Exclusive: How Rick Elice Found the Heart of WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
May 15, 2024
Welcome to another Edition of The Roundtable on BroadwayWorld. This week we are talking about writing the book of a musical with someone who changed the game. Rick Elice is the go-to writer for musical biographies after he co-wrote Jersey Boys. That show ushered in a new musical to Broadway and things have never been the same.
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Are you ready
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It's the Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon. Broadway World, I'm back. Happy Friday, everybody
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Robert Bannon here and welcome to this Broadway World exclusive edition of the Roundtable
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And we have a good one for you. Do you know what it takes to write a musical
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Do you know what it takes to take someone's life story or a movie or book that we love and turn it into the stage
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Well, one of the best people to do at Rick Ellis is here. Rick Ellis has turned some of our favorite shows
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Do you remember the first time you saw Jersey Boys or heard that Adam's family was going to be adapted for the screen or sung along to the share show
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How does Rick do it? How does he take these shows and flip them around and turn them into something great
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Well, he's going to be here to talk about Water for Elephants, the beloved novel and movie. is now playing at the Imperial Theater
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And we're so excited to have him here exclusively on, boom, Broadway World
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Bapabur, you're here. Did you check out last week, our second edition with Dorian Harewood of The Notebook
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He was here to tell us all about his epic career. And our first ever edition of the show
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was with the Muses of Lampica, Ida Espinoza, Beth Level, and Ambrian with the co-writer, Matt Gould
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Thank you for all the love and support and sending all of your haze and out there's
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and you saw it and you watched it and you shared it. And I'm so grateful that you did
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Thank you so much for being here. We are always around. You can check me out at Robertbanon.com or follow me at Robert M. Bannon on Instagram
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Or you can listen to us on the Broadway podcast network every single day. We have content
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But this is the only place to catch these Broadway World exclusives every single Friday
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Well, Rick Ellis is smart. He's probably too smart to be chatting with this jersey boy
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We're going to find out all about Water for Elephants and what it's like. to write a musical
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One of the best to do it on the roundtable. You ready? Here we go
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All right. So he's written some of the greatest shows that we've seen. Look, I'm a Jersey boy myself
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So I have a lot to say to Rick. Come on, Jersey. And now, as someone who went to clown school
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I'm ready for Water for Elephants as well. I just saw Rick on the red carpet of Water for Elephants
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and we're so happy to join him here on the Broadway World exclusive chat with Rick Ellis
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Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Step right up
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Let's go. Let's go. We're here right now, Water for Elephants is playing on Broadway
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at the beautiful Imperial. You can go get your tickets and see the show
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And before we even get started, tickets are available at WaterforElefencethamusical.com. Rick, how did this show come to you
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And what made you say, yes, this is the next one? Oh, well, I was really, really lucky
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I kind of answered the phone one day, and it was my friend and colleague, Peter Schneider, saying he had the rights to a novel, and would I be interested in adapting it
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And the novel was Water for Elephants, which was actually a novel that I had read, I don't know, I guess maybe almost 20 years ago now
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I was in a book club, and I read it, and then I talked about it with my book club cohorts
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And this, I got the call. I had worked on a play that was adapted from a novel called Peter and the Starcatcher
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And I think maybe that's why he thought I would be a good person to call. And I was interested in understanding adaptation a little bit more because it's an interesting assignment to adapt a novel, a 500-page novel
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to something that could be two hours of entertainment on the stage
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Because you don't read a novel, obviously, in one sitting. You see a show in one sitting
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You can put a novel down for a week. You can come back to it after a month, whatever. You can reread certain parts of it if you want to recall
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And a show has to start and get all the way to the end. And therefore, you have to figure out, as you're looking at it, in terms of adapting it
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how do you figure out what to include and what to exclude or what characters to
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conflate, what characters to eliminate, which themes you're going to bring out and which, you know
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which things you'll never have time to do. So it's a fascinating assignment and it's different
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every time because obviously the underlying novel is different every time. The author's intention
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is different every time. So I thought it would be interesting to take a question
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to take another crack at adaptation. And I had just done a workshop with this theater collective
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of seven guys who called themselves Pigpen Theater Company. And we were sort of flirting with the idea
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of doing a real grown-up project. And so I said to the producers
