WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1172 - Heidi Schreck

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

With the world still wondering what this year's Presidential election really means, it's the right time for Marc to talk with actor and playwright Heidi Schreck, who knows a thing or two about power structures and why they don't serve everyone equally. They talk about Heidi's acclaimed Broadway show, What The Constitution Means To Me, and how her recognition of generational trauma in her family prompted her to write a show about unequal rights and the people who help stack the deck. They also talk about her time living in Russia, how she started a writing career in her 40s, and her newborn twins. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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covering only what you need, and policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Lock the gate! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what the fucking ears what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast obviously broadcasting from another location a room with a bit of bounce in it.

I know you know that I get hung up on bounce. I can hear the sound bouncing around a bit, but I'm doing what I can. I'm hunkered down away from reality a bit up in up north. I'm in Big Sur and I've been up here for three days. There's no TV. The Wi-Fi is spotty. I made a choice. I made a choice to come up here,

as I told you guys before, that I was checking out for a few days because I felt like I'd done all I could and that I just, I didn't want to get caught up. I didn't want to be caught up in the frenetic unfolding of numbers and maps all day long

and all night long. I just i couldn't handle it and i i believe i made the right choice i'm staying up here it's it's still one more day i'm recording this on wednesday afternoon just barely afternoon all i know right now is that ballots are still being counted uh there's no no reason to heed any declarations of victory by the monster and that every ballot will be counted. And hopefully, in terms of that particular process, it will be honored when the outcome is declared properly. I will say today on the show, we do have an interview with Heidi Schreck. She's a playwright, and I found out about her by seeing her Broadway play, What the Constitution Means

to Me. She was also a kind of a friend of my late girlfriend, Lynn Shelton, and I went with her to see the show. She had seen it before. I'd never seen it. And we went and spoke to Heidi backstage a bit. And I was really taken with her and her passion. And also just the fact that it educated me. I mean, this is a personal play about the Constitution, about the lack of representation for large swaths, large numbers of people. And she made it very personal. And I think it's also relevant to what's happening right now, to the sort of drop-off in younger people voting,

younger people feeling like they're engaged in this process, younger people not even educated in civics or what government means or how it works or the basic structure or how our voices are to be honored. I mean, this play about the Constitution is really about women and people of color, you know, not really being represented at all in the evolution of even the minimal representation that they experienced to this day. And looking at the Supreme Court as it stands now and the sort of shaking of the foundations of this republic, this democracy on a constitutional level, it just, it seems like the right show to air right now. Now, again, I'm up here and I am detached. I'm looking out at the

ocean at night. I'm looking at stars. I'm feeling the sort of smallness of being a human in a beautiful world and wondering how that world is going to look eventually, given that we have ongoing ecological disasters that need to be addressed, ongoing governmental disasters that need to be addressed. And will they be addressed? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I know there's a lot of people that want them addressed, but what do we have to do? What is our personal responsibility? It's odd because when I came up here, I felt like, hey, I voted. I've been talking to you guys, you know, twice a week throughout

this, being honest about what's happening without being a pundit or being another source of news, but just being a guy that's relating. But it starts to kind of really feel like the calling is going to be a little deeper as we move into, hopefully, what will be a Biden presidency. That obviously, Trump is going to be an American cult leader, the leader of Trumpism in this country, even after this election. So what is required of us as individuals to sort of guarantee constitutional representation, guarantee the rights of the underclass,

guarantee that we'll move towards saving the planet. I mean, how do we do this? How do we, it has to be more than just lip service, which I am guilty of. We're all, I think, somewhat guilty of feeling like we've done something and maybe we have, but is there more we can do? I don't know.

I mean, these are thoughts that I hope we're all entertaining, but it's all terrifying. And the fact that this was even close is a is a terrible indicator uh for the country look i had a dark night of the soul i guess as as many of you did i don't even know if it's a dark night of the soul as much as it is a sweaty night of terror so yeah even up here where i've disconnected myself for for reasons of my sanity. I didn't want to sit there alone and panic in front of a TV set with my cab buster. I chose to sort of force myself into a situation where I wouldn't have access or easy access to the ongoing shit show and maps and numbers, maps and numbers, districts and numbers, counties and numbers, names and numbers.

