Technology
A STICKY MEMENTO by Ken Urban
In 'A Sticky Memento' by Ken Urban, two strangers meet in the bushes of Harvard, revealing their personal struggles and unexpected connections. This poignant exploration of identity, expecta...
A STICKY MEMENTO by Ken Urban
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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I'm Claudia Catania and you're listening to Playing on Air.
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We're about to hear a sticky memento by Ken Urban.
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Ken's plays include a guide for the homesick and the correspondent.
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As a screenwriter, he penned an adaptation of his play The Happy Sad.
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As a musician, he leads the band for Currence.
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And as an educator, he currently teaches theater at MIT.
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Kodut Adams joins Ken as our director,
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having recently directed primary trust at the roundabout and English at the Atlantic.
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Kodut is much in demand and we are fortunate to welcome him.
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Our cast features Jane Kazmarik and Taylor Trench.
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Jane Kazmarik is most well known for her role as Malcolm's mother in TV's Malcolm in the Middle.
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And she has graced film, the TV screen and the stage, both in New York, in LA and regionally.
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On Broadway, Taylor Trench starred in Kamalot, dear Evan Hanson,
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the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime and wicked.
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And now a sticky memento by Ken Urban.
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Oh, it's all, oh, I wouldn't do that.
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Are you scared me?
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No, I just didn't want you to.
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What, what, what, what are you doing in the bushes?
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I was hiding.
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Why?
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Look, I just, I wouldn't touch that statue.
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But the guidebook says that it's good luck to rub the feet.
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Yeah, never touch the John Harvard statue, especially not the feet.
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Am I going to get arrested or something?
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You touched it already.
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No, no, I didn't.
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You sure?
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Why can't I touch it?
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We piss on it.
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The among other things, Harvard students, we do that because we know.
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What?
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We know, tourists like to, so we...
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So you pee on a statue?
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One pee, spit, barf.
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Why?
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Nerd rage, maybe, I guess?
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Uh-huh, think of it as a memento.
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Look kids, mom's hands sticky with Harvard kids pee.
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You go here?
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Um...
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Maybe?
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Why are you hiding in the bushes?
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I think I'm expelled.
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Sorry.
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Not expelled.
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We don't get expelled here at Harvard.
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That's under coming.
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I'm taking a leave of absence.
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What'd you do?
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Oh, um...
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Nice vanny pack, by the way.
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Oh, well, thanks.
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Did you get in trouble because, you know, you...
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On the...
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You know, on the statue?
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Oh.
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You think I'd get expelled because I pissed on John the Harvard here?
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No.
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I prefer to piss on my parents' dreams.
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You're weird.
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And you smell...
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Like...
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Oh, is...
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Is that marijuana?
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Mm-hmm.
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I'm really baked.
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It's not even 10 a.m.
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Where are you from?
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Rockford.
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It's in Illinois.
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It's one of the country's most economically depressed cities.
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I read about it in class.
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Well, I...
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I don't know.
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It's just...
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It's just where I'm from.
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Why the hell come here?
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Never been to Boston.
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And we...
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We planned this trip ages ago.
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And...
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I just figured, you know...
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Went in Rome.
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I should come to Harvard, right?
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Your kid's dream of coming here had...
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No kids.
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Oh.
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Your husband wanted to...
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No, don't have one of those either.
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Cool.
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Cool?
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You said we.
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We planned a trip to Boston.
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Oh, a habit, I guess.
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I used to pray for my parents to get divorced.
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But since there's no God, they're still married.
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You seem like you're full of nerd rage.
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In trouble.
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Like, something bad is happening.
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And all this joking is because you can't face what's happening.
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You're a perceptive lady.
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What's happening?
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My parents are waiting for me in my dorm room
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because they have to take me home.
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They've been summoned.
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Apparently, on account of my non-expulsion,
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I'm not allowed to be anywhere near campus for the rest of the year.
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Yikes.
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Or you must have done something really bad.
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That's the thing.
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Not really.
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I didn't commit a hate crime.
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I didn't invent a social media platform
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that emotionally crippled an entire generation.
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Well, you must have done something.
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I prefer to think of what I did as a form of sampling.
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I sampled other writer's thoughts
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in order to create something new in numerous assignments.
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The dean calls that plagiarism.
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Not good.
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In my defense, I told the dean I was gay
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with boatloads of emotional problems.
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That's why I plagiarized and never go to class.
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You know?
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Because of my sadness about the whole gay thing.
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We got a gay at the plant. He's pretty nice.