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I will definitely be interested in doing it. And I'm definitely interested in doing it
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with these seven guys. And they said, well, how would that work
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It's eight people, you know, that's a lot of people to collaborate on writing a show. And I said, yeah, I mean, I'm interested in that too
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I'd written shows by myself. I'd written shows in collaboration with another book writer
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I'd written shows in collaboration with composer lyricists. Sometimes that's one person, sometimes it's two people
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But this was going to be eight of us in the room, eight, eight, you know, unruly children in a room
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trying to beat out a story and figure out how it would sing, as they say. And I thought it would be
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I thought that would be an interesting experience too, because while I'm an old man
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I'm really only like 20 years old as a writer. So I want to have different kinds of experiences
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and see if I can not just do the things that are similar to things that I've done before
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And I was, I had gone to see the pig pen guys had done a show called the Old Man in the Old Moon, and I became kind of obsessed with them in their music
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And so I was, I was very, very excited when they accepted the challenge of writing up to this point
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They had only written for themselves to sing and perform. And I lured them with the opportunity to write for women and write for, on
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ensemble, right for duos and trios and, and, and, uh, right for, uh, a, uh, you know, jazz that would
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be played with, you know, accompanied with by a horn section and, and, and, because they, they play
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they, um, they play guitar and harmonica, you know, basically banjo string, string instruments
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like that and harmonica and, uh, accordion. I'm showing off my mime skills because I went to the album school
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Um, and, uh, and, uh, luckily. for me and for for theater goes everywhere they said yes and uh eight years later here we are
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eight years later well we got to when we were on the red carpet with you the other day we met the
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the folks of pig pen and i asked them collaboration amongst so many people is it is it is it
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is it always pleasant are there discussions how do you make a final decision what in a professional
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setting where it's art and heart and you're so vulnerable to be a writer it's so vulnerable to
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share lyrics and music um how how was it in the room
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How did you make choices? How did you whittle things down to tell this story
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Well, you know, the novel has, you know, some major themes, I guess
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which are the guideposts for writers and super interesting characters, which are also handy
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I give Sarah Gruen the author of the novel, all the major props for that
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But, you know, the themes of what she wrote are, let's say
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what is family, what is home, is their life after loss. The title, I think, Water for Elephants
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is predicated on a circus sort of in joke, which is it's impossible to carry water for elephants
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because they, it would require, it would take you the rest of your life
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because they drink and drink and drink and drink their capacity for drinking is gigantic So you never want to be the person who carries water for elephants But for me that became a metaphor for um not to sound fancy about it but it became a metaphor for the the burden that we carry
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and um our show um was written um to be a reminder that that burden is more easily carried when
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it's carried together and that it's the people who help us with our heavy burdens who are in fact
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our home. And at the time that I was asked to start on this project, I had also been through
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some, you know, very personal upheaval and, you know, the loss of my spouse and dealing with bad
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after 33 years together. And I was very broken and sad and feeling as if there wasn't much
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reason to put one foot in front of the other. Those things that survivors
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tend to think, I guess. And this is a story told by an older man about what happened to him
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50 years before when he was a young man, a young man who suddenly woke up and had lost everything
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His family suddenly had, you know, were killed in an accident. And the bank repossesses the house
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And he has to drop out of school because he can't, he has no job
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to the depression, everybody's out of work. His whole world is turned upside down and he jumps
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perhaps about to jump under a train. He decides at the last second to jump onto the train
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bound for he knows not where. And it turns out to be a circus train. There were many criss-crossing
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the country in the 20s and 30s and 40s. And it just happens to be a circus train. And because it's a
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circus train, it changes the trajectory of his life. Then 50 years on, the man who's telling that
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story, who has lived his entire life, has now just recently suffered the loss of his spouse and being
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sort of parked by his kids in an assisted living facility or someplace like that. And, you know
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he thinks it's all over for him. And he takes himself to a performance of a small one-ring circus
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that's coming through town and stays afterwards and starts chatting to the people who are
