Stage Whisper
Whisper in the Wings Episode 644
(upbeat music) - Welcome back in everyone to a fantastic new whisper in the wings from stage whisper. I am so excited about our show today. I cannot wait to share the piece we're talking about. It is a creator's pick. It was such an amazing night out, not just a great show, but a great experience. The audience is amazing. The cast is phenomenal. So we are so excited to be bringing you the show today. And joining us today, we have one of the best character actors. He wears so many hats to the show and he steals the show. He's got some wonderful performances. We are honored to be welcoming on the actor who plays the role of River and Eric, Michael Rashon. He's here to talk to us about Table 17, just playing now through September 29th at MCC Theater. Tickets and more information are available at MCCtheatre.org. I cannot say this enough. Get your tickets now because this thing's going to sell out like that. And then you're going to wish you'd seen it win, but it's such a brilliant show. So I don't want to waste any more time buttering everything up. I just want to welcome on our guests and dive right in. So let us welcome on Michael Rashon. Welcome in to Whisper in the wings from stage whisper. - You know what's going on in Trejo? (laughing) - I'm over the moon. I'm over the moon that we get to talk because like I said before we started, this is a show that my wife and I saw before we left for travel. And we could not stop talking about it. It was so, so good. We wanted it to be longer, the journey, the weight it's presented, just everything was hitting the mark and then some. So why don't we start by having you tell our listeners, a bit about what table 17 is about? - Absolutely. So table 17 is in its most simplest form. It's a play about love, loss found and possibly reignited. The play follows two lovers, Jada and Dallas, who exes who for more or less haven't spoken in about two to three years. And they end up coming back to our neighborhood restaurant where we meet our young yankas and they are essentially just reorienting and re-meeting each other after having had some time away from the partnership actually breaking. They come back and they rehash all the things. And yeah, the two of them, they get, we find out, is the relationship salvageable? What does it actually mean to truly love another? Self and then also, the play is also speaking about what does it look like? Like what does deep forgiveness look like for our self as well as for your partner? And hopefully Jada and Dallas at some point get to a meeting of minds to reignite that love that was once there. - I love that description. And yes, don't give that ending away 'cause it's such a brilliant ending. That was probably the first thing my wife and I walked out of the theater discussing. And I'm not gonna give any hints to what it's about, but it's a brilliant, brilliant journey. So how did you come upon this particular piece? - So Douglas Lyons, the writer, had approached me when the play was honestly not even fully finished. It was about maybe 40 pages or so. And he had asked myself along with two other actors in LA, good friends of mine, Casey and Blod, if we could hop on just a quick Zoom call to sort of give some life to these pages that he had been sitting with for a minute. And we hopped on and it was probably like a half hour or so. And that was really sort of the beginning of what, of where we are now, in terms of like a fully realized production. But he had approached me about the pages and was like, I'm gonna have you read River and Eric. And I just kind of like jumped in from there. So that was my, my start in the process, actually a little less than a year ago. Yeah, we're now in fully realized production, so. - That is fantastic. And I wanna snowball off of that 'cause I would love to know would the show having been open to rave reviews and everything of that nature? What has it been like developing this piece? - Right, yeah. So we've had a series of presentations that were directed by Jalen Levingston Douglas and Jalen had worked on chicken and biscuits together. And when I think, I think they had maybe two or three seasons ago on Broadway. And so we had had a series of presentations, Douglas from that initial 40 page read, he went and then fully sort of like fleshed out the play. And our producer Mark Cortelli of Provincetown New Works had us all do a presentation in Provincetown for the folks that are sort of like living there and vacationing there. And the reception was like wild people. There wasn't like a dry eye in the house, essentially. And we started to realize that we sort of maybe had something. And so that snowballed into a second presentation in New York. This time we added Carrie Young and Biko Eisen Martin. And then it became like a whole 'nother thing, but the way, but the response was so wild in terms of how it was affecting people and how people were receiving it. And so it kind of just snowballed from there. Maybe like a third presentation happened in New York City. And then before I knew it, I was getting a call from my agents that we landed at MCC. So it has been sort of like a year long journey of like from page to production, but we've had a series of presentations that people really responded really positively over. And then MCC was like, it's ours. Let's actually push it to production. And so now this is where we are with a two-week extension. So I guess we must be doing something right. - Just a little bit, that's an incredible journey. Now with this fantastic show, you know, is there a message or a thought that you're hoping audiences take away from this piece? - Yeah, I think there's a couple. For me, I think the characters that I get to play are all at different, they're all at different moments in their love journey piece. And just like Jada and Dallas are, but for me it's like really, really knowing, for better or worse what your attachment style is in love, healing