Good Life Project - Thomas Sadoski | Acting, Love & Service.

Episode Date: November 7, 2019

For Thomas Sadoski, acting has been in his DNA for as long as he can remember. With a decades-long love of the stage, he's landed award-winning performances on and off Broadway, features in movies like John Wick, The Last Word, and Wild, and TV shows including The Newsroom, Law & Order, Ugly Betty, and Life in Pieces. And, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the upcoming CBS series “Tommy” where he’ll be featured alongside Edie Falco.What stood out more than anything in this conversation, though, was Sadoski's big, open heart, honestly, commitment to family, as well as his powerful embrace of service. He currently sits on the board of directors of INARA, an organization that provides life-saving and life-changing medical care to refugee children wounded in war, and serves as an ambassador for War Child USA, which works to provide educational, legal and economic aid to children and communities devastated by conflict all over the world. We dive into all of this in today's moving conversation.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So for my guest today, Thomas Sadowski, acting has more or less been a part of his DNA for as long as he can remember. Born in Connecticut, raised mostly in Texas, he found himself immersed in the world of New York theater at the age of 19 and never looked back. And in the 20 plus years since, his stage credits are kind of mind blowing, including features in Reasons to Be Pretty, where he was nominated for Tony, Other Desert Cities, which earned him an Obie, Reckless, which was his Broadway debut opposite Mary Louise Parker, and more recently, Susan Laurie Park's White Noise, which was this fierce look at race and humanity and the stories we tell ourselves and just so many others. You may also know him from movies like John Wick, The Last Word, Wild, or maybe leading TV roles on The Network, CBS series, Tommy, where he will be featured alongside Edie Falco. Cannot wait for that to come out.

And with such an accomplished professional resume, what really blew me away, though, in our conversation is how big and open his heart is, how deeply he thinks about work and life, and how much care he gives to his craft and to the community he both co-creates alongside and offers his art and his love and his mind to. We dive into all of this in today's conversation, along with the role of acting and art and belonging in society, and his personal commitment to becoming much more, as he puts it, forward-footed in his activism. Now sitting on the board of directors and being very actively involved in INARA, an organization that provides life-saving and life-changing medical care to refugee children

wounded in war, and also serving as an ambassador for War Child USA, which works to provide educational, legal, and economic aid to children and communities who have been devastated by conflict all over the world. So enjoyed this conversation on so many levels, and I'm incredibly excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot if we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So good to be hanging out with you. Flight Risk. As relevant, if not more so today than it was when it got almost prescient in a weird way. Well, that's sort of the nature of great art. Yeah.

You know, that it seemingly is ahead of its time and simultaneously timeless. Yeah. and probably deserved a lot more attention being paid to it while it was of its moment. Because I do think that we were saying something that a lot of media is actually demanding be said now, which is, you know, wait a minute, pay attention to us. There is a legitimate fourth estate here and it has a job to do and it is an important job.

It is nothing short of the survival of our Republic is on the line, you know, of our democratic process. And, um, I think that, uh, you know, at the time we were living in a were living in an America that we thought was sort of moving at an unstoppable pace forward. Yeah. And as we learn repeatedly, there is no such thing. Yeah, history is funny like that, right? Yep. We take two steps forward and sometimes we take three steps back and then, you know,

sometimes we can only take two and a half steps back or one step back, but there's never a movement throughout the course of history that doesn't, doesn't have some resistance. It never goes smoothly. Progress is never easy. And that's the point, I think. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to sort of explore what the role of art is in that too. Yeah.

Which we're going to dive back into. I want to take a step back in time, though, and we'll kind of work our way back to a certain extent. We're hanging out here in New York City where it feels like you have spent the vast majority of your adult life, a solid chunk of. Because you were born not too far out of here, Bethany, but then jumped down to College Station, Texas as a kid, five, six years old, something like that. Yeah, that's exactly right. What was that move about? My father.

My father got a job teaching at Texas A&M University. He's a professor. And then the sort of latter part of his career became primarily a research scientist in the field of reading psychology. And he got a great opportunity down there. It's a wonderful town to grow up in as a kid. Lots of wide open spaces and a really very solid community. Not a lot in terms of problems that we had down there at the time,

other than you would find in your normal college town. So yeah, that's where we were that's where we were until i was what 19 or so 20 years old and then i got out i got i got to new york as soon as i could yeah this is just the place that made the most sense to me um your dad became a research psychologist um interesting parallel. My dad had one job his whole life. He was a research psychologist, ran a lab researching human cognition, like human learning for close to 50 years before he retired. That's my father. That's too funny. I wonder if they actually know each other. I wouldn't be surprised. They probably do know each other.