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I'm not actually gay. I'm just from Connecticut.
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What?
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Gayness is merely a ruse.
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What the heck is wrong with you?
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I mean, I might be gay.
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By, I don't know.
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All the same in the dark, I guess.
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God.
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I hate this place so much.
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You hated here?
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She looks pretty nice to me.
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Everyone here has their lives figured out.
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That's hilarious.
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Who the heck is their life figured out when they're a kid?
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As you rightfully pointed out, it's 10 a.m. on a Tuesday.
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I am baked and hiding from my parents and the bushes.
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You don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out
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I'm not in the best of shape.
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Yeah, but going to school is here to this school.
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Oh, it's such an opportunity. I mean, why blow it?
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What's your name?
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D. I'm Evan.
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D. What happened to you and Hubby?
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That's none of your damn business.
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That's true, but I'm on the edge and I think you might be too.
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What?
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What is that supposed to mean?
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Like, recognizes like.
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Can you not speak in riddles?
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You're in Boston so low, talking to a stoned kid hiding in a bush.
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You should have run away from me or at a bare minimum, politely excused yourself,
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but here you are.
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Still talking to me, so what happened?
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I mean, it's... I...
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No rush.
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I got all the time in the world.
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Mark, that's my ex.
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He lost his job at Viking and he couldn't find anything.
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But a buddy of his found him something over in Cedar Rapids and...
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You know, he had to take it.
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But I had my job at the plant and I couldn't...
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I got you. You got a new job, started boning his secretary.
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No.
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No, we lived apart. It was just too hard.
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Being apart, I mean, then one day we just realized...
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Yep, we just...
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We just couldn't do this anymore.
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I just had the guts to say it first.
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And he couldn't deny how bad it was getting.
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And so then it was...
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It was over.
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We filed for divorce and I still love him.
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We just can't...
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That's really sad, actually.
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That's how it goes sometimes.
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And you came to Boston to cheer yourself up? Are you a masochist?
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I don't know what that word means.
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You're a woman. Question answers itself.
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Kid, you're a real jerk. You know that?
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Do you think I should try and get hit by a car on Mass Ave?
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Not fatally. I mean, just badly injured.
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I hear gay suicidal teens are all the rage.
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Maybe that my parents would love me.
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You got into Harvard.
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That's success, isn't it?
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You see that building over there?
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I have eyes, don't I?
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We share our last name. That building in me.
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You get it now, Dee?
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What you're rich, is that what you're saying?
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You're saying your parents bought your way in?
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Is that how things work here?
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Dee, it is how the whole world works.
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I can barely pay my mortgage.
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I shouldn't even be on this trip.
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As daddy says, life's a sucking chest wound, then you die.
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Sounds like your dad's got problems.
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He's from Connecticut, of course he has problems.
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Dee, were you adopt me?
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You can take me back to Rockford and we can both work on an assembly line
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and eat food made from the recipes in the back at Campbell's soup tin.
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You ever worked assembly?
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I've never had a job ever.
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God, your Fanny Pack is giving me life.
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You're making fun of me.
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No, I'm really not.
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No, you are. You're making fun of me.
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You think you're better than me.
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Here I am, spilling my heart out.
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No, I really like talking to you.
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You listen, you jerk. I work assembly.
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It's not rocket science, but it's hard and I'm good at it.
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You're just a spoiled kid who thinks that he has it rough.
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You don't.
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And making fun of people like me is why people like me hate people like you.
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And I, for one, I'm not going to feel bad for you.
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You stupid little brat who can't even face his parents.
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And what?
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What?
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You think you can handle where I'm from?
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You got everything handed to you on a silver platter, your whole damn life.
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And even then, you can't manage not to screw it up.
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You think you're owed something because of where you come from.
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But you know what?
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You ain't owed squat.
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Also, kid, you are gayer than a $3 bill.
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So just suck it up and deal with it.
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Oh my gosh.
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Oh, kid, come on, Evan.
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Evan, Evan, don't, uh, Evan, don't cry.
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It's okay.
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It's okay.
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It is us.
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No, Evan, kid, you're not.
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Yes, I am.
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No, no.
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You're just, you're just, you're figuring things out.
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But it's too late.
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Oh, what?
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What are you?
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17?
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I'm 19, 19.
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You told me to have things figured out when you're 19.
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But I do.
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Oh, but nothing.
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Come on, you fruitcake egg.
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Look, I'm man for Christ's sake.
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Here.
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Here, take this.
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Just take it and just, you know, clean up your face.
