted and if it wasn't unanimous, I was gonna have them do it in the cafeteria so that no one would be uncomfortable. And it was a unanimous vote to do a mud run. And that run through the show was like one of the most beautiful experiences I've had in theater because they were so committed to telling that story and to like stretching themselves to their potential, I have photos from it where I'm just like, it looks so, the rain is pouring down as they stretch and they kick and they shout. And I just felt really moved by their expression as young people during that show. I feel like teenager done is a really difficult time for a lot of people and folks who love theater often cling to it at that age. And I just felt really lucky to be working with artists that committed even at that age and that I got to witness that. So that's just a really special memory for me as a director. - That is such a wonderful memory. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. Sophie, what about you? What is your favorite theater memory? - I've got it. I've got it. Okay. So for me, it was definitely when I was in undergrad, I was a BA drama major, which meant that like, I just kind of took like all sorts of classes across all the different theatrical disciplines, including a props class. And I ended up getting tapped to be a props master for a student production of The Flick by Annie Baker, which is a hugely, hugely beloved play. I mean, by me, I love it. And part of my responsibility during this play was for people who don't know what The Flick is about, it takes place in a movie theater and characters are sort of these like janders who clean up the movie theater. Well, they also have other roles like popping the popcorn stuff, but their main role during the show is they are sweeping up theater trash at the end of various movie showings. And so during the show, which ran, you know, like a pretty snappy two hours and 20 minutes, I spent the entire time underneath the risers that made up the set. And I was wearing all black and I had black gloves. And leading up to this, I had made thousands of tiny popcorn kernels out of yellow and white tissue paper to be our popcorn because our Titan Mill director did not want real popcorn on the risers 'cause those are the risers that we used for shows. So I made all of this fake popcorn. And then during this two hour and 20 minute show, I would crouch under the risers like a little gremlin and during like the lights down transitions, I would be like madly fleeing popcorn and madly fleeing garbage onto the set. And then the lights would be up and the set would be covered in garbage. And people were like, how did they do that? They had no idea how this could possibly be done. And it was literally just me like crouching. I would like crawl, army crawl on my belly like covered in dust bunnies. I loved it. I was so committed and one of like the best-- - It was the set gremlin. - It was, it was. I, every time I go back to my college, I will crawl back under the risers and be like, the risers are gremlin, the risers again. But one of the things that was actually so informative about that is one of the reasons that any baker is my, you know, one of my favorite playwrights is because of how well she uses silences and like sort of like white space between dialogue. And I got to sit underneath the risers and not see the play, but listen to the play every single performance and just how it was paced and how it sort of spooled out. And I've really learned a lot from that in a way that I never expected to. And it was just a really, really lovely time. And I cherish that memory. And last night actually I got to, I'm gonna be going back to my undergrad this fall 'cause they're gonna be doing a reading of one of my other plays as part of their main stage season which I'm really excited about. And last night I got to like zoom in to their little rehearsal. And I was just like, oh, I can't wait to be back here, you know? And it's so special to me that they're doing that. - That is also such an amazing memory. Thank you so much for that. Thank you both so much for that. Those were lovely. - Yeah. - Well, as we wrap things up, I would love to know, do either of you have any other projects or productions coming on the pipeline we might be able to plug for you? - Yes, we do. Sophie maybe has some additional ones to add to this list, but I wanna plug that Good Apples is having a new play reading festival that's gonna be coming up this fall. Submissions aren't open yet, but they will be. So for folks who are interested, keep an eye on our website and socials for when that goes live. And we're also gonna be workshopping one of Sophie's plays called The Afterwife at LaGuardia Center for the Performing Arts in October, which we're really excited about. And the two of us are pretty constantly at work on a number of new projects that we're toggling between. So, yeah, appreciate that question and feel very excited for the work that's ahead. - Yeah. - Sophie, what else do you have? - Yeah, no, I think you got the main ones. I think the only other thing that I would love to plug is me and Nina have been working really, really hard to create resources for emerging artists, especially involving, you know, like helping them to become more contract literate so that they can know what they're getting into when they sign something. I have been in hot water before because I signed something that I thought I understood and I did not and also in terms of like rehearsal spaces, rentable feeders. We're really, really just trying to do as much as we can to make this knowledge transparent and accessible instead of kind of like stash in these institutional silos. 'Cause I feel like so often it's like you have to ask somebody who knows somebody who works in this place and they can be like, okay, I can tell you what insurance to get for your equity showcase code production. And it's nice when that can just be out there for people to know. - Yeah, so if you are an emerging theater maker who's like, how do I make a budget? Go to goodapplescollective.com. - Yes. - Any of those things could be found there. - I love all that. That is also amazing. Thank you for sharing all of that. Well, that leads to my final question, which of course is if our listeners would like more information about Kana Kalari or about either of you, perhaps they'd like to reach out to you. How can they do so? - Yeah, I mean, my website is out there if you Google me and my email is out there. I can say it here too. It's just my name, Sophie McIntosh, and then writes at gmail.com. Please reach out, hit me up. I'm on New Play Exchange as well, love that place. And yeah, always, always happy to answer questions. - Collectively, we can be found at goodapplescollective.com. Also at goodapplescollective on Instagram and TikTok. And personally, you can find me at meanahgoodheart.com. I also write a little sub-stack about - Yes. - Working and making art called Artist Unpaid, which is a little joke from the lore. Artists should be paid, but you can read that at artistunpaid.substack.com. - I also have a little sub-stack, but mine is called Swamp Driver Monthly. It's a re-swamp driver. - Great, if you listen to this whole podcast, you get that joke now. - Yes, you do. - Wonderful. Well, Sophie, me and I thank you so much for your time today for sharing this amazing show and your amazing insight. This has been so much fun. I could keep going for hours on end, but I appreciate the time you've already given us. So thank you very much. - Thank you, that has been such a joy, really. - Yes, absolutely. Thanks for having us. - Thank you. My guests today have been the amazing playwright, Sophie McIntosh and the incredible director, Nina Goodhart, who stopped by to talk about Good Apple's Collective's presentation of Kanakalari. It's playing June 28th through July 13th at Alchemical Studios, and you can get your tickets and more information by visiting goodapplescollective.com. We also have some contact information for our guests, which will be posted in the episode description as well as on the social media post. But hurry right now and get your tickets to this fantastic show, this brilliant journey. Again, the show is Kanakalari playing June 28th through July 13th. 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 whisperer. - 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 @stagewhispererpod. - And feel free to reach out to us with your comments and personal stories at stagewhispererpod@gmail.com. - And be sure to check out our website for all things stage whisperer and theater. You'll be able to find merchandise, tours, tickets and more. Simply visit stagewhispererpod.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/stagewhispererpod. 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