That would be pretty funny. Yeah. As a kid though, it seems like you're down there, your dad's doing the professor thing. You're an only child also. And when does performing, acting, art start to show up in your life that you remember? You know, that is the question. Yeah. That's the same question that we always get asked is like, when did that moment sort of hit you that you wanted to be an artist and i don't know that i ever had a specific moment of like if i do i if i did i don't remember it i don't remember having a specific sort of like oh no

this is what i meant to do this is what i i will sacrifice everything else in order to do moment it just sort of made sense it was frankly like one of the only things that made sense after sort of rifling through any number of different potential vocations from dolphin trainer to marine biologist to cook to, you know. Wait, fire person wasn't in the museum? Police officer for a while. Yeah. police officer for a while. But it just was the one thing that just always seemed to make sense to me. And I don't know how and I don't know why,

but my path just drove relentlessly forward towards that. Curious how that, so you got a father. I don't know what your mom did. She worked all over the place. She was a member of the PTA, and she sold insurance, and she sold audio-visual equipment, and she was a manager at a health club. And I mean, she did all sorts of things. She's one of those sort of jack of all trades people. Like whatever she just sort of gets herself into, she exceeds that, you know. And just sort of moved around in that way. But, you know, primarily was my mom. So you had a mom who sounds like pretty business minded.

A dad who's in the world of academia. That doesn't always go well when the kid says, hey, I think I want to pursue something in the theatrical or performing arts as my jam. Yeah. You know, my parents were incredibly brave. I also didn't leave them a bunch of a choice. You're like, this is happening no matter what, so let's find a way to be okay with it. That's true, but they were also incredibly brave and incredibly supportive. I mean, they didn't understand exactly what it was that I wanted to go and do or how one makes it happen.

I didn't understand either, but they were just so generous and so supportive and so loving about it. You know, I couldn't have asked for, for more. Um, but there is an artistic undercurrent that runs through my family and the entirety of my family. Like my, my dad's side of the family, you my dad is actually a really he has like an artistic soul uh he now in retirement takes really um extraordinary uh landscape photography and before that he was an art major in college before he became uh interested in academia but he was from a super working class background and uh you know he couldn't afford the materials to be an artist so uh he had to go a different way my aunts

uncles are you know some work in poetry stained glass painting um you know woodworking uh framing you know there's so there was a context of vocabulary around it when you were coming up art is definitely part of my familial vocabulary my cousins too you know and it's a big family it's a it's a big family and it runs through everybody you know everyone's got some sort of touch to it which is pretty amazing you know my grandmother uh who is sort of my guiding light, really inspired that in us and supported that in us. And in as much as I don't recall her ever being particularly artistic herself, you know, as somebody who sat down, I mean, she did some

things, but, you know, like she did with everything in her life, she didn't make a big deal of it. You know, she sort of kept it to herself and kept her focus on her family uh and and her activism she just loved that part of her family and supported it and was just so generous about it and uh and you know everyone in the family was always so it was just second nature i think we on some level as a family almost took it for granted that everybody had this sort of artistic touchstone that they would return to as a hobby or a career or something, you know, just and they're really good. That's the thing that's also sort of disturbing, too, is that work ethic and talent runs in the family apparently. It's just, you know, we just come from that tribe of particular kind of, you know, working class New Englanders who, you know, over on our side of the fence, our family does this kind of interesting stuff with a great deal of support from its matriarch and guidance from its matriarch.

And we are really lucky in that way, you know? Yeah. Do you still identify more as a New Englander than a Texan? Yeah. I think in my soul, you know, I have a lot of love and respect for Texas. It taught me a lot. I was exposed to a lot of different kinds of people and a lot of different kinds of thinking. And that was really important for me growing up. It's been very important for me as an adult, too, to have that in my history. But this has always been home. You know, when I sort of imagine in my soul what home looks like, it's, you know, it's those mossy rocks in the mountains and the hills of new england yeah there's something that i've been here my whole life yeah and i think even if you're just

here for the first hand there's something that gets inside of you yeah it's just like becomes a part of your dna it's like no matter where you are in the world for how many years it's almost like there's this mega like pull yeah back to certain extent. I will always relate more to Nathan Hale than I will to Davy Crockett or Sam Houston. You know, like those will always be the things that speak more to me, you know. Curious that your dad started out in the world of art also, which is really fascinating because it's kind of like, it's actually, it's not that far away from psychology. Because it's really, it's two different ways into the exploration of human nature and the human condition.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, one sort of, he has this incredible capability of operating with great logic. And I remember growing up, I would go to his office at Texas A&M to visit, say hi, and he always had a picture of Mr. Spock on his desk to remind him that logic was his touchstone. And I did not have a picture of Mr. Spock on my desk. I'm just cut from a slightly different cloth. But at the end of the day, I think that all roads or both of our roads lead to the same spot just in seemingly wildly different ways, wildly different starting points. Yeah. So you end up, you get out of high school, you end up in UT Denton for a semester?

Yeah. University of North Texas, I was there for a semester. Yeah. And then was it straight to New York from then? I went back home, went back to College Station to sort of lick my wounds and figure out what was going on and why somebody who loved learning as much as I did in theory just couldn't make college happen just wasn't working for me and um when I sort of talked to the artists that I that lived in College Station who were my primary sort of inspiration I mean these two really sort of defining people in my life uh who ran local community theater, who had actually been on Broadway and had been the original Pontius Pilate in the original Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar. No kidding. Yeah.