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Wait, to give me a dirty tissue.
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It's not dirty.
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It's just, it's wrinkled.
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But now, here, come on.
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Clean your, clean your face.
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You got, you got, it's not hanging down your nose.
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D.
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I'm sorry.
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I've been a jerk.
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Oh, I shouldn't have yelled at you.
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I deserved it.
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Well, that's true, you did.
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What do I do now?
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Well, honey, everyone's a little lost.
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But you, you push through.
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You find your way.
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Did you read that in a greeting card?
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You are such a jerk.
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Yeah, and you love it.
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Yeah, maybe it is.
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Maybe it is from a greeting card.
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That doesn't make it any less true.
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Point taken.
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Anyway, you got to make all this up to me somehow.
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Do I now?
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Yes, you do.
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I come to this miserable place and I listen to you bitch and mone.
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And so you own me.
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Oh, all right, all right.
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Your wish is my command.
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I'm bored and I, I don't know my way around.
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And I keep running into groups of orientals taking pictures.
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You really, really shouldn't use that word D.
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Well, so show me around.
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Show me what tourists like me don't normally get to see here on campus.
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You know, like the special spots.
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Okay.
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Okay, okay.
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I can do that.
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Actually.
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Oh, I know exactly where to take you.
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I'm going to take you to my favorite place on campus.
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It's deaf not in your guidebook.
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Good, good.
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Show me.
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And then I'm going to walk you back to your room.
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I don't know.
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My parents are, you can't run all day.
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Really?
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They love you.
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They invest in me.
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That's more than most people getting this life.
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Fair enough.
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Got a deal?
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Deal.
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Good.
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Come on.
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Come on.
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Shake on it.
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Oh, your hand is released.
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I touched it.
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Damn it.
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I put my whole hand on that statue.
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You really shouldn't piss on John and Richard.
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Well, let's go.
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Time's the waste, kid.
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After you, Dee.
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You just heard a sticky momentum written by Ken Urban and directed by Knut Adams.
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The future, Jane Kazmaric as Dee and Taylor Trench as Evan.
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Hello, all, and thank you.
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First day to talk about what we all just did.
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Can you all say your name and role in the recording so listeners can better attach your voice
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to the role?
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Hi, I'm Ken Urban.
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I'm the playwright.
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Can you, Adam's director?
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I'm Taylor Trench.
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I played Evan.
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I'm Jane Kazmaric.
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I played Dee.
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Ken Urban, playwright.
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Who was John Harvard?
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And is the PP tradition he describes, you know, that's described true?
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Well, John Harvard is the founder of Harvard University.
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And there is a big statue of him in Harvard Yard.
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And one of my students told me, I used to teach there, told me that, yeah, the students
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pee and tick gum and awful things on there because all the tour guides say, all the tour
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books say, you should rub the feet of John Harvard.
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It gives you good luck.
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And so when you see the statue, the feet are super shiny because everybody shrubs their
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hands on it.
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And now every time I would walk, when I used to work there, I would walk through Harvard Yard
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and I would see all these tourists rubbing.
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And then I'll get to think about what my students would say.
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But is the statue on a plinth though?
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Yes.
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How do they get up there?
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It's touchable.
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It's not.
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No, no, no, how do they get up there to urinate?
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How does a pee?
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I didn't ask my students.
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I just, I just, I just, I just, they told me that, well, yeah, they, they also would be
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if they got really drunk, they would go there specifically.
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Yeah, I can see that, but the urinate, unless they've got a really long street.
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I guess they're, my students were more talented than I did.
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They had been drinking and I don't know.
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But yeah, they would get up on, I guess they got up on the plinth, yeah.
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I'd never thought about that.
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I mean, I went to the University of Wisconsin for undergrad and we had a beautiful statue
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of Abraham Lincoln.
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We just put pennies on it.
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Oh, that's sweet.
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That's Midwest.
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That's sweet, see?
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That's D, right?
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That is kind, yes.
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That is kind as opposed to the, the latest.
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Yes.
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So called Brett's.
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Canute, Adams, director.
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What aspects of Ken's play most attracted you?
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Yeah, Ken and I have been in process with a couple of his plays these past couple years.
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I love all of his writing, the balance of humor and vulnerability.
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Yeah, his way with dialogue, it just sounds like people to me.
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And specifically on this, I think, you know, I had a sort of traumatic freshman year of call
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college coming out, conservative family, coming from like a really rocky high school experience
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and trying to figure myself out.
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So I just think this sort of, although my circumstances were very different than Evans,
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I just related to the feelings of both wanting to belong and also burn everything to the ground.
