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Video: Find Out What DRINKING IN AMERICA Is All About
May 17, 2024
Audible Theater is currently presenting Drinking in America, written by three-time Obie Award winner Eric Bogosian, starring Andre Royo, and directed by Mark Armstrong. All three are chatting with BroadwayWorld in this video!
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Audible Theatre continues their fifth season here at the Manetta Lane Theatre
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with Andre Royo and Eric Boghosian's Drinking in America, directed by Mark Armstrong
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And I caught up with them all on opening night. ♪��
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Well, first of all, it is opening night. How does it feel? It feels stupendous
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It feels crazy. It feels nerve-wracking. It feels enjoyable. It's like parenting
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It's all emotions at one time, and it feels great. I mean, it's an honor to be back and to see the crowd
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and feel them receiving what I'm doing and receiving, I don't know, I'm lost for words
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because it's been so long. It's been such a journey to get here, and I'm just amazed that I have this moment
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Because it's been a while since you've been on stage. I remember you on stage, but then you left us
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for TV and film. That's right. Once I heard I'm pregnant, I had to go to TV and film
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Law and order was like, yes, I need to make some money. But I never forgot my roots
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I never forgot, you know, for most of the artists I know
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the stage is our home. I mean, it's the most spiritually satisfying for any artist that I know
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So any chance I can get on stage, it took a lot of
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you know, convincing my managers and agents, like, I got to do it. I want to do it, and I'm here
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Andre contacted me in January of 2022 and said, I want to get back on stage
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You know that I want to, you know, work on some stuff with Eric. We'd had conversations, and this play came into the mix
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when probably maybe August, September? It wasn't that long ago. Yeah, it wasn't that long ago that we talked about it
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And then, you know, Andre was in LA, and we read through it over Zoom, and we talked about it
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And then we just sort of hit the ground running. And when Andre contacted me about saying
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I want to get back on the stage, he had lost friends during the pandemic. He was feeling the weight of wanting to realize
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his talent on the stage, which is where he started. He didn't start doing screen until he was 31
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and Eric was the voice that he wanted to sort of bring to the stage
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And it has just been such a... It's not Eric's voice anymore. Now it's Andre's voice
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And he's, it's an incredible voice. It's really, I'm so proud of him and of Mark
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and the effort that's been done here. It's kind of fantastic. I mean, I keep getting asked as we were
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as we were rolling up to this date, what do you think, what do you think? You're going to do this show of yours
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And it's like, I don't know. I don't know until I see it, you know? And now I've seen it, and I'm, I'm blown away
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And I was on my feet first at the end of the show, and I had tears in my eyes
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So, I mean, you make them laugh, make them cry. That's all you can ask for from theater, right
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That's all you want, so. It was, it was amazing. It was a couple of months
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I didn't know if I had enough time to really settle into this type of project
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but I do know that I have a lot of experience with alcohol, good and bad
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So I understood the characters, and I said to myself, you know what, this might be a great moment
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for me to say goodbye to alcohol in the best way an artist knows how to
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in the craft, right? And I thought to myself, I'd rather have alcohol in my craft than in my liver
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Let me say, you know, bravo to the times I had with it
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and let me see if I can emote it on stage. And it's been a blessing, and Eric's been behind me
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all the way when I thought I couldn't do it. You know, he kept on giving me affirmation
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that you can do it, you can take this on, and we just jumped in, and a couple of months later
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I'm in New York trying to, you know, learn some lines. And it's been, it's been life-changing
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I will say, it's probably, you know, it's right up there with the wire
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You know, these are the two, these are the two most prolific experiences
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I had in my acting career that I'll never forget, and makes all the 30 years of grinding worth it
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So, it's an honor. It's not just remembering doing the show, but the show itself is based on
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things that happened in my life, which I now, I found a way to write about them
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so they'd be funny, but they're real things. And, you know, whether it was some kind of gang life once
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or some bad drug stuff, I mean, I haven't touched anything for 38 years
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which is going back to when this show was first done, and I guess Andre has just cleaned up
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and so all of that is emotionally wrapped into this package. It's not a simple package, but, you know
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I guess I'm looking at Andre's skill, his physicality, his ability to get the laughs
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his ability to get laughs that I didn't even know were there, which is great
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And then, of course, I'm an actor who did these scenes, and I have a way that I do them
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and then there's the way that he's doing them, and I'm, like, looking and saying, oh, oh, you could do it that way
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I didn't realize you could do that. And so it's fascinating to watch
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So, yeah, that was my experience of tonight. Talk about Audible Theatre
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What a great thing. This is their fifth season. I mean, they do it right. They do it right
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Now, like I said, I'm a New Yorker from the Bronx. I used to come to the Manetta Lane Theatre, right
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Cherry Lane Theatre, Lower East Side Theatre. So when I first heard Audible bought the theatre
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you know I was a little bit like, oh, here we go, corporate. But they've been fantastic
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They really, really put artists first. They really pamper artists with the ability to be sensitive
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They give us a chance to feel safe. They made a safe, safe space for me to feel creative
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and feel free, to be fearless. So anybody out there, work with Audible
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They're fantastic. They respect the artist. Audible Theatre is really special in terms of being able
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to see things and move quickly in a way that's unusual in the New York theatre ecosystem
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and is incredibly refreshing. And the Manetta Lane is a beautiful theatre, and they've done a great job with the design
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and the look of the show. It's a very, I mean, there isn't a bad seat in the house
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It's great. So that's wonderful. Audible Theatre was brainchild of Don Katz, our founder
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he believes deeply in the work of theatre artists and also believes that our listeners on the Audible platform
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would love the work. So we wanted to come and offer more opportunity
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both for audiences to experience the work and to bring the really phenomenal writing
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and performances to our membership. This is now going to be recorded
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and people all around the world can listen to this wherever they have this. Yes
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That's the best part. You put all this work, you put all this energy, you learn all the lines, and then it sort of lives
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in this finite space, except with Audible we can make it live longer and globally
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which is really thrilling. Makes it a little bit more worth it, I think
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