those emotional wounds so that you can fully not only know that you are whole perfect and complete as a person, like you're good, but that also you can truly love unconditionally for another and to do that mindfully, to do that in a healthy way, really showing up, really cleaning up your side of the street and knowing what the red flags are and being able to like really work with your partner to create a relationship that is mutually beneficial for both of you. Because I do think that sometimes we can fall into relationships and expect that someone is gonna fill certain needs of ours that we really should be filling on our own. And you can't really know that until it's like, until you've had a couple of relationships in and you really know what your own triggers are, what your emotional wounding is. And like on top of that, what deep forgiveness looks like, no one is perfect. And so like really getting to a place of like, if you can forgive yourself and all the stuff that you contributed to the demands of the relationship, then hopefully someone else can also have that space and that grace for you as well. So yeah, I'm hoping that people, when they leave the space after seeing table 17, they are sitting with what it means to love myself, like really feeling that intrinsically in every fiber of your being, knowing how to show up for another and also for real knowing what your attachment style is and working on healing that. Because that can essentially, you know, the impetus of like, is this a mega to break situation? Knowing what your attachment style is, healing that so that you can fully show up for another person and they can show up for you as well. - I love, love that far. I think it's an idea that we don't, we don't see in real life a lot lately. So I love that it's being reflected on the stage in this piece, that's a fabulous idea. And it leads to my final question for this first part, which is who are you hoping to have access to table 17? - I mean, everybody, because I mean, I think that, you know, there are five different characters in the play and what I've been hearing is that people are coming into this space and they can essentially see themselves identified in one of those five people. And sometimes you're all five of them if you've lived a substantial amount of life, you know? And so we have people coming in who are upwards to the age of like 60 and 70 all the way down to like young 20s. So we wanna welcome everybody into the space. The place is about love and if you've experienced love, if you've lost love, if you've reignited love, then yeah, we wanna share that with you and talk about it. I mean, 'cause, you know, MTC is about it. You know, they wanna talk about the real stuff. And so I think that's what the play is, the playlist itself to being able to connect with anybody. It doesn't matter sex, race, creed, color, whatever it is. We wanna welcome everybody into the space. (upbeat music) - On the second part of our interviews, 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 are who inspires you? What playwrights, composers or shows have inspired you in the past or are just some of your favorites? - I'll start with actors first. I find myself drawn to chameleons. So people like, at least in TV and film land, Meryl Streep, Kate Blanchett, Morgan Freeman, Jeffrey Wright. I think even someone like Jessica Chesk did, she's a favorite of mine. Writers-wise, I'm drawn to work that is, that is not only like new but provocative, but has no issues about really highlighting issues that are sort of not talked about or like brushed to the side. Work that represents people from marginalized groups. Some of the writers that really inspire me are Torel Allen McCreney, Ethel Feugard, my children in my Africa. I also really enjoy Douglas Lyons' work. People that are really pushing the narrative of like, what it means to have equality and equanimity for all people, for everyone. It's sort of the old adage of like, no one is free until all free. And that requires bravery and courage to talk about all the things so that everybody can have the mic because everyone deserves to be hurt, in my opinion. And that's how I approach my work. As far as like art goes, you know, of course, Basquiat, I'm a huge art history buff. So I enjoy like just walking through museums, travel, do feetsy and Florence all the way down to, you know, I'm sort of rambling, but I'm a huge art history buff. Like, I take a lot of inspiration from that when it comes to my work. And really, I think I love, I take inspiration from everyday life by watching people, observing people. I think what's really cool about people is that I do get to play various humans in it, but those humans are an amalgamation of different characteristics of certain friends of mine, certain things that I'm like remembering and logging in my brain, certain like vocal patterns and things like that. Like, I do sort of like move through the world sort of quietly 'cause I'm constantly observing and like logging certain things into my psyche that potentially I could use for my work. So, yeah. I love that that is not a ramble that is a brilliant, brilliant list there and a fantastic set of inspiration. So thank you for sharing that. I would love to know now, what is your favorite part about working in the theater? - For me, my favorite part is that instant connection. I think that you're making something for a couple of weeks and the people that you're working with, you guys are creating something and when it finally is ready to then be shared and offered, the audience is the last part of that equation, right? And I think up until this point, at least for table, because the audience is such an essential part of the play, so much so that they're actually sort of like a bit of a fourth cast member, we're able to really see and understand and feel what's working, what's not working immediately based off of the response of the audience. So I think for me like, and anytime I get to