And I did avoid it. And I know it's still happening. But nonetheless, I was exhausted yesterday just with the panic and with the fear. And I went to bed at like eight at night up here in the country on the edge of a cliff. I didn't sleep on the edge of a cliff, but I kind of did metaphorically in my mind. I just sweating through a night of tossing and turning existential terror and uh food dreams oddly some food dreams i ate some uh some overly rich food and i think it fucked with me i'd like to blame it all on the food but i think it's a it's the fall of america that was the cause of most of it in my and in my personalizing

of it i mean this is also the thing is that i I tend to fear for myself, and I have to sort of expand that. Because so we're all in the same fucking boat here. We're all under the onslaught of plague and potential fascism. We're all in that. all in that and i i have to remember that because i think that is the core of what differentiates a progressive you know or a monster really i mean there's this this weird sort of identity politics business that goes on that these republicans have convinced people that there's a huge white white voting bloc that always shows up to vote Republican. They've been taught to fear that what they've got will be taken from them, that somehow they will be robbed of their birthright,

that somehow their property, their money, their way of life will be taken from them. And that is the most important thing. I want what's mine. I want to keep what's mine. Fuck you. And this particular president is one of the great fuck you artists of all times because he's taken that idea of independence of of it's it's some sort of malignant mutated monster of an idea of uh of working hard to get what you got and holding on to it because it's different because he steals what he has. He grifts. He does it without paying attention to laws or right or wrong. There's no moral compass.

There's no truth compass. It's just that by any means necessary, take it. And somehow or another, that's become easily rationalized by so many people in their minds. They were already selfish, but now it's like, fuck them all and fuck laws and fuck them if they're not smart enough to get it that's why he's surrounded by fucking grifters and what about fascism what about this team sports notion of how government works the red and the blue teams because it turns out that nothing really made a difference in this election there were bigger numbers but it wasn't the economy it wasn't covid it wasn't, but it wasn't the economy. It wasn't COVID. It wasn't the debates. It wasn't fucking anything.

More people voted, but percentage wise, people voted the way they did in 2016 as they did today. And then I always get concerned about, is it that these Americans crave a strong man? Do they crave actual fascism? Do they want a daddy that will just kind of keep a myopic sort of narrow minded view of what life should be? And they were willing to sort of kill or vote for that. Is that what it is? Or is it more shallow than that? I just wonder, you know, there's this assumption that conscience is part of the human brain, that conscience has evolved in our species from some sort of primitive idea or biological notion that

animals, as we as animals, we care for others in our species, that conscience evolved. I'm not a philosopher, but it just seems that conscience is something that requires vigilance and that many people who are monsters think they have conscience and that it's completely relative to the moral construction of your values and that it's easily fucked with. And that if you watch, depending on what information you take in and your inability or lack of desire to mind your mind so they don't mind your mind that compromises your conscience i think we underestimate the epistemic crisis in this country this lack

of of seeing or accepting or believing what is true if there is repetition involved and you know there is a sort of hypnotic non-truth posited in your fucking brain recording machine and that's what you believe in and i i don't i know it gets a little crazy but this all goes back to for me to the idea of you know people need to believe in something and i think that at this juncture, we are in sort of the United State of a cognitive dissonance of different kinds. I don't know if we ever come out of it. But I do know one thing, that there's something very shallow.

It's not even, it's tribalism, I guess, but it's also just, it feels like just team sports. Have you ever noticed on Twitter how many trolls, if you go to their page, it's just sports? It's just that there's no real civic engagement other than, fuck you, fuck you. And I know it goes on both sides a bit, but I think the basic premise in terms of the difference between what is thought to be democratic or, or, or thought to be progressive is that that team wants to make sure that everyone is taken care of, that we see,

you know, spread the resources out, that we all have healthcare, that we all have these basic things that could make life comfortable, that everybody has a shot, has an equal opportunity to, to make a go of it. That is the idea of the collective.

And that is the idea of the progressives. And that is sort of ingrained in the democratic idea. That's one team that I guess you would call the blue team. And then the other team is really all about wanting to see the blue team cry. That's it. We just want to blue team cry. That's it. We just want to see them cry. That's the depth of it. Fuck you.