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Jane, Ken's married.
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It's so nice to see you again.
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It's nice to see you too.
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Thanks for inviting me to do this.
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Well, Jane recorded a piece by Daniel Wrights for us about a single mother with an adult son on the spectrum.
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So folks out there, you should definitely catch it on our website or podcast.
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It's called Napoleon in exile.
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Jane, how do you relate to the classified aspect of this play, this meeting of Connecticut Elite?
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One of the things I loved about this play, reading it was that it has a beginning of middle and an end.
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It's a well structured play, which just always gives you some place to go as an actress.
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You know, you can make active choices.
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And we had so much fun recording it today because with the direction of hold back here,
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don't become friends so quickly.
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And as act true actors, you know, Taylor and I just were just like,
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stinking it up with charm.
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I love you too, I love you.
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So pulling back from that is always, it's fun as an actor to be given direction to,
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to not use your muscle, you know, that which comes easiest to you.
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But I am from the Midwest and there was a lot to do about D.
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I really related to a lot of cousins and family whose situation is very, very different than what Evans character Taylor is talking about and the whole Connecticut thing.
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I went to school in the East or graduate school and that was, that was different.
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But it was a long time ago too, you know, when I think there was tremendous pride in getting into Yale.
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And nowadays, I think young people are much more attached to their fury, rage and cynicism that I could understand these dismay at what Taylor is feeling about going to Harvard.
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And because of what kids are going through these days, understand his disgust with it all.
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Did you go to Yale?
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For drama school.
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But you know, I graduated in 82.
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I was three years old and...
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It was, you know, times, everything is, well, everything has changed.
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Yeah, Taylor trench.
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I know you're now a distance from age 19.
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But are there any handles in this play that helped you relate to Evan?
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Totally.
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I'm also a queer person, so that's like a really lovely window into the play and into the character.
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And I think I similarly come from a family of like very polite patient people.
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We don't necessarily like share our feelings with each other.
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And that sort of dynamic of where Evan comes from is highly relatable.
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I like so much about all of Ken's writing that it feels almost like it's been musically scored.
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There's such a good map as an actor on the page.
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And maybe it's because he's very cool and is in a band.
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Like there's something he can't help but have.
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There's like a musical feeling to his plays and it paints such a perfect map for actors.
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And it makes your job so much easier.
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That's such an interesting realization.
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What kind of band are you in?
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It's like an electronic music band with two singers.
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Like Scroox?
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It's a bit more poppy than that.
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Oh good.
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And I do all the electronics than there's two singers.
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Do you write the music though?
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I write all the music.
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And sometimes I write the lyrics.
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But mostly the singers write the lyrics.
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So you're a composer.
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So that it does tie in.
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That's really interesting.
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Yeah, when I hear a composer, I feel like someone who like study music and things like that.
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But thanks to technology, it's easy to like figure out how to make things now.
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Like to fight.
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To be like, three blind minds.
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Right.
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I feel like my...
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I feel like when people are like sitting on the piano and play as something I get really nervous
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because it's not usually how I compose.
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But yeah, I don't know.
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I guess I am a composer.
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Anyone, Taylor, what's your understanding of nerd rage?
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That's a good cue.
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I don't know.
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I feel like maybe Candice better equipped to answer.
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Not that I'm calling you a nerd.
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Not that I'm dragging you to.
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No, no.
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I felt like some of the students I taught when I was at Harvard had these perfect lives to me.
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Right.
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Because I never went to a school like that as an undergraduate or graduate school.
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And so I thought, oh, wow, they're so smart.
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They have these parents who really care about them.
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All these things I didn't have.
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And yet they were so angry.
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Like they would get so...
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Yeah, it would just like bubble out of them in a way.
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And I thought, oh, that's so fascinating, which is what made me want to write this little play.
spk_0
So yeah, I guess that's what nerd rage is.
spk_0
It's like, when on the surface, it seems like you have everything.
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But then underneath, there's just frustration, this unhappiness.
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And, you know, when I was a kid in college, my parents didn't even know what I was doing.
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They thought I was majoring in engineering.
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And then they were like, why did you get this degree?
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Oh, I thought it was...
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But these kids, like their parents know everything.
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They know their grades.
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I can believe it.
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I remember when my son was starting and they were saying, communicate with your children.
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Help them, of course, choose classes.
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I said, choose classes.
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I don't even, you know...
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I'm amazed.
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I...
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Yeah.
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I don't know that my parents could have said where I was at college.