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running the circus. And because he decided that day to not stay at the home, but to pick himself up
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and go and remind himself of this experience, this life-changing experience that happened to him
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50 years before, one particular experience at this circus, he is, he ends up getting
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another crack, another chance, you know. I think that, you know, it seemed to be very, it's
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it was easy to make it very, very personal. It's my long, winded answer to your question. It was
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very, very personal for me writing this, although, of course, I've obviously never worked at a circus
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but I have my version of it very, very foremost in my mind as we, as we set down to write this
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Well, it is a very heartwarming and touching story. And if you have, there's so many themes that are, that throughout this whole entire piece, Jessica Stone and this cast putting it up on its feet
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We were speaking before we came on to this about the performers and the life, the life threatening literally circus accent and the amazing art they perform eight shows a week on the stage
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What was it like either in Atlanta when you were out of town or now on Broadway
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What was it like to see this come to life with the actual characters and the actual actors
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Well, I mean, it's been a bear because it's not just, it's not like your ordinary musical
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It's, yes, of course, there are actors playing characters, but there is also a company of circus performers who are engaged in a first-person way
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in the telling of their telling of the story through what they do
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There is also a cohort of puppets that portray the animals of the circus and, of course, our title character, Rosie
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And everybody, it's not like having a, there's, okay, you're the singers and you're the dancers and you're the acrobats and you're the actors and you're the puppeteers and you're the puppeteers and it's six different groups of people
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Jess Stone, our director, who has done such a wonderful job of sort of field marshalling this production
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It's like, you know, it's like not like a sailboat this show. This is like a battleship of a show
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And she has made us into one company where everybody does everything
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There's a real feeling of community. And I think the thing that's most special about Waterford Elephants, this person
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production, the Jessica Stone production of Water for Elephants, is that the play, the story of the
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play, and the production of the play, the presentation of the play are in sync. You can't, as it were
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leap off of a platform into the air unless you know, as a circus performer that the person
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on the other trapeze or on the ground is going to catch you. And it's not that you think they might
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You must know, you must trust that they are going to catch you or else you're simply going to die
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And you only take that leap because you know that that person will catch you
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That kind of trust, that kind of community, that sense of being part of something bigger than yourself is not just what our story is, but it's also what our presentation is because you are watching people hurling themselves off of, you know
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ladders and flying through the air because they know they're going to be caught. So the story and the
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presentation are beautifully in sync. And I think that's incredibly moving to watch, very, very powerful
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and thrilling. And it really was hard as hell. And so every chance I get, I tell everybody that
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Jessica Stone is, you know, she is it. I mean, amazing job she's done. Amazing
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These actors are a miracle. They're amazing. These performers are amazing, and it is a edge of your seat
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with the story and edge of your seat with the circus. And they're also young, and they're so, you know
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there's 17 Broadway debuts in this company of 23 people. 17 of them have never been on Broadway before
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And, you know, one of them, one of them is, you know
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65 years old, Stan Brown who's making his Broadway debut. One of them is Grant Guston, are
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our lead actor making his Broadway debut. All the acrobats are making their Broadway debut
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They are, and they are young and gorgeous and amazingly gifted and they work so hard
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and they do four hours at the gym every day. They are, you know, glamorously beautiful
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and they're from all over the world and some of them barely speak English
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and we've all gotten to figure out ways that we can all communicate with each other and love each other
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and respect each other. But these, I mean, these circus people are, you know
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there's already, you know, 100 people every night outside the stage door screaming for another
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one more glimpse of them, because they're, I think collectively and individually gonna be
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amazing Broadway celebrities this season. They're so, because they're, you know, it's just not like anything we've ever seen before
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They sure are. Grant and Isabel. are stunning their relationship. Oh my God, yeah
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And I mean, Izzy Macalla is genius. Grant is like incapable of being false on stage
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Paul Alexander Nolan or Paul Nolan, as I like to call it
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Is it's, you must see this performance. It's just a performance that demands to be seen