I got mine and cry, baby. Are you going to cry? Cry. That's the other team. And that's the team that is sort of brought to a fervor, a fury by this lawless fucking King that we have in place right now. Now, this is a nice conversation. It's specific. It's about the American government, about the

system, about the constitution. The filmed version of Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Means to Me is now streaming on Amazon Prime. And you'll hear Heidi talk about living in Russia in her 20s and her impressions of the land and the people. But after our talk, she wanted to add some thoughts about her time there. And I thought it was important to make sure you had this context when you're listening to our conversation. She wrote me an email, and this is what she wrote. Quote, I was working as a journalist in St. Petersburg in the 1990s and I watched as our country fucked Russia over by withholding aid and promoting disaster capitalism at the exact moment they were trying to build a democracy.

And now we are paying for that dearly. I saw the divide between rich and poor become so huge it was absurd, just like it is here now. I saw social systems fall. I saw nationalism and racism and anti-Semitism become loud and violent. I saw my Russian journalist colleagues get harassed. I also interviewed Putin, which is a less interesting story than it seems, but I thought he was an asshole even back then. Even if we win this week, I fear how bad things could get. I often think of Masha Gessen quoting the Russian phrase,

we thought we had hit rock bottom and then someone knocked from below. Unquote. She also, Heidi, also wanted to give some context to the part where we talk about her family. So this is something to keep in mind when you hear that section. Quoting Heidi now, there were no abusive men in my nuclear family, but there was a mother who sometimes couldn't function as a mother because of the horrific abuse she endured growing up. So my childhood was quote unquote good, except for the rare but awful days my mother locked herself in her room and cried and wouldn't come out.

I've spent my adult life trying to reconcile my two mothers, the brilliant loving one and the one who couldn't function. And I guess I wrote this play about generational trauma because the abuse inflicted by shithead men and the lawmakers and culture that enables those men really does last for generations and it affects all of us. And I think it's part of what's going on right now in this country, unquote. I hope that adds something as you listen to me and Heidi Schreck talk about her show, What the Constitution Means to Me. cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis

company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Hi, Mark. How are you? You know, I'm doing okay. I have new babies. I just gave

birth in April, so I have twin girls. Oh, my God. And it's fantastic, but I don't sleep a lot. Twin girls, newly fresh-borns. Fresh-born. Now, was this the plan? Well, yes. I mean, I'm in my late 40s, so it was quite planned. And you had them yourself? I had them myself.

That's bold. You just said, we're going to do it. We're going to roll the dice. Well, it required a lot of science. We did IVF. Okay. Last August, actually, while I was performing this play I'm doing on Amazon, and we did IVF.

I got pregnant. I was very excited. And then we went to the doctor. And well, first of all, they asked us how many embryos we want to put in. And you said nine. I said one. Yeah. And the doctor said, that's good, because at your age, it could be very dangerous to

carry more than one. Right. And I said one. Yeah. And the doctor said, that's good because at your age, it could be very dangerous to carry more than one. Right. And I said, great. So we put in one and then went six weeks later and they said, you apparently have two in there. And I said, well, what about that thing where it's really dangerous for me to have two? And he was like, it's going to be fine. Yeah. And it was.

It's good that he switched up his tone that would not have that would have not have been the time for him to go like oh fuck uh well exactly i burst into hysterical laughter and then yeah that's pretty much been the how i felt this whole i guess 14 months now. Yeah. Well, I mean, congratulations. Thank you. It's really, thank you. They're incredible. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a, it's gotta be a challenging and scary time to realize that, uh, you know,

you're bringing kids into this situation, but, but you seem to be a, a um i i don't know if i i i get optimism but you believe in the power for people to change i do i do believe in that so yeah so like maybe you're not i i have to assume that when you have children at this juncture in history, you don't say like, oh, what did I just do? You know, right. I mean, there have been a few moments when I've said, what did I just do? And I am scared for them. You know, so much feels precarious right now.

I do sometimes have a I wonder, whatever, it's wonderful to be alive. I do believe that. I do hope there's a future waiting for them. We wonder what the world's going to be. I guess I saw the show with Lynn. Yeah, I remember. You came backstage, the two of you. That was wonderful.