Wow. And they just happened to land in College Station, Texas running the community theater. And then the other one was my acting teacher, the person who first sort of like took me under her wing. And she had been, she was actually a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. wilson who's just recently passed on and uh and joe spiller who really like inspired me and told me look tommy you know we know that your parents want you to get a degree but you're never going to be happy taking biology you're never going to be happy taking chemistry you know that that's just not going to work for you. Something inside of you is demanding to go out there and do what it was put on this planet to do. And I, you know, I trusted them and so did my parents. So off I went to Circle in the Square in New York City.

Yeah. Did you, you landed, had you been in the city before that? I mean, if I had. Right, from like before five when you were in Connecticut. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's it like when you, I mean, you I had. Right, from like before five when you were in Connecticut. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's it like when you, I mean, you're coming from there, you know, theater's your jam, acting is your jam, like this is your thing and you say,

okay, I'm going all in, right? You land in New York City, you have to arrive with a certain set of expectations. Was it the same as like when you actually get here? Curious, did your experience meet those expectations? Was it wildly different? Were there big surprises? You know, throughout the course of my life, one of the great blessings that I have had is that my reality has never matched my expectations. And I'm so grateful for that. I don't remember what my expectations of New York

were because the reality of New York so rapidly outgrew them. I mean, and I mean within hours, you know, I mean, I still remember that feeling of my first year in the city of walking around and just, I remember that feeling. I still get it, you know, sometimes walking in the city of walking around and just, I remember that feeling. I still get it, you know, sometimes walking around the city. There's just an energy that sort of starts to crank up. It's like an engine just starts running underneath inside my soul, you know. And like that is just, that's the energy I sort of associate with new york and i knew almost immediately that i had found my place this was this was my home this is where it was meant to be for me yeah so you start training in this legendary institution

in new york also yeah i mean it's um the only theater school on Broadway. Yeah. It seems like you have had from the earliest days a strong pull to theater. I mean, there's so many outlets, so many ways to express the craft. But it seems like there's a, you almost have like this set point that keeps pulling you back to the stage. Yeah. You think that was, I mean, was that from the earliest days? You know, my father's reference points to this version of art, this medium. We're all film. And that's what I was exposed to when I was a kid. He gave me a really great foundational education in great art, you know, in the film industry and in that medium. And in as much as I appreciated it, the first time that I really got on stage, there was just something about that.

I knew that in the film world, you weren't acting in 360 degrees. That the art wasn't happening fully encompassed. It was ultimately two dimensions. Beautiful two dimensions. And you can do extraordinary things with it. But for me, what made the most sense was the full immersion of the theater, because if it just seemed to me that if you're going to tell human stories to human beings who have given of their time to come and sit in this hallowed darkened hall together and participate in one of the most

ancient traditions that we as a species have that you owe it to give them as much of a story as much of an encapsulating story as you possibly can because it's important i'm i'm resistant as i've gotten older as an artist and as i've started sort of working as a director but also as my i have become sort of more publicly and personally front-footed as an activist i am really resistant to allowing my audience too many places to hide it doesn't serve them as an audience i know that it doesn't serve me as an audience my wife and i were actually talking about this the other day and she said you know why don't you like movies because i don't really go and see movies very much and you know i don't it frustrates her because very much. And you know, I don't,

it frustrates her because she's, she loves them. She loves the movies and, uh, you know, go ahead. You can, by all means go to the movies. I don't need to. And she was saying like, why don't you like the movies? And I've been thinking about that since she brought it up. And I think that part of it is that so many, the vast majority of movies that I have ever watched, but certainly these days, just provide their audience too many places to hide. painting in really broad strokes or a lot of times movies are falling back into tropes that they attempt to appeal to only certain parts of us as an audience or frankly they just don't trust their audience they're spoon feeding their audience morality um and uh i just it doesn't it doesn't work for me I don't I don't like the feeling of being manipulated or being forsaken or not being trusted and not to say that you don't find that in some theater too of course you do but more often than not in the theater, because it takes a very specific type of person and a very specific type of work to make good theater and to want to even be in the theater

more often than not, there's not a lot of places to hide when you're sitting in a room with other human beings and there's a tangible actual human only feet from you living an experience does not give you a lot of places to hide nor does i think the theater as an institution as an art form has it ever sort of been a place that that's satisfies that fear in its audience um and i think that's part of what i love so much about it is that it's just all there yeah it it feels like theater again this is i can only speak to my experience and my observation but it feels like theater to me has always is it's played a different role in society than TV or film has played. Whereas, not to belittle any of them, I think they're all really interesting, powerful, valuable formats.