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I agree with you.
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I mean it.
spk_0
I totally agree with you.
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It was another world.
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Let me tell you.
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My mom's a high school teacher and she'll have students call their parents in class if they get a bad grade to argue on their behalf.
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I mean, it's a new world.
spk_0
Well, that's a big difference, too, because I went to Catholic school and your parents always sided with the nuns.
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You know, there was no...
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You were always the odd man out.
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And that completely changed.
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It's always the parents siding with the kid against the teacher.
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Yeah.
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Which I think is so kind of a narcissistic thing of the parents not separating themselves from the kid.
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So if you're saying that my kid is a bad student, you're saying that I'm a bad parent.
spk_0
Yeah, yeah.
spk_0
Wow, Shane, you and I have so much in common.
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I'm Polish and went to 12 years of Catholic school.
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You went to 12.
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I only did eight.
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What was the name of your school?
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St. Mary's of the Lakes and then Bishop Eustace Prep was what they were called.
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Amazing.
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They never invited me back.
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I wonder why.
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Bishop Eustace Prep is a drag band.
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Yeah, it's exactly how I should call myself a friend.
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Yeah, I don't know.
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They're still in business.
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I don't know.
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So Taylor, Knut, anybody, why do you guess that Evan,
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who's from a relatively accepting state and university still seems to have trouble coming
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to grips with his sexuality?
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Well, I think that's so personal and related to your circumstances, your family, your expectations
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they place on you.
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I think there's something interesting to his, just come up with this class, his feeling fraudulent.
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You know, I went to a very expensive undergraduate and I went on scholarship.
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So I had the inverse relationship to my peers where I felt like I couldn't believe the kind of wealth
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that I was surrounded by for the first time in my life.
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But I came to observe the double edge sort of that privilege and the sense of not knowing what is of your achievement
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and what's of your family.
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And I think there's something sort of gnawing at that, especially as a young person trying to figure out their value system.
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So you combine that with trying to process your identity.
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I think it's really complicated and hard.
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You know, because again at the University of Wisconsin where tuition started out at $327 a semester.
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For in-state students, everybody I knew was on work study.
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I worked in the costume shop, you had grants, but we were all of the same socioeconomic background.
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I don't know anybody from my high school who went out of state to college.
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You went in here and they were, they had very happy lives.
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But going out to Yale for graduate school, I saw people who had you know bedrooms with their own bathrooms.
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I grew up in a house with one bathroom.
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And it was like, what do you mean?
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You have your own bathroom.
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I couldn't believe that kind of, you know.
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I also learned something when I was at Harvard that I really surprised me as being an older person is that
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I thought you came out in college, but actually at Harvard, the Harvard Gays had all come out in high school.
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And so it was actually really hard to come out in college because they all looked down on you like,
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where were you the last three or four years?
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You couldn't be part of the group.
spk_0
Oh my god.
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Coming out in college.
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So much for camaraderie.
spk_0
Exactly.
spk_0
You kidding me?
spk_0
Yeah, no it was like a real thing where it was, oh yeah, coming out in college was harder because everyone else had come out in high school.
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And so you were not seen as truly out or like self actualized.
spk_0
Yeah, you know, what took you so long?
spk_0
That's so ghost.
spk_0
That's a way to sophomore year.
spk_0
So that was such a mine screw for me was like, I was like, I thought everybody came out in college.
spk_0
I thought I was like, oh, I came out in college, but yeah, they were like, what do you mean in college?
spk_0
We did a freshman year of high school.
spk_0
Oh my god.
spk_0
We were in an affinity group in high school.
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So it was hard to come out at Harvard as an undergraduate.
spk_0
Can you, was this your first time directing a short audio play?
spk_0
I have done short plays that I've done audio plays, but this was my first time directing a short audio play.
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So what was it like?
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I really fell in love with the audio play format during quarantine.
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It felt to me like the kind of process that felt most like being in a rehearsal room, which I miss so much.
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The spontaneity, the aliveness, the emphasis on language and communication, especially when you can be in a room together like today.
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It's such a pleasure just to hear people play off of each other.
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Combined with the pleasure of film, which is like getting what you get on the day, trusting you have it in a couple takes, and putting it together and post.
spk_0
Yeah, it's just such a delight.
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You know, I'm a very visual person.
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I came to theater through studying art and installation design.
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So setting aside that part of my brain and just trusting the ear is a different muscle that I really enjoy flexing.
spk_0
That's nice to hear.
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Can you both work together in the past?