Yeah, and I can't quite remember what your history with her was, because you both come from Seattle, right? But you work together? Yes, I met Lynn in 2001. She was editing. I was in a movie version of Hedda Gabler that was based on a, we had done the play in Seattle with my theater company and she was the editor on that movie. And I remember going to the editing room with my director to meet her and talk with her and thinking she's the smartest person in this room and this was before she decided to become a director but I immediately thought this person is extraordinary yeah I loved working with her I'm so sorry

her. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry she's gone and I'm so sorry for you. She was a really remarkable person and then to watch her, I left Seattle right after that and moved to New York and to watch her just kind of break out as this brilliant filmmaker was, I have to say, I remember being not surprised. Right. Based on my work with her, I thought, of course, like that person was so giant. Like, of course, she became that. And then I remember kind of learning, I think I read an article about her later when my sister's sister came out talking about how she, at I think age 37, had decided to become a filmmaker because she'd seen that talkback with Claire Denis, I think, who had not made her first movie until she was 40 years old. Right.

And she realized, oh, I have three years left to do this. And I remember actually being really inspired by that. I didn't start writing for film or television until I was in my forties. And I, I kind of looked to Lynn. So I think there was like a kind of chain effect there where I, she looked to Claire and I looked to Lynn and thought, oh, it's not, it's never actually too late. always feel you always think it's too late to do the things you really want um and i and she definitely made me realize it wasn't too late to do the things i wanted and you just had twins and and i just said right yes another thing i decided apparently it wasn't too late to do in my late 40s as I run around with this like horrible, these horrible back problems and a giant scar on my stomach.

Yeah. Yeah. Lynn was amazing. And it's been really hard to to sort of, you know, you know, you live with loss. I think everybody does, but you just don't. There's no reason. You know, your brain is sort of like, why? Why does you know? And there's no answer to these things, you know. But I always like hearing about her because like my experience with her is so limited to the small amount of time we spent with each other. So like there's all these other lives that she had that I don't know about. all these other lives that she had that I don't know about. Yeah. Well, and she, you know, she also had, I didn't learn until later that she,

she and I had very similar beginnings in downtown theater in New York as well. Like I, she started as an actor and I was very excited to learn that about her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She was,

yeah, she, and she could do it, you know, she could do the acting. Oh yeah. But when you guys were, when you were in Seattle,

like the, the thing about this show, you know, the the what the constitution means to me is like i had you know when lynn wanted me to go see it and she really sort of sold it you know kind of pushed me to it i was sort of like i don't want to learn is it learning you know like there was a it's like how could this be a good show i mean mean, look at the title, you know? Yeah, the title's, everybody hates the title. I mean, it just sounds like, I don't want to go to class today. But like, even like watching it again, which I did last night, you know, it's an incredibly moving, engaged performance, but it's an engaged, emotionally engaged, you know, story about how, you know, this thing affects us personally, the Constitution, because we all take a lot for granted. And I think that, you know, when you sort of started to see your own life through the

context of the Constitution, then see the sort of the life of women through it and the life of people who are underrepresented, you know, it becomes this sort of beautiful tapestry of emotions and facts. Yeah. And it was very, you know, not only do you learn, but you sort of learn there's a sort of empathy that comes through, you in in if you are

paying attention you can't really watch your show and be like what the fuck is this lady talking about i mean you can i think some people do watch it that way i don't know i hope not yeah i mean really to me i think i didn't really know what the thing was when I started to make it. But it became clear pretty quickly that it was a story about my mom and about my grandma and really trying to understand. the mystery of my grandma, which was how, how did this woman who was really the smartest, strongest woman I knew who loved us all so much and took such great care of her grandchildren, like how did she, you know, live in this abusive relationship all these years and, and not, and fail to protect her children. Yeah. Yeah. I am without, you know, without spoiling for people too much. I mean, I think that what was fascinating is at some point, like we can go back, but at some

point you realize that, you know, that experience that you had, you know, touring the country, debating the constitution, you know, there must've been some kind of aha moment where you're like oh this is the portal to run my memoir to run my life through right right like i i don't yeah i don't know how you workshop that because there is there there's sort of a a tradition of this isn't a one-person show but it's a small show and it is an autobiographical show so it does sort of uh have a vibe of a one person show. And so many of those are kind of straight up kind of this is what happened to me. And there's a self-importance to them that can be tedious. debating the constitution you can integrate your story the story of your family the story of women the story of domestic abuse and and and rights for people you know into this broader context of why this country works that must have been a big day to realize that you could do that that was that was actually a big day it was a a big, scary day. I, yeah, I don't know which