They can be, yeah. Theater to me has always been the place of provocation, much more so than film. And I don't know why, I don't know if it's related to the economics behind it or the people who are drawn to the different forms of expression. But to me, it's sort of like when I look at the role of society of theater versus TV versus film, they play very different roles. different artists so theater is an actor and a playwright's medium film is a director's medium and an advertiser's medium to to a small extent and television is almost entirely an advertiser's medium and you know that's certainly true of network television, although now things are changing a lot, too, with the different platforms and places like HBO and Netflix and Amazon and Apple Plus and, you know, places like this that are just starting up. It's becoming more of a writer's medium, which is interesting. Yeah, that's exciting. But I think that that differentiation between those three voices that are sort of prominent in the different expressions in the performing arts, specifically this type of performing art, I think that there's something about that. I can't unpack it.

I don't know that I know necessarily what any of that means. That's just something that I'm sort of acutely aware of. You know, I have much more of a voice as an artist on stage than I do on film. You know, film is, like I said, it's a director's medium, but it's also largely an editor's medium. And your performance can live or die based on the quality of the person who's editing the film. You can put as many brilliant moments down on film as you want, but once they get into the room, if they're cutting around them, no one will ever see it.

And it's a powerless position to be in as an artist that I don't know that makes a whole lot of sense to me. I certainly respect the people who are great at it in that format, but it's just not something that has ever sort of linked up particularly well with me. Yeah. I mean, it seems like, you know, it's more forgiving, and at the same time, it's different stakes too. Vastly. You know, which has got to change your experience of it as the person who's actually delivering.

Oh, yeah. In a huge way. You don't get the same kind of adrenaline bump that you get walking out on stage on a film set. You just don't. You know, it's hard to get an adrenaline bump when somebody's coming to your trailer door walking out on stage on a film set. You just don't. It's hard to get an adrenaline bump when somebody's coming to your trailer door, knocking on it with a cup of coffee,

and then walking you to set, where you stand around for a half hour getting ready to go into the thing. Whereas in the theater, somebody comes and knocks on your dressing room door at a half hour and says, you've got a half hour. And then that's when all the real stuff starts flying.

And before you know it, you're shot out of a cannon onto that stage. And who knows what will happen? There's no cut. There's no, all right, we're going to go back and fix that light or that move. You know, it's just go cat go, you know, and we'll see what happens. Oh man, that's just, it's the best. Yeah. I would have to imagine. The Apple watch series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple watch ever making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming,

or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. It's interesting. I spoke to an artist, a writer actually, a little while back.

And it was interesting because at the end of the book, he wrote something like, it's not the exact words, but he wrote, every time I say yes to writing a substantial project like this unless I believe truly that the process of researching and writing the book will not just create something that will go out into the world and make meaning for other people, but will in some way leave me deeply changed simply through the process. Yeah. I wonder if you have, if there's like a similar corollary with what you do. Oh yeah. That's, that's art. It's part of the deal that you make.

That is fundamentally the deal that you make with art as an artist. You can't ask your audience to show up and be willing to learn about the human condition and potentially

be changed by what they hear if you're not willing to put that on the line yourself. It's just not, it's non-negotiable. And one of the things I think that audiences can feel at its most profound levels are when an artist has signed off on that deal, has made that deal with them. Sometimes it's too much. Sometimes it's overwhelming and they're not willing to go halfway I just did a play last year Susan Laurie Parks play called white noise yeah and it was very challenging yeah share a bit about what that was it's it's a it's a pretty pretty unapologetic look at race in America as it currently exists, 2019,American, two white, are sort of ripped apart and put back together again after one of their friends has a run-in with the cops. Black man has a run-in with the cops in which he gets beaten up by the police simply for walking around the block late at night and how it then subsequently unravels each of them as he pursues

his mission to feel more safe again in society and what that means is i mean it's a brutal journey and when i say uh earlier about you know pieces of art that do not allow people a place to hide white noise was unapologetically not allowing anyone a place to hide i mean it susan, Susan Laurie laid all of the questions out on the table and gave zero answers. And that is an act of profound artistic courage, particularly in this day and age. It's an act of profound courage to show up and really take that in. I think one of the things that really sort of landed with that play for the people who were willing to, to show up and allow it to land with them is that,

uh, there's a certain population that makes up the sort of regular theater going audience and a certain demographic and bless their hearts. I'm glad that they do. And they keep on showing up. But one of the really big takeaways, I think if you were paying attention really closely to white noise is that just by showing up at the theater and seeing a piece of art written by a black woman dealing with race in America does not mean that you have actually done anything. You have simply showed up paid money to buy a ticket to see this play. The rest is up to you. And it

starts from the moment the curtain rises and it continues from that moment on until you know you shuffle off this mortal coil as it were um it demands the questions that were asked demand answers outside of the theater and people you know a lot of people were not willing to sign that part of the contract could you could you actually while you're literally in the room, while you're performing, could you feel that? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, I played this character who started off as sort of what you would consider to be or what was considered to be a pretty woke, lefty college professor. And by the end of the play, because of the deal that he's made with his friend, um, his African-American friend, his black friend who I don't give away too much of the play in case people want to go read it. I think you have an opportunity to see a production of it.

