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Video: Nathan Lane, Danny Burstein & Zoe Wanamaker Explain What PICTURES FROM HOME Is All About
May 17, 2024
Pictures From Home will begin previews on Tuesday, January 10, 2023 at Studio 54 on Broadway. In this video, the cast, including Nathan Lane, Danny Burstein and Zoe Wanamaker, chat with BroadwayWorld while on a break from rehearsals.
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. Nathan Lane, Danny Burstein and
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Zoe Wanamaker are returning to Broadway in Char White's new play Pictures from
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Home, which is based on the photo memoirs of groundbreaking photographer Larry
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Sultan. Under the direction of Bartlett Sher, it begins performances on January
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10th at Studio 54, and I caught up with all of them during a break in rehearsal
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I'm so so happy to be here. Bart and I did have done five Broadway shows
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together. This is our sixth, I believe, and Char White and I did a play called
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The Snow Geese on Broadway about six or seven years ago with Mary Louise Parker
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and I had seen his play called The Other Place with Laurie Metcalf on Broadway
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and I thought that was so outrageously good, and I just knew I wanted to work
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with them both again. And this play is completely different, which is something
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that I I just love to do. I turned down a lot of work because, you know, it's very
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similar to something that I did in the past. This has nothing to do with
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anything I've ever done in the past, and it's completely different, and I'm... that's
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sort of why I'm an artist and why I point myself in a certain direction, just
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to challenge myself and to scare the hell out of myself, and I love doing it
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Yeah, it's been for me, by the time we get on stage, it will have been four years
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since I've done a play or anything on stage. You know, Bart I just have admired
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from afar, and I just, it's been, I can't say enough good things about him. He's so
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much fun, and he's so smart, and so that's been joyous. Danny, known a long
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time, and again also loved from afar, and he's, you know, aside from being a great
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guy, he's a brilliant actor and can do anything, and so I'm thrilled that we're
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finally getting to work together on something, and then, and Zoe is someone
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again, I've just loved when I've seen her, and she's, there's obviously this
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very accomplished consummate actress, who every time she's come here, she's gotten
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a Tony nomination for her work, and she's, and she's utterly delightful and
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charming and fun, and so, and it's just the three of us, so it's very, it's a, you
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know, a family, very family atmosphere, and, and, and, and, and great, great fun to
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work, work on. We've only really just started. We just started last, sort of in
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the middle of last week, so, but it's been, it's been, it's been a wonderful
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wonderful time in the rehearsal room. I mean, everybody said this is a memory
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play, but at the same time, it's about family. It's about ourselves, and it's
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also about art. I think it's about art because, you know, what takes a person 10
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years to create something, and to have a tenacity of knowing, not knowing, but
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knowing what, why he wants to do this, and that's what I found interesting. It's
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about childhood. It's about our childhood. It's about us. It's about being alive, and
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I just thought it was a, I hadn't seen the photographs. I didn't know the
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photography at all, so it was, it was just an atmosphere about the play, and it was
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I thought it was funny. Yeah. I think it's a lot to do with time. You know, how do we
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perceive this crazy thing we're in the middle of? Our families, our work, our, how
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it changes, how we age, how we see things, and what the value is in making art to
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represent who we are in our time, and I think it, I think audiences will leave
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comforted by it, comforted by the struggle, comforted by the humor, and
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comforted by the enormous pleasure they have in seeing people struggle with
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exactly the same things they do, but maybe add a little bit to them
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I think this is a play about all of us. I think especially post-pandemic, this is a
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play about what I love so much about this relationship is that, between Larry
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and his parents, Gene and Irv, is that as much as they were at odds with it, with
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one another, they stuck together. I mean, it is about intimacy, and love, and family
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and it's also a story of, ultimately, mortality, which is very moving now, I
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think. To be honest, the first thing that I was struck by was Larry's writing, that
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he's such a terrific writer, and in particular, the opening couple of pages
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where he's talking about, it's late at night, and his parents are asleep, and
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you know, he talks about the house, and you thought, oh, this guy can really write
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and then he sort of also writes through the pictures. He's telling you this
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story, and I was not familiar with him at all before this play, but he was this
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celebrated photographer. He was known as the master of color photography, and did
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a lot of interesting, offbeat projects. You know, he did a whole series of
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pictures on porn sets in the San Fernando Valley. Hilarious, you know, just
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people half-naked, smoking cigarettes, waiting for their scene, and then this one night in his parents' garage, he found all these old home movies, and started to
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look at them. The father had taken them when they had just moved to California
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from Brooklyn back in the in the 40s, and he sort of thought, what's behind these
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images, this idyllic family, this so-called idyllic family? It was the Reagan era, so family values were being politicized, and he wanted to kind of
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deconstruct all this, and then he also started taking pictures of his
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parents, and making stills from the home movies, and writing and interviewing them
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about their lives, and this, he wasn't quite sure what it was going to be, and
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it went on for almost a decade, which is unbelievable that they allowed it for
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that long. It was only the love for their son that allowed them to put up with
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this kind of intrusive, invasive process, and so that's that. When Char White, he
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was in Los Angeles and saw an exhibit of these photos, and a quote from the book
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he thought, what's behind that? How did that happen? And that's what inspired the
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play. So it ultimately is about parents and mortality, something we all we all
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have to come to terms with, and it's very, very funny because of that, and very moving
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