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And what is it about one another's style and approach to work that make you a good duo?
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What I love about Canude's work as a director is how finely crafted the performances are and also his great visual sense.
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I definitely hear a play and so often rehearsal I close my eyes and so I really like to trust a director that they know how to make it look in three dimensional space.
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And I think he's a master at that.
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And so we've had a lot of fun working together.
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And we also had a lot of fun working on this audio play over the pandemic.
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And it was a real highlight.
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It was one of those things that kind of got me back into theater because right before the pandemic, I feel like I was in a pretty dark place.
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And then the pandemic happened.
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And I thought, oh, that can get worse.
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And so it did.
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And so I feel like that experience really brought us together.
spk_0
Yeah, and we're both fisterious and having it into detail which can be annoying, but also is fun to riff off of.
spk_0
And yeah, for me, I just really love repeated collaborations and such an introvert.
spk_0
I feel like the first time I work with someone, it doesn't count.
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And they only get to know me by round two or three.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Same.
spk_0
Jane and Taylor, can you describe directors and directorial styles that bring out the best in you?
spk_0
This is my second time getting to do something with Canute and Ken.
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Both Ken and Kudar are not afraid of quiet moments.
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And also, today, we were Canute pointed us towards a place where we could both be a little more vile and cruel to each other.
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And I think my whole life, all I ever want to do is make people comfortable and happy our laugh.
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And so it's nice to have somebody push me out of that and challenge me to like sometimes have a little more bite.
spk_0
Absolutely. Everything you just said, it's wonderful working with directors who have a vocabulary of theater things.
spk_0
Unfortunately, I shouldn't say that because there are a lot of good TV directors too.
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But so often they're thinking about the shot, they're thinking about this.
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And they really don't know how to tell actors what they want.
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They don't have the vocabulary for really saying something which is why I also love line readings.
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Because I think if a director doesn't have the words for what he said, let me hear you say it.
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Because I'll be able to hear, oh, oh, you want it more plaintive.
spk_0
Like reverse engineer.
spk_0
Yeah. If I hear the way you think it should sound, I can come up with a whole book out for what that is that you might not think that's what it, you know.
spk_0
So that's really nice.
spk_0
And then you just think about what it would be like to have a whole four weeks of rehearsal for something.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
To me, it seemed like these two characters were actually quite courageous in the end in terms of just the moral courage of going forward.
spk_0
Did you feel that was there and can did that ever occur to you?
spk_0
I mean, just in terms of the courage it takes, you know, to be that optimistic that you can get over this hump and that hump.
spk_0
Well, you have a great line in here. I said something and you go, what'd you read that in a reading card?
spk_0
A greeting card?
spk_0
Yeah, but you know what? That doesn't make it not true.
spk_0
You know, there's a wonderful line in private lives I know about when they're out and some song is playing and they recognize that this was the song that they were on their honeymoon, you know, the other couple.
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And the line is something like, I'm aging the potency of popular music.
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And I think of that so often just because it's popular doesn't mean it's bad.
spk_0
And what did she say after the divorce? You know, you just got to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and start all over again.
spk_0
You just got to get going.
spk_0
Yeah, I think that's right. And true isms and addages are for people who need them.
spk_0
You know, I think I observe like it's when my friends on Facebook start posting like optimistic, like life-affirming memes that I know they're really like spiraling.
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That's when it gets dark.
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But you know, it's true.
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Any harbour in a storm.
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And I think one of the charms of this play is noting that two people who have a lot of differences connect over fragility.
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And I think that sort of offering a helping hand to someone who is pushing you away is like really like one of life's miracles.
spk_0
And something that I find like really moving when people can sort of see past the rough edges and observe someone's like need and heart is like, yeah, it's just really lovely.
spk_0
That's a lovely note to end on actually.
spk_0
Thanks for coming.
spk_0
Thank you.
spk_0
Thank you.
spk_0
spk_0
I'm very, very much.
spk_0
Oh, thank you.
spk_0
I'm very, very much.
spk_0
Thank you.
spk_0
Thank you.
spk_0
Yeah, thank you.
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You've been listening to Playing on Air.
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Great American Shortplays with great American artists.
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Theme music by Tom Cochan.
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Play music by Ken Urban.
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Recording and sound design, John Kilgore.
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Playing on Air is distributed by PRX Public Radio Exchange, and available on our podcast Playing on Air.
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Or you can stream performances from our website playingonair.org.
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I'm your host, Claudia Catania, the founder and artistic director of Playing on Air.
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Thanks for listening.
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Thank you.