Um, but by the end of the play, he's kind of ended up being a proud boy. Um, you know, he's, he's borderline white nationalist, if not fully. And, uh, the transition from one to the other, just as it was in the actual creation of the proud boy movement didn't take very long. You know, the guys who started vice eventually ended up starting this, what they refer to themselves as Western misogynists. That did not take long. The evolution, sorry, devolution from one to the other. The regression from one to the other does not take long. feel people reacting to that being put in their lap that you know we're not as evolved as we think we are and only you at the end of the day know what happens in your mind and in your heart

when you as a white person are walking down the street at night and you come across a group of young black men you know is there something inside of you that urges you to cross the street that puts up red flags that tightens up you know only you know that but i think what the last few years has highlighted if anything in our sort of cultural and political existence in this country is that a lot more people are having to answer that question in a way that is surprising and uncomfortable to them, then they're willing to admit publicly. And it has ended us up in a place where those private moments then translated into that private moment in the election, in the ballot box, when you press the button and here we are and we have now given voice

as a society to the worst of us and we you know we have to be clear about this there are actual literal neo-nazis marching in the streets of the United States of America in 2019. That's a fact. I'm not going to single out any one politician and say that they definitely are this a very ugly place, but I think also a vastly important place as a society and as a country. And art has a real responsibility now, more than ever. Maybe not more than ever, but it certainly has its most important responsibility is when moments like this present themselves. And this is where art really succeeds we don't remember cultures for their great wealth or war victories you know unless it's just one person that we remember you know we remember Genghis Khan or

Alexander the Great but we don't remember the rest. However, the cultural impact that the Mongol Empire and the Greek Empire made artistically and culturally vastly outlived those names and will forever outlive those empires in that sort of very Ozymandian way. You know, and this is where we as artists have our most important responsibility, I believe, to raise our voices and to hold up a particularly clean mirror back to society and say, this is what's going on right now. This is who we are as human beings. This is who we are as human beings right now. Do we really want to be like this? Yeah, completely agree.

And at the same time, it's a really interesting tension between saying, this is the fundamental role of art in this moment, in this season, where we're at right now. And at the same time, zooming the lens out and sort of saying, okay, so wrapped around this is a business context too. And when you ask people that, okay,

so pay money to come and show up and sit in a room for two to three hours to witness and participate in this experience that may move you profoundly and open your eyes, but also make you really, really uncomfortable. There's such a fascinating tension in that to me. I'm sort of like bundling all that together. Yeah. And, you know, I think that's sort of the bizarre nature of art in a capitalistic economy. You know?

And trust me, I'd rather be doing art in a capitalist economy than in a fascist economy. Or in a sort of... We a fascist economy or in you know in sort of we'll take that bargain yeah that's i'm i'm i'm all for the free market uh certainly when it comes to art and artistic expression you know i don't want government interference sort of happening here but i'll tell you i had a very interesting experience i did a project about 10 years ago called the bridge project that sam mandace organized between the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Old Vic in London. And he got a group of actors. Half of them were American, half of them were British.

And we took two Shakespeare plays. Our particular year was As You Like It and The Tempest. And we did them in rep and we took them literally around the world. We started in brooklyn uh we went to hong kong singapore paris madrid um amsterdam a little town in germany called recklinghausen a couple months back at the old vic in london and then back to northern spain and there were a couple places where i mean first of all you know you have vastly different experiences in in every place that you go uh doing those plays but doing anything you know singapore is a wildly different country than spain um but when we were in madrid one of the interesting

things that we came across was that there were government subsidized tickets to the theater which meant that in as much as you know free market economy that there were government subsidies for the arts that made attending that play any play possible to anyone of any demographic and our audiences were so diverse and and our audiences were so diverse and oh sort of alive and present in a way that i just found so incredibly interesting you know i think that there is of course a danger you know when it comes to government

you know subsidizing art because there's always the danger of it putting its thumb right on the scale control yeah um but to see i mean there's a like i said vastly different experience going to like singapore where every play that's done there has to be run through the government censors first. As opposed to Spain where it was like, just do whatever you're going to do and we'll make sure that everyone can go. You know, to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, you know, where it was, you know, if you can afford it, we'd love to have you. It was really interesting. Really, really interesting. And I don't, like I said, I don't know that I necessarily have answers, but I do have questions about it and I did recognize it.

So, yeah, I hear you. There is this very interesting trade-off in our sort of economic reality. But that's always true. You know, the intersection of art and commerce is always very difficult and very… It's always fraught on some level. And it always will be. Yeah. And it should be.