kind of came first. I think at first I just thought it would be fun to write about being a teenage girl doing this contest. Like the contest itself had a lot of fun stuff about it. I was usually the only girl. It was the eighties. And what was it? A debate? It was a debate thing. It was a speech contest. So you would show up and you had to give an eight minute speech about the constitution. And then my favorite part, as I say in the show was drawing,

you had to draw an amendment from a hat and speak about it extemporaneously. I just found that just so fucking thrilling for some reason. I don't know. I think that's maybe when I was 15, I learned that my, that I had an interesting brain, you know, I really liked thinking on my feet like that. And I, when I started making the piece, I just thought that seems like a fun time to write about the eighties. I had really big permed hair. There was a lot, you know, Reagan was president. There's

a lot there. It seemed interesting. And then pretty quickly, I started, I mean, I gave myself the task of taking the prompt of the contest seriously, which is, you know, draw a personal connection between your own life and the constitution, which is just like a social studies assignment, basically. But I thought, what would happen if I did that now that I'm at the time in my 30s? I've lived a lot. I've traveled the world. I've had an abortion. I've had a really interesting relationship with my own family history.

I've seen a lot of things. And so as soon as I started trying to do that I I realized what the show was going to be that it was going to be about these four generations of women in my family so that's interesting so you were really kind of like going back and writing about the experience of doing that when you were a teenager and then the actual question of the actual you know uh uh contest yes yeah was contest. Yes. Yeah. Was provocative. Good question. It turned out. I just didn't realize at 15,

you know, I was just trying to fake it at 15 and win the money. I was just like, well, what sounds personal? I don't know. And really the, the, that prompt led me much further than I wanted to go.

I'm actually a pretty private person, which seems absurd to say now, considering how much of my life is out now for the world to view. But I felt okay talking about having an abortion. I felt that was important to talk about. We know there are these statistics, one in three, one in four, depending on what you look at women have had an abortion uh people i should say um you know but not just women have abortions uh but and so i knew it was an important thing to not not that i shouldn't be afraid to talk about that it was important um but i didn't want to talk about the history of violence in my family that that felt taboo. It's heavy, man.

Yeah. You know, it's heavy because, well, I mean, I think that the way you kind of structure it in. And also, again, you know, to set up the history of violence in your family, you know, you set up, you know, Washington becoming a state, you know, plowing under the rights of indigenous people, indigenous women, and then, you know, moving sort of basically hostage white women from the East Coast into this strange, dark logger town with just a bunch of like kind of like monsters who are chopping down trees and drinking, you know, and so like, like, I think that you're painting a really good picture of it. Thank you. Oddly, but oddly, that tempers the story of the personal story of domestic abuse. Like, you know, if you were just to come out and just say, like, you know, you're very good at balancing, you you know the weighty

with the comedic but also like there's something that affords you a little less you know potential risk when you sort of contextualize the beginning of your the known domestic abusing your family with this horrendous kind of national undertaking to yeah yeah you know what I mean well and all the violence is related of course but I will say the discovery about the what happened in Washington state that was a shocking day for me I was in my little office looking through old newspapers on that, I don't know, I got a subscription to a bunch of those sites and I was reading the old newspapers and I found, you know, the newspaper from my great-great-grandmother's town and I saw this, these headlines and I was like, there are women being murdered and beat up every day in this newspaper.

It was a really, truly shocking thing. I had no idea. And then when I read the story of Asa Mercer, who brought all the white women from the East to Washington State back in 1865 i that was a shocking story to me and then i found out they'd made a television show about it a comedy called here come the brides really it was on tv in the 70s yeah it's a really like isn't isn't this hilarious like like a like a little house on the prairie period yeah yeah kind of i mean wait to their credit they it's a tragic it's not a tragic comedy it's like a dramedy sure sure but it's that era but it's that era and they yeah it's all about washington state it's all about bringing these women to this town the the

the sort of inciting incident in the pilot is that this man tries to rape this woman and so then everybody's like and but it's somehow comic and everybody's like, I guess we better get more women. Uh, because this guy tried to rape the ugly school teacher. And so we must not have enough women. And then, and then the,

that's how the whole series. Let's feed the monsters. That's the pilot. Yeah. That's basically the pilot. It's really intense. The monsters are going to hurt people if we don't give them fresh women. Right.