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Greg Edelman, Sarah Gettelfinger, Wade McCollum, I mean, these sort of like great Broadway feet folks
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are in the cast and then a remarkable a remarkable phalanx of people that will be part of our Broadway history I think in our Broadway future because they also great
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It's a really special group of people. It sure is. So please get your tickets
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Come on down, spend the night and come see a show. Support art, support this work
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You, Rick, have such an interesting story. When I spoke to you about with the Jersey Boys over the pandemic, we had a virtual chat
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And I didn't even get a chance to really go into your journey to Broadway is so unique and so interesting
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From New York to Yale as an actor to teaching at Harvard to working for Disney and being a publicist or putting it
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What a journey. No, it was in advertising. I wasn't ever a publicist, but I was creative director at an advertising agency that handled in its day the lion's share of Broadway plays
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musicals as you know we're part of our client list. We specialize in selling products with
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no shelf life and of course a theater ticket is is a product with no shelf life. You have to buy it
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today and if that seat goes unsold, it's lost forever. It's not like a can a can of Coke that can
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sit on the shelf. If you don't buy it today, you can buy it tomorrow. So my expertise if in
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to the extent that I had expertise was in getting people to buy every single day, something that
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had to be sold every single day. And my secret was I was working on Broadway to keep shows
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running longer and working off Broadway to keep shows running longer. And so everything, all my
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careers, because I've sort of bounced around like, you know, I kind of the Ben Franklin of
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show business, you know, I've just like sort of held every single job you can have because all I
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ever wanted to do was work in the theater. So any job I could get in order to work in the
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theater I would take, whether it was, you know, sweeping the stage or stage managing, or choreographing or directing or acting or, you know, doing advertising or writing shows
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I never, I didn't have a plan other than to try really, really hard to work in the theater
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Maybe it's because I was born here in New York and grew up here
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And I was taken to see my first Broadway musical when I was three years old and tickets were 90 cents
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And, you know, when you sat in the last row of the last part, of the balcony and the ceiling was right right just over your head. And my mother, I think
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recognized she tells me, of course, that it was the first time in my three, my long three-year
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life that I had ever shut up. So she kept taking me because 90 cents for a ticket was cheaper
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than a babysitter. So she said, we would just go to the theater and it was great because you
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just sat there with your mouth open. And so I guess she knew before I did that it was going to be the
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theater for me. And it has been ever since. It's been a checkered career, I think, would be fair to say
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But it's a fascinating career, and it's a career that has twists and turns and keeps growing and
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going. When you're writing, you seem to me, at least, on Broadway, at least, you have, you're the
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go-to person if you're either going to make a bio-musical like you did with Jersey Boys, like you did with
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share where you're taking somebody's life and you're telling their story in two and two and a half
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hours or and then you are the person that takes novels and and public very famous pieces like
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Adam's family or Peter and the Starcatcher and you put them on stage as well and these shows are
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done everywhere all over the world every community regional theater is doing Adam's family or
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Peter and the Starcatcher paper mill playhouse announces jersey boys comes back to Jersey
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I saw that. Isn't that wild? What is it like to see these different iterations, your words being spoken in different languages, in different places, literally all around the world
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At any night, there's a Rick Ellis show being put up somewhere. Well, that's probably an exaggeration, but thank you. I like it. I like it
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What is it like? Look, you know, all joshing aside, it seems to me that I, it's, it's, it's
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If I exist, and I think I do, if I actually am not just a hologram of myself
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which sometimes feels like it might be the case, it's only to demonstrate to everybody who's watching this
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that if you have an urge to write, let's say, a show
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then go ahead and do it because, folks, if I could do it, so can you
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I never trained to do it. I never wrote anything longer than, you know, than a 30-second commercial or a 60-second commercial or a three-minute trailer for a movie
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And, you know, and one day when I left advertising, I was offered a job as creative consultants at Walt Disney Studios
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And the phone rang. A former client of mine said, oh, you know, I got the rights to, Mama Mia had just opened, right
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So this guy said, I got the rights to the Four Seasons music
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Do you want to, you know, do you think you could be, would you be interested in writing a show