Yeah. I don't disagree. Yeah. If it's too easy, then you have to really start worrying. Yeah. But I think one of the cool things is that, you know, is that you have the opportunity to participate in a full suite of experiences and show up. So, yes, you could show up to white noise and be rattled and have to face your own internal stuff and how, you know, you've been in the world and how you want to be in the world from that moment forward. And then at the same time, you know, you can show up and come from away and you can witness this other gorgeous side of humanity where people embrace absolute strangers and welcome them into their families. And I almost feel like, you know, like a part of

your commitment is to let me just participate fully in, you know, a wide array of what's being offered. And I'm going to get the, you know, the full experience of all aspects of my humanity from delight to amazement to provocation to sorrow. And that's kind of what we're here for. Well, it is. And I don't know, frankly, that those two stories are that vastly different. Yeah, I agree. Honestly, on a fundamental level, I don't know that the stories behind white noise and come from away are fundamentally different because i think for some segment of the population as we have witnessed a lot in the last

eight years uh there's a significant portion of the population for whom the idea of welcoming strangers into their home or their country is in fact a horror movie. Yeah. And would rattle them to the core. That's why there has been this profound rise of right-wing populism in Europe is because of the refugee crisis. There's literally no other reason for it. That's what sparked it all off so a play like come from away is asking the same questions just doing it in a different way but it for it is audience individual dependent as to what affects them in what way if you were to take some of these

golden dawn or you know sort of right-wing populists marie le pen or you know whoever and stick them in come the audience for come from away they'd be shook and And that's really interesting to me. That to me says great art. That's art. It's just on a fundamental level, it is the same story because it's our story. It's our story as human beings. It is the human story. And it is a human story and it is a huge story and it's important,

you know, to regardless of what show you're doing or how it is being marketed to know that as an artist who's performing it, that your commitment to noises off is just as valuable as your commitment to Hamlet. It's going to reach people. On some level, something is going to reach in there and do something. Even if it's just giving people an opportunity to laugh for two hours. That is a great service.

But it also has a way of drawing people together. Sitting in a room and laughing with people who are different than you, but who are all laughing at the same unique sort of human foibles, that does an extraordinary job of drawing us all together. And I think that that's part of art's responsibility too, is to give people a break. Yeah, it's such an interesting point also that that part of the experience is the all almost the experience of recognizing the humanity in hundreds of other

strangers almost through osmosis yeah which I never really thought about that way, but that's pretty cool. Yeah. And they talk about us needing an invitation to experience that on a regular basis in this day and age. Yeah. It's huge. You know, Mother Teresa once said that part of the problem that we have is that we've forgotten

that we belong to each other. And whereas I have some, may have some philosophical quibbles with her in the sort of christopher hitchens bent um it's a good point it's a good point and it matters you know we do belong to each other and it's important to remember that and when you go and you sit in a darkened room like i said doing that tradition engaging in that ancient tradition that goes all the way back to the caves you know sitting by firelight and listening to the stories that were told about the hunt you're engaging in something that is primally necessary and that binds us all. And I don't know that there is,

for me, I don't know that there's much more that's as important for me than being an active participant in that. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

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Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. It's interesting, belonging is a psychological, it's a physiological, it's a moral need and imperative in our lives. And over the last generation or so, many of the sources that we used to turn to, to find that sense of belonging have vanished. I remember Robert Putnam wrote this fascinating book called Bowling Alone a chunk of years back, where he kind of like documented the demise of belonging, at least in the US, where it's like, you know, we used to belong to local leagues. Most of those have gone away. We used to find a sense of belonging, at least in the US, where it's like, you know, we used to belong to local leagues. Most of those have gone away.

We used to find a sense of belonging in faith or religious or spiritual organizations. And there has been a fleeing of those organizations. In a generation or two ago, we would find that to a certain extent in our work, you know, where you kind of, you showed up the first day of work, you stayed in this community of people for your entirety of your work life.

And like there was a camaraderie in a sense of belonging there. And that's largely gone away these days. And we're in this window where there's plenty of research that shows that we have to have this thing to be okay in the world. Yet many of the sources of it for generations have stopped being sources of it for generations have stopped

being sources of it. So now we're feeling the pain of not having it and not quite understanding where that pain is really coming from and also not having those places that we used to turn to to find it. So it's fascinating to me, the idea that participating in theater, different events, emotional art-driven experiences where we come together and participate in them and feel them collectively is a really interesting source for that. It is. It's a vital source for that. We are profoundly alone. We are profoundly lonely right now. We are. We are no longer as much a contemplative society as we are a contemptuous society. And I think that comes from that profound ache of loneliness. That's why you find so much tribalization now. And that's real.

And that pain is real. And it leads to some, I think, like you said, what we're seeing right now is the result of that. This society in lurch, that's caught in this moment of profound uncertainty and how do we get back to each other you know how do we find each other and i think that art is almost always the answer you know when you start asking these questions about humanity, when you start asking these big questions about humanity, the answer almost always comes back to art. Yeah. Yeah. One other thing that I know has become a real major part of your life is, and you mentioned earlier what's been happening with every geezer around the world. And then also you mentioned

even earlier in our conversation, how you sort of been more forward-footed about your activism, about your looking out into the world and saying, okay, so beyond my devotion, my commitment to create art that in some way moves into people, provokes them, lifts them up, opens them that you're looking out into the world and sort of asking yourself, well, what more is my responsibility? How more can I be of service? I know I used to fairly recently back from Beirut.

Yeah. I'm curious what that was about. Also, I know you become involved in Inara and War Child. I would love you to share more about what's behind this, what you were doing in Beirut, and also these organizations which seem to be doing really powerful work and your involvement in them so the first thought that jumps to mind the first thing that jumps to mind is just the great Joe Strummer once said without people you're nothing and you know I think that it relates very much to what we were just talking about in terms of loneliness where we are as a society.

