The Cosmic Tree and "Once On This Island" with Mythologist John Lundwall

Playwright Jeff Talbott invites us into the process of adapting a female-centered version of Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People." Where Henrik Ibsen was focused on the dangers of "compacted majorities," Talbott is focused on the reasons that we've stopped talking to each other. The play is being developed in PTC's Play by Play program and will be read this Friday, March 13th @ 7:30pm and Saturday, March 14th @ 2pm & 7:30pm in the Babcock Theatre.

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JEFF TALBOTT (Playwright) Jeff Talbott’s play i was developed in Pioneer Theatre Company’s Play-by-Play Series and subsequently produced by PTC in 2018. His play A Public Education was also seen in Play-by-Play and was a finalist for the 2015 O’Neill Playwrights Conference. Other plays: The Submission (Off-Broadway – MCC Theater; Laurents/Hatcher Award and Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award for New American Play; published and licensed by Samuel French); The Gravedigger’s Lullaby (Off-Broadway – TACT/Theatre Row; published and licensed by Dramatic Publishing); Civics and Humanities for Non-Majors (2018 O’Neill Finalist; Montclair State University and last fall at Utah State Univeristy); Joseph Cook (2019 O’Neill Finalist); Three Rules for the Dragon (2017 O’Neill Finalist), How to Build a City, Elliot and All the Stars in the Midnight Sky. He writes musicals with composer Will Van Dyke; as a musical theatre writing team they were finalists for the 2019 Fred Ebb Award. Jeff graduated with honors from the Yale School of Drama.

For this episode—in conjunction with "Once On This Island"—mythologist John Lundwall, PhD, explains our need for stories with elemental gods, the origin of Haitian mythos, and the image of the Cosmic Tree in "Once On This Island" and beyond.

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John Lundwall is the author of "Mythos and Cosmos: Mind and Meaning in the Oral Age," a book that examines myth through oral thinking and oral cosmology. He obtained his doctorate in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate School in Santa Barbara, California and is currently leading an archeo-astronomy project in Fremont Indian State Park.   

https://www.amazon.com/Mythos-Cosmos-Mind-Meaning-Oral-ebook/dp/B017L4S5BI/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mythos+and+cosmos&qid=1582486755&sr=8-1

Our first Play-by-Play reading of the 2019–2020 season is "The Anatomy of Love" by Ted Malawer.

Mr. Malawer talks about how he gradually makes a play less personal for him and more personal for the characters that inhabit it.

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TED MALAWER (playwright) is a recent graduate of the Juilliard Playwriters Program. He has received Lincoln Center’s Lecomte du Nouy Prize and The Kennedy Center’s Blanche and Irving Laurie Award. His theatrical work has been developed and commissioned by T Magazine/The New York Times, The Public, NYTW, Atlantic Theater Company, MCC, and others. TV writer-producer credits include shows for Netflix, Hulu, Showtime, NBC, Freeform and Disney+, where he developed an original pilot. Malawer has also written several novels, including the Mystic City series for Penguin Random House. A former opera singer, Malawer is a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, a graduate of The Juilliard School-Columbia University Exchange Program, and received his master’s from Fordham University. He is currently adapting the novel Red, White & Royal Blue into a film for Amazon, and writing an original musical with Kate Nash and Andy Blankenbuehler.

Next up at PTC is "Mary Stuart" by Jean Stock Goldstone and John Reich (derived from the text of Friedrich Schiller).

Director Shelley Butler talks about how she approaches political intrigue, how she prepares for historical dramas, and about the manufacture of narrative in Elizabethan times and today.

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SHELLEY BUTLER (Director) recent productions include the world premieres of Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 at South Coast Repertory and helming the Japanese premiere of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo. She has developed over two dozen new plays and musicals at companies including Ars Nova, Primary Stages, E.S.T., WP Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, South Coast Repertory, Denver Center Theatre Company, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Geva, New York Stage and Film, The Playwright’s Realm, Keen Company, New Dramatists, and the Lark. She spent two seasons as artistic associate in charge of new play development for Hartford Stage and three seasons as artistic associate for Great Lakes Theater Festival. Upcoming: Arcadia for South Coast Repertory.

PTC's holiday show for 2019 is "The Play That Goes Wrong" by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields. It's a demanding physical comedy with a lot that goes wrong—as the title implies. For this episode, actors William Connell (Chris) and Ruth Pferdehirt (Sandra) talk about the rigors of comedy—timing, pacing, "riding the wave," and more. They also share their stories of other moments in plays gone wrong…. 

The outro music is by Trev Lewis/Hagfilms.

Dr. Avery Holton, a 2018 National Humanities Center Fellow from the U of U's Department of Communication, helps you separate fact from fiction in this episode, as we discuss how social media has warped (and sometimes strengthened) the lifespan of facts. 

Musical Theatre pros Brent Barrett ("Phantom – The Las Vegas Spectacular") and Matthew Hydzik (national tour of "Rent") chat about making it in musical theatre, self-care, and saying yes to roles that scare you. Brent and Matt will play Lawrence and Freddy in a concert musical production of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" at PTC on October 18th and 19th, 2019. 

Dr. Andrew Nelson from the Film and Media Arts department of the University of Utah breaks down the old movie studio system and the success of tough guy and silver screen icon James Cagney. Pioneer Theatre Company is opening a new bio musical about Cagney and this episode of the podcast provides some background on the early 20th-century films that made the man Jimmy Cagney a star.  

Matthew Ivan Bennett interviews PTC Artistic Director Karen Azenberg and Managing Director Chris Massimine about the 2019-2020 Season. 

Seven main stage plays and musicals, a concert production and three new play readings...it's a busy season, and all the action started this week with the arrival of the cast of "Cagney." 

Here's a bit about each of the upcoming productions you'll see this season.

Outro music by the Dead Tubes Foundation.

Matthew Ivan Bennett interviews Resident Sound Designer Allan Branson about the intricacies of sounding a musical like Grease.