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And I said, well, I love Vivaldi, but, you know, do you think there's a whole show there
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And he said, not Vivaldi, you idiot. He didn't say idiot, but, you know, I'll say idiot so that, you know, everybody can keep it G-rated
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And he said, no, Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons. And I went, well, why
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why would you do that? He said, just meet with them and see. And I had, I owed a certain amount of money to a friend of mine from Poker Night, who happens to be a legendary Academy Award winning screenwriter, Mr. Marshall Brickman. And I said, hey, Marshall, you want to write a Broadway musical with me? And he said, I've never written a Broadway musical. I said, neither have I. Let's go and have lunch with Frankie Valley and the principal
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songwriter and part his principal songwriter and partner bob gaudio and and see you know let's have
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lunch and see and i i guess part of me thought the lunch would never end up happening um as so as is so often
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the case but it did happen and so there were there were the two of us these sort of two new york
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overyzed overeducated overprivileged new yorkers sitting with these two jersey boys um and uh in the back of a dark restaurant on 46th street italian restaurant natd
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And as we were waiting, I guess, for the schoonjili to arrive
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just by way of making conversation, we said, you know, what was it like to be you
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And they started to talk. And they described things that happened, and they told us anecdotes
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And it was, you know, suddenly I looked at Marshall and then I looked at myself and I realized we were both sort of leaning forward
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You know, we were like an audience hearing a really interesting story
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Now, of course, theater is always about, is there a good story? Are the characters compelling? Do you care what happens to them? Do you care how the story turns out? Well, suddenly, there we were. And I said, listen, I mean, I remember a lot of your songs from when I was a kid, but how come I don't know any of these things? And they said, well, we were never written about because we didn't have long hair. We didn't have exotic accents. We didn't come from across the pond. We came from across the river. The culture elite never thought we were
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cool so we were never written about. And then the two people, you know, Marshall and I looked at each
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other and, you know, and heard that thing. You mean like this isn't not just a good story
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and it's not just a true story, but it's an untold story. Oh, okay, well, we're storytellers
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If we're going to write a musical, let's try to be storytellers and tell their story. So it was
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absolutely accidental that I ended up having that opportunity. And because musical biographies hadn't really been done at that point
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we just we just didn't want to do the Mamma Mia gag of retrofitting a story to a song list
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Instead, we treated the four-season songs as sort of milestones along the way of their lives
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the path that their lives took. If they'd made automobile tires, we would have had a good story
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but it would have been about guys who made tires. This way, it was a good story about a guy who made songs
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So there was a score. And without realizing what we were doing
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we made a show and Des McEnough directed a show brilliantly that you know kind of combined the high art of the theater
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with the low art of pop music from the 60s, and people dug it because it was a story
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they didn't know either. So I absolutely just backed into it. That's why I say anybody can do it
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It's not like I have some special skill, and I don't think I'm a great writer
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and there are obviously great writers. But I think that I'm, I think I'm a good writer
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and I think I'm smart and I love big ideas and I love sort of the game of it, the puzzle
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of figuring out a structure and a conceptual thinking. I really like that a lot
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but I know a lot of the people watching this are going to feel the same way
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and that's why I say, write a show. Because if I can get one on, anybody can
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anybody can. Oh, write a show. Like I said before, as a Jersey boy who grew up listening to Frankie Valley
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I remember going to August Wilson. I remember the second that Sherry starts. I remember the audience
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literally cheering like a concert. And I was at a show that Clive Davis was at, and he went into the
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men's room, and I was in the men's room, and he looked at me at the York, swear, and said
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this is a good show. And I said, oh, damn, that's, it sure is, Mr. Davis. It's really weird
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because I think I was there that night. I seemed to remember being there the night
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Clive Davis was there because we were all a little bit, I was standing in the back with Gaudio
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and he said, you know, he said, you know, we really want Clive Davis to like this show
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because he can talk about it and got a lot of people to come to see it. And I thought, Clive Davis
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Like, Clive Davis is going to come? Jersey Boys was a crazy thing because it was, you know
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people thought we were nuts. And then people dug the show. and of course love the songs
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So suddenly it became a hot little hit and it was exciting to be at the theater
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because one night the president would be there and then one night the Senate leader
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from the other party would be there and one night Clive Davis would be there and one night Paul Schaefer would be there