But I've always felt like I've spent time in Seattle and in Washington, and I find that part of the world compelling, and the climate and everything else and the feel of it. I lived in Alaska when I was very young and my second wife was from Seattle. So I've had I've had experience with the. But I always felt that there was a darkness there that seems to be. Yes. Very deep. very deep it's like i'd like to think it runs pre-history but but it does seem that that that

the type of uh industry that came up in that area was rough man it's some real weird kind of like pioneering shit yeah there's a lot of darkness i actually feel like twin peaks being set there made perfect sense yeah right like history of And of course, the other side of that is it also, a lot of those women who came over on that boat then ended up being suffragettes. And Washington gave women the right to vote before many other states. There was an interesting-

It all backfired on them. It all backfired, yeah, exactly. That's the interesting part. I'm surprisedfired. Yeah, exactly. That's interesting part. I'm surprised you did. What made you choose not to discuss some of the other avenues that those women took? Well, there was just so much. I actually, there's like seven more hours of play that I just had to cut out. You know, there was a lot of other amendments.

I mean, you could keep this going. You could. I actually, I did. That was my first very ambitious idea was that what if I kind of, could I relate? Once I sort of realized I was telling this personal history, like, could I relate a personal story to every single amendment? And then I realized that would be a, I don't know, a year long play. And also I would probably die before finishing it. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the more practical approach would be like, is there any way that you could do live events with each amendment in the hat,

you know, with these kids, with these teenagers, let's just riff it. Let's just have live. Let's really put you on your feet with, you know, and just do it for real. That's a great idea. Yeah. Can I take that idea? Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

I just pitched a perfect show for you. You really did. I'll be following up later. Yeah, you could do it. And that way you could get new teenagers too. Exactly. And you could even do it at high schools. That's a great idea.

There you go. I feel like you just, thank you. You're welcome. I'm just, I'm looking out for you. You got kids now. I do. Two expensive kids. This is it for you it's good it's just starting

um i hear they're cheaper now like it pretty much you just got to put them in a box and feed them they get expensive they get expensive later yeah we'll see what happens with college education i guess this is the budget days right now this is okay okay. So when you, like, but growing up there, I mean, I have, your immediate family was okay, right? Yes. I had a great immediate family. I have a wonderful father and a younger brother. Yes. Both my parents are still alive.

They're in Washington. They have not been able to meet the babies because they're in Wenatchee, and so they haven't been able to fly because of COVID, which is just my mom's going pretty nuts. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's terrible. The plague has isolated everybody.

Now, Wenatchee, where is that exactly in relation to like Spokane? So Wenatchee is right between Seattle and Spokane, sort of right dead in the middle of the state. So not quite. So it's not quite white supremacist land. Not quite. Exactly. You know, you're not in meth supremacist land. No, no. In fact, it's sort of like you're right in the middle. It's like a tiny little paradise before you cross. Is it near anywhere near where Lynn's parents are, where Lynn's father is? You know, Chris Twisp or what is it?

Twisp. Twisp. Yes, it is close to Twisp. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a very beautiful part of the state. Very pretty. But very far, you know, Seattle's the nearest big city. And that's what two hours three

hours it's almost three hours between to either of them yeah spokane is like four hours it's weird i kind of i was in spokane you know even you know in its like demise i i found it a very charming place is it my um dad's family is from them so my i, I visited there a lot. My, my grandparents on that side, uh, also German and Swedish, um, lived in Spokane. And actually my great grandma on that side was Bing Crosby's, uh,

cook. She was a Swedish cook. So. Yeah. What a great show business story. You're connected. You're totally connected. She hated him.