The two organizations that I've sort of given myself completely to these days, Inara and War Child, on some level, what they fundamentally ask people to do is to be present, to just take a moment to be present for what is really broken about where we are and who we are right now. And, um, you know And Inara provides life-changing and life-saving medical care to refugee children who were injured as a direct result of war or in the biosphere of war, meaning driven from their homes and into deplorable living conditions in refugee camps, which they're completely unaccustomed to living in, and then injuries sustained within the camps because of those living conditions. War Child basically attempts to shelter children from war

and rebuild communities based entirely on this ideal that individuals and locals know their society and their worth more than anybody else does. And that in order to rebuild a community, you have to start with this future. And so you have War Child, which offers legal support to victims of gender-based violence. They're a registered legal organization in Afghanistan and some other places. So they offer people who are the recipients of war crimes an opportunity to seek truth and reconciliation.

They provide opportunities for education to children because education is often the first thing that disappears in a war situation, in a conflict situation. It's the first thing that gets taken away from children is the opportunity to grow and be educated and they're thrust into this biosphere of war that is just that forsakes the most innocent uh and the least of us so it provides education opportunities and then they do like micro granting and sort of setting up opportunities for the in humanitarian work a perfect example would be haiti you have tremendous human suffering tremendous human need and the first thing that happens is you know the un or american-based ngos roll in with tons and tons of rice to help feed people who are desperately in need of food,

which is amazing and necessary for a period of time. Unfortunately, what they do is they bring in so much that they crater the market and drive the actual local rice farmers completely out of business permanently. So you've taken people who are productive members of society and who want to be productive members of society who can help rebuild and regrow their own society, and you've cast them completely aside. So not only have you taken away their livelihood, but you fomented this sort of resentment. And helplessness. In an accidentally colonial way. And the sort of genius of War Child that Dr. Samantha Nutt came up with is that it operates completely outside of that. There is no sort of white saviorism happening with, with war child or Inara, you know, there's this, um,

real effort to help people who will then go on to rejoin society and rebuild society. You know, it's difficult to talk about wounded children as a burden, you know, but these are the terms are are used by economists and by governments so unfortunately these are the terms we're sort of left with in term in discussing this as we have to do with governments and large donor organizations but in our takes these kids who would be considered burdensome to the economic future of their families and through the life-changing and life-altering surgery allows them to rejoin society right so they're going back to school they're learning they're able to go back to work their families don't have to worry about

staying home and caring for them uh or not being able to go out and look for work because they have to take care of this child they have to worry about the massive medical bills piling up um that prevent them from being able to put a little money away so that they can hopefully move out of the refugee camps and back home um if they want to if they want to go home so yeah these these organizations sort of have grabbed on to something inside of me and i you know it's funny i was thinking about it as i was coming up here i was like like, what is it? I was on the train and I was like, what is it about? I've been doing a lot of talking with both of the organizations recently. And I was just trying to nail down what it is about these particular organizations that just really grabbed me.

And I don't know know but they just did and I think that between the two of them going back to that sort of concept of 360 degrees of life lived in 360 degrees you know between the two war child and Inara you know we're providing opportunity and help in 360 degrees for people who are desperately in need of it. And, um, that is, uh, something that I just find invaluable right now. It's something that has to be done. That's just the reality of where we are as a human species right now. There is so much suffering and it's not to take away from the suffering of people here in the United States who are finding it difficult to put food on their table. Uh, you know, there's, I'm not oftentimes, you know, one of the things that happens with activists, particularly people who are, are activists

for, uh, causes outside of their own, um, borders, uh, is that you have, uh, one of the first criticisms or one of the first questions you get is people coming to you say, well, why don't you give, take care of people here? They need help here. And I kind of don't ever want to participate in the atrocity Olympics. You know, I'm not, I'm not going to get in into that sort of debate about who's suffering is worse because all suffering is suffering. It's just that for right now, this is where I find that the need speaks most specifically to me. And I think that

everybody can recognize the real extraordinary need and pain that exists in horrors of war being delivered on what are literally, literally the most innocent, the definition of the purely innocent. And these are kids. They're kids who have no concept of what is being done around them or why they just happen to be the unfortunate victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And they've had the worst of it delivered upon them. And it's when you sit with these kids and their families, as I did over in, in the, uh, some of the refugee camps in the Shatila camp and the Sabra camp in Beirut, you know, you realize that the first thing that you see in their faces is this question of why.