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or Diana Ross came one night. It was very, very exciting in Jersey woods
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Well, I don't, you should give yourself more credit than just being a good writer
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I want people to know that you brought up, it's personal, but you brought up your
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your husband and you brought up roger you wrote a book that's available you can get it on amazon
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right now um it's available and and you can check it out and as someone who has a beautiful partner
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myself i love your story and i love your love your love story and thank you for sharing because
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that's the most personal probably most uh meaningful story you could ever share and you shared it with
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us so thank you roger would be mortified he you know he was a brit and of course um
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It was not in his nature to talk about himself ever. Because he was, because he worked all over the world
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and everybody loved him, he was well known and he did some great things and but very, very shy
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and self-effacing person. And so when he wasn't around anymore, I just wanted people to know about him
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as a way to sort of help me through the awful process of learning to live without him
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And so I'm glad that you, I'm glad you responded to the book
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It was really just a way for people to have an idea of what he was really like
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as opposed to the sort of public face of someone, especially someone from Great Britain
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who is, you know, very much a stiff upper lip kind of presenting, you know
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keep calm and carry on sort of British subject to, of the crown, but who, you know, in real life was, you know, just a lovely, lovely guy
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great person to spend your life with. I'm very lucky. Well, thank you for sharing the story
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and thank you for telling it. And your stories make us, my future, my future marriage
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my future partnership gives us, we have a couple goals right there, couple goals for short
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The last, in water for elephants, the, the, the, the, the, the, uh, as the
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man who's telling the story, the very, very end of the play, sort of conjures up one last image of his wife
30:50
and remembering the last moment that he had with her. And he says, oh, she put her hand on my face
30:59
and she said, and then Isabelle says, aren't we lucky? And those were the last three words that
31:10
Roger said to me and that's why they're in the play. You know, it's also kind of wonderful to be able to
31:15
share something that personal with, you know, with 1,400 people every night, they'll never know
31:26
how personal it is. But to be able to put that in there as something that is meaningful
31:34
oh, really only to me and the people in my family that were there at that moment
31:40
moment is very, very special. And another beautiful thing about the, you know
31:46
being able to craft the theater as opposed to just going to see it
31:51
is a, you know, is a real privilege when you can make it personal
31:56
Oh, Rick, that is the most beautiful, beautiful tribute. And it's going to mean a lot to a lot of people because we see
32:02
ourselves through this story and your story. So thank you. Thanks, Robert. That's very sweet
32:08
You have all sorts of rumors. about things that are to come, I'm sure you're not done writing, Rick
32:14
I'm sure there's shows and movies and original works and things that may be coming down the pike
32:20
Well, I don't usually do these on-camera things because if people see what I look like
32:26
they might actually lose some of this work. But I am engaged, as they say
32:35
on a couple of other things that are exciting to me indifferent and working with people who were extraordinary
32:44
One of them actually will be directed by Jessica Stone. One will be directed by Susan Stroman and one will be directed by Alex Timbers
32:55
the great Alex Timbers, and who was a, who co-directed Peter and the Starcatcher with Roger Rees
33:01
And I should probably, you know, just leave that there because, you know, I don't
33:09
want to talk about things out of turn, you know, they don't like it. They don't, they don't, they don't
33:15
you know, there are people who want to manage how things are, are talked about. So I probably should
33:24
just shut up. But, but, I'm going to be, I'll be busy for a while. So if you want to come over
33:29
you know, we can have a cup of coffee and, and, you know, I'm always sitting here at my
33:34
my little desk. I'll bring you a sandwich and a cup of coffee. And, uh
33:39
I have to make sure that Rick is watered and fed so we could keep making the art that we love so much
33:46
I love it. I love it. Come on over. I got a piano. I got a couple of comfortable chairs
33:52
And, you know, and we can sit and talk about the theater until the cows come home
33:57
That would be my pleasure. And it's my pleasure to have you here. Thank you for sharing this afternoon with us on Broadway World
34:02
Thank you for creating art. Thank you for putting these stories that have given so much joy to, you know, I saw Jersey Boys with
34:09
my family. I saw Water for Elephants with my best friend. You give us nights out. You give us
34:15
a community and camaraderie. And we get to go out and have a purpose to share some time together
34:19
with people we love. And that's as holy as you can possibly be. So thank you so much
34:24
You're very, very kind. And I'm very, very grateful. Thanks, Robert. Go get your tickets. Waterfor Elephants, The Musical.com. Go check it out
34:32
Imperial Theater, 45th Street. How fantastic is he? How beautiful is Rick Ellis. How beautiful is his story
34:39
Anyone could do it. Broadway world. If you're here on Broadway World, that means you have a little artistic bug in you
34:44
So get on up and do something, write something, sing something, something, dance a little something, something, something
34:49
And join us every single Friday right here on Broadway World. My name is Robert Bannon. I thank you so much for being here
34:54
I always like to say there is more good than there is bad. There's more love than there is hate and the best is always yet to come
35:00
So until next time, I hope to see you here next Friday and see me every single day somewhere
35:05
Enjoy some art. Go support Broadway. Go support Broadway. Go support regional theater, go support your local community theater, and show some love today to the actors and artists and performers and creatives that put it up
35:16
Until next time, bye everybody
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