She hated him so much i hear he wasn't pleasant i hear he's not a good man an abusive boozing guy he was yeah and she what so she lived in hollywood no and he lived in spokane with his family being crosby did yeah yeah no kidding yep that i had no idea i thought the only thing that spokane was famous for were the boots i'm wearing white's boots no it's now it's white's boots and being crosby and your great what is your grandmother was his swedish cook yeah elsa she was his swedish cook so you know you knew elsa when you were a kid i Yeah, I used to dress up like her. That was my favorite thing to do was to borrow her glasses and her shawl and dress up like an old lady.

She must have loved that. Did you do a character of her just telling horrible Bean Crosby stories? Was that your first one-person show is Elsa, and it's just you doing an hour of what an asshole Bean Crosby was? Yeah. you doing an hour of what an asshole being crosby was she was also the one maybe that was my other grandmother she was the one who said she came from sweden when she was 19 and um apparently they'd been passing out these flyers in sweden like come to america it's the promised land there was a famine but you know they did that because they they wanted these the scandinavians to come plant the country up there because they couldn't grow anything.

So they'd give them and they knew that the people in Sweden, they're like, they can grow things in rocks. So they wanted them to come. I read this in that book Ian Frazier wrote, The Great Plains. But I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. That's right.

That makes total sense. Well, then she said when she got here, she was like, she would all be like, you know, they said the streets were paved with gold, but really they're paved with shit. She knew. So get me back to Sweden. She was surprised she didn't go back. Man.

I mean, right now, I'm just, I can't believe they all left. I'm like, what were they thinking? Well, now they're like, I can't believe they all left. I'm like, what were they thinking? Well, now, I don't know. I think that their big COVID plan is backfiring. But yeah, I spent some time there. Have you been there? I've never been.

I actually lived in Russia for two years, and I still have not visited Sweden. Where did you go? I don't know. What's the big city? Stockholm? Yes. I did a show there in Stockholm. I saw the ship.

I ate some of the food. You know, like it's weird when you only have a couple of days in these countries where you're like, I went there. What'd you do? I ate the stuff that you eat at that place. The dumpling. That country's dumpling. The meatball, the dumpling, the bread, the what's the berry? It's not cranberries.

There's a berry. Oh, lingonberry. The lingonberry thing. I ate some of that. Yeah. And I saw the boat, you know, that Viking boat. That was that. Oh, right.

But I went, there's also. You really, you make it sound so exciting. It's great. I loved it. I loved it. Great museum there. And you can walk along the water. It's very, it's very nice.

I, it's, it's, it's everywhere is pleasant, but here, um, right now. It was a great museum there. And you can walk along the water. It's very nice. Everywhere is pleasant but here. Right now. Anywhere you go outside the United States, you're like, oh, it's not the main thing here. Right. You know what I mean? The chaotic fucking, you know. They're not currently living in a codependent relationship with a lunatic.

No. But that aside. Yeah. Yeah. There's other fascists around. Some of them are. But yes, we have a particularly special version of that. Yeah. It's uniquely American.

I think you can say this is our take. What's the American take on auto crap? It's happening now. Enjoy. We made him. But okay but that okay so you're growing up there so that side of the family seems your father's side seems grounded and and there's a history of uh hard-working uh swedish people who came over and then your mother's side is just the dark lager well yeah i mean yes and no i think that um i mean that side also was and they were both they're both like half german

half swedish that side was also you know really hard-working people and then um, but growing up in a more, that place, according to my research, was just a more violent place than where my dad's family settled. Wenatchee was. This was actually Castle Rock, so more Western Washington is where my mom's family was. And because that was a stronghold of the logging industry. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. I think it was just more remote. There were, you know, it was, as I say in the play, it was mostly men who were there to log.

Right. And it was pretty harsh living conditions for quite a while. For some reason, I'm thinking McCabe and Mrs. Miller. I'm thinking like, you know. Yes. Right? That town. Totally. That town. Yeah. Yeah. But like, but her family was amazing, too. I mean, my grandma happened to marry a really bad man. But I mean, part of the create working on the play.