work in the theater, being able to tell this story in a truthful way, in a powerful way, provocative way, and then actually hearing and seeing specifically how it's affecting people, for me, that's the best part of working in this medium is truly like that instant connection or lack thereof, if something isn't landing, because all of that is valuable in tell and we're all in this thing together, we're all like breathing and watching the same exact thing. So for me, that's the most apart, the part that I enjoy about it. - I love that answer, that is a fantastic answer. And that all leads to my favorite question to ask guests, which is what is your favorite theater memory? - So when I was in college, I was in my young 20s, and I went to go see fences with Viola and Denzel, and I could barely afford like a ticket. So I think I took the standing room, I was in those sections of the theater. And I remember I went on maybe like a Friday night and it was packed. And I remember there's a part in the play where Troy Denzel's character basically tells Rose Viola's character that he's like cheated on her and he's got another baby on the way, but from this other woman. And I remember distinctly Viola had this like sort of like red dress on, very evocative of her name. And when he told her this in the space as it was playing out, I remember Viola did something where she put the this like deep level of betrayal and pain in her body and her body started to like writhe. It was almost as if it was like decaying, right? Like Rose was like sort of like crumbling. And she didn't say anything. And it was just all in her body. And I remember like she held, she held like silence for like 30 seconds. You could hear a pin drop. And when she was finished, the like death of that, of the realization of that truth from his character, I just remember like when she stopped the entire audience like there was like a wave of grief that went through the entire like space. You could feel it. And I just remember being like, y'all that actor, if an actor can like have that much power with no text and you're just like inhabiting and embodying, like that is so powerful to be able to get to that level of craft and mastery of storytelling. And I was like, that's what I want to be doing. So the short of it is that Viola Davis give her her flowers, but also just like, I just remember being so deeply and profoundly moved by an actor in a theater that, you know, didn't require language. And yet it was still so powerful to watch. That was my favorite moment in theater. - I love that. What an amazing memory. Thank you so much for sharing that. - Yeah. - Well, as we wrap things up, I would love to know, do you have any other projects or productions coming down the pipeline we might be able to plug for you? - I do, yeah. I mean, I've got some like really big TV stuff coming down the pipeline, which I'm very excited about. I am on season two of Michelle Buto was survival of the thickest on Netflix. So that'll be probably to be premiering, I guess it could be sometime next year. And I also am actually shooting this week on Tracy Morgan's new multi-cam comedy for Paramount. It's called "Crutch" and it's amazing because Tracy has been on the TV for a very long time. So he's not coming back. So I have that coming up and yeah, you know, other than that, I'm a free agent, but I do have some TV stuff coming up. So I'm excited about that. - That is very cool. So we will have to keep an eye out for all of these irons you have in the fire. And that is a wonderful lead into my final question, which is if our listeners would like more information about table 17 or about you, maybe they'd like to reach out to you. How can they do so? - Oh, you can definitely hit me up on IG @MichaelHarshan, MCC tickets I think are still available, but you definitely wanna, you know, if you wanna see it, you definitely wanna get a grab a ticket 'cause I know it is selling pretty well. And otherwise, if you do come and, you know, see the, like, come see the show, please connect. Like we're, myself, be going care are always in the lobby and stuff, post show. So we love being able to meet the folks who are coming in to see the, to see the play and being able to connect and talk about all the things that the plays bringin' up for, for them. So yeah, I'll see you at MCC. - Yes, Michael, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me and for sharing your amazing work. Truly, it is such a phenomenal piece and I feel so fortunate that we got the chance to see it. So thank you so much for your time today. - Andrew, thank you. I really appreciate it. And please tell all of your people, you know, to come and see us and let us love on you. - Yes. - Perfect. So it's been, this has been really, really cool. So thank you so much for supporting and highlighting our show. I really appreciate it. - Thank you. My guest today has been a phenomenal actor who's currently playing the role of River and Eric in the creator's pick, Table 17, over at MCC Theater. The actor, of course I'm speaking of was Michael Rashawn. He's amazing. You can catch him now through September 29th at, now through September 29th in Table 17, which is playing at MCC Theater. Get your tickets while you still can and more information by visiting mcctheatre.org. We also have some contact information for our guests, which will be posted in our episode description, as well as on our social media posts. But like he said, you better run, don't walk, get your tickets, they're gonna be gone very quickly. You don't wanna miss this creator's pick, this amazing show, Table 17, now through September 29th. And we wanna add for our American listeners, that election day is November 5th. Make sure you are registered to vote, have a plan to cast your ballot and do your democratic duty. You can find out how and where you can register and 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. (upbeat music) ♪ They're anywhere near your town ♪ ♪ Makes me there ♪