Why did this happen? Whether they're capable of sort of understanding it or not, but it's just the most heartbreaking thing to see because I don't have an answer for it. I don't know. Adults weren't able to work out their grievances responsibly, and so you have to suffer. And all that you can do, the great Dharma teacher, Frank Bostraseski, talks about meeting human suffering with a strong back and a soft front. And it's all that you can do is just sit there with as much strength as you can to take on the weight of human suffering and as much compassion and

openness as you possibly can and just be present and do as much as you possibly can in those moments, not just for those children, but for their families. Any parent can imagine or maybe doesn't want to imagine, but on some level has had fears about sitting with these kids is heartbreaking enough, but sitting with these parents who are struggling so hard to provide for their kids and who did nothing wrong also, just happened to be living in a house that an airstrike hit next door or whatever it was. The pain that these parents feel watching their children suffer needlessly is, if that doesn't reach into your heart and push you into action i have real concerns but yeah this activism has become a a primary driver in my life you know i i did sort of grow up uh with this like i said this grandmother who is my guiding light and my grandmother was an activist and she did it in

her own small way and she did it in a quiet way, but she did it. And it was one of the things that I just knew about her, whether it was working in her, you know, local church, uh, gift shop, you know, or, or, uh, it was just, you know, giving clothing to the poor or whatever it was that she was doing, she was doing. And she made it a real centerpiece of her life was compassion and action based on that compassion. And I have responded to that on some level. It's the light that the Buddha's last teaching was sort of be a light unto yourself, right? And then you will shine the path for others. Well, my grandmother was definitely a light unto herself and she lit the path for me and so many of my

family members. And I have proudly picked up that torch and and will continue to carry it as long as i possibly can and you know that is my responsibility i believe as a human being but also as an artist my job requires me to be front-footed about this stuff. And for a long time, I wasn't. It's funny. I'm sitting here. Coming up here, I had this incredible knot in my stomach about coming here and doing the show because obviously I've listened to the show and I love it. And you've had conversations with such extraordinary people. And I was thinking, like, where do I get off sitting in the same chair as Brene Brown?

Knowing what I know about me and knowing what I know about my past and, you know, a history of sort of drug addiction and alcoholism and pain that was caused through that sort of behavior. And this imperfect sort of journey to some small awakening you know there's a teaching in Buddhist scripture and particularly in Theravada tradition the forest monks the Thai forest monks they talk about this person born under a robber star called the Angulimala and then the name literally translates into a mala you you know, being like a necklace or a wristband and Anguli being fingers. And so, you know, there's this murderer who is known throughout the land as he had been a student who had been told by a jealous teacher and jealous fellow students that his responsibility in the world

in order to attain enlightenment was to gather a necklace of a thousand fingers and so he had to kill a thousand people and take one finger from each person and he was doing that he was known throughout the country as the this sort of uh horrible bringer of destruction and chaos and he was on his 999th finger and he needed one more to complete his necklace and attain that bastardized version of enlightenment that he had been promised when he came across the Buddha. And he took off running after him. And the story goes that the Buddha kept on walking, but Angulimala could not catch up no matter how fast he ran no matter how slow the Buddha walked and Angulimala finally yelled out to the Buddha you know stop stop and the Buddha turned around to Angulimala

and said I have stopped it is you who has not stopped and so they sit and they talk and the Buddha at some point tells Angullli mala take your sword and chop that branch off of that tree so he does he gets up and he chops the branch off of the tree and the buddha says now put it back and you know anguli mahala can't and he says your power is so limited all you can do is destroy and i think that um you know the story, of course, goes on. Angulimala then at that moment throws his sword and his shield over the side of the mountain and becomes a renunciant, a monastic, and then spends the rest of his days walking about and giving of himself. And finally, at some point, attains enlightenment, becomes a great saint. And they talk about in the Buddhist scriptures, him shining like the moon

removed from behind a cloud. And that was the thing that just kept on landing on me on the ride up here. It was like, I've made so many mistakes and i've caused so much pain throughout the course of my life to innocent you know people people who just had the horrible sort of misfortune at that time of being in my orbit this self-destructive sort of orbit and you know that that question of who do you think you are who do you think you are um and the answer just being sort of like i too can be the moon you know that shines when the cloud is removed and part of my front-footed activism comes from an extraordinary amount of time spent completely in self-involvement, inconsiderate, ego-driven, and angry and lonely life and once you've been down that path and you've seen it and owned it and sat with it then when the opportunity to you know as maya angela said right uh if you're walking down the path and you don't like what you see turn turn around. If you don't like what you see, get off the path and make your own. You know, when that opportunity presents itself, you do it. And for me, I've done it with a zeal or a level of responsibility that I, uh, really, really deep and cellular. I, I just,

I feel that I've taken enough from the world and now it's my time to put it back. And, um, and, uh, that's it. That's, that's where, you know, and then that's, that's the front footed activism and just sort of the, the drive of where it comes from. Um, you know, it comes from a history of having a hero in my immediate life and, uh, and, you know, the sort of depth of understanding of, you know, what it looks like on the other side and, uh, wanting to make, uh, the path easier for as many people as I possibly can, if I can do that with the time that I have remaining. Yeah. This feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well.

So sitting here in this container of the Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life. To live a good life, you have to live a good life. To live a good life, you have to live a good life. Live, be present, ethical, kind.

Life. Meaning, this moment-to-moment existence that is so fragile and that you can't hold too tightly with all of the wonder that comes in every moment of sorrow and every moment of joy. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes.

And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button

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