That was one of the myths. There were many sort of things I unlearned while making the play. And one of them was like the myth of the, the one bad man, right. Where I sort of grew up being like, oh, if only that bad man hadn't come into my. That's weird. I was just going to say that. So what is, what is that myth? The myth is that all it takes is one bad man to set a history of, of a repetitive, a legacy of repetitive uh abusive relationships uh yes that and then i also think that that the one bad man is somehow a lone figure not um not divorced from a larger culture of male violence divorced from a larger culture of laws that don't protect people from that kind of violence, divorce from centuries of Western law that,

that says you can beat up and kill your wife. You know, it was sort of like, I really started to see him as a symptom. And then I think because of the focus of the show, also just some, a person enabled by laws to to take out his violence on children and take out his violence on you know what i mean like that that the law i think in some ways continues to enable that and and had for centuries and that that the macro. But the micro is still the one bad man. The micro is still the one. Yeah. She ended up with. Right. With. Yeah. The wrong person. Yeah. And it happens all the time. I think that a lot of the statistics that you cite and the way you

sort of capture in the show, you know, how how does this negligence happen when you kind of share in the show those bits and pieces of those proceedings in past Supreme Courts, you know, how how does this negligence happen when you kind of share in the show those bits and pieces of those proceedings in past Supreme Courts? You know, we're men. These men are clearly uncomfortable in having arguments over semantics when there's really lives in the balance shows, you know, a strange disconnect, an empathy, a disconnect uh an empathy a disconnect there's no there's no empathy there and i think is the point that they can't see how their their policies are are making it dangerous specifically for you know women and people of color right right yeah that was the thing that struck me the most when i listened i listened to hundreds of hours of Supreme Court cases, and particularly in the case you're talking about, which has to do with an abusive man, I was just shocked at how dissociated the judges seemed from their own feelings. You can sort of

hear it in their voices as they sort of ramble on, like, you know, does shall mean shall? I don't know. Sometimes it means shall, sometimes it means this. And in the meanwhile, at the center of this case is a painful, horrific story that they've just stopped talking about. And I think right now, as we're having apparently this national debate over whether the Constitution is a living thing or a dead thing, I feel like this idea that you could interpret law without keeping the living human beings at the center of your argument and keeping them in your mind and in their bubble and in whatever numbers they're fighting for, that there are these broad ideas around, you know, fiscal support and fiscal responsibility that really come down to numbers without really having stories attached to them, right? Right. But that case, that was just insanity that it's really about a woman who had a restraining order on her husband who then took the kids, killed them. And she wanted recourse, you know, for the police not defending her or prosecuting the restraining order. And that argument that you have from the Supreme Court is about whether there was a constitutional responsibility on behalf of the police department to protect that woman and her children and they decided no yes that was

the decision and that's fucking nuts it's I agree I I 100% agree that it's fucking nuts but that that that was the issue of of you know uh originalism right and intent so that yes yeah i you know the way you sort of flesh out the the the kind of negative rights positive rights and all that stuff i wouldn't have known any of that and i could have went to my grave not knowing that you know and now i know it and you know and i find it i i think that like when you're my age and you learn these things you're sort of like oh wow that well that really changes everything in the way i think or understand things but i think more importantly the show may uh sort of instigate younger people to realize like i gotta get involved with this

shit yeah i mean i hope so it certainly made me feel that way. Like I think even the grownups on the show have all become more politically active just because of the things we all learned while making the show. I knew nothing about positive rights or negative rights. I honestly only learned about that because of that case. I listened to that case so many times and I was like, I don't understand. This makes zero sense to me. She went to the police, police you know like 14 times in one night and said my husband has my children will you please go look for them and they were like go home lady you're being dumb you know and uh and the fact that she could not sue that police department is uh i just couldn't fathom how our laws work. So I actually, that's when I asked a friend who knew a constitutional scholar to hook me up.

And I said, can I just please take you out to dinner and can you just explain to me? And it was a very long dinner because it's very confusing. But that's when I first learned about positive rights and negative rights. The two types of constitutions. The two types of constitutional rights. And, you know, and that's when I learned that that all modern constitutions, you know, ours is the oldest one still in use.

It's really an antique. Most other constitutions were made after the 20th century and they all contain positive rights, which are like affirmative rights. Let's say the government has to, you know, protect you. It has to provide basic things like healthcare and a certain standard of living. It has to protect people on, you know, it has to protect minorities. Like it has gender protections and it has racial protections, ability protections. And a lot of them contain clauses that protect, that say that you have a right to clean air and water, that you have a right, that it's the government's duty to look after the environment. And I was just sort of gobsmacked. I had no idea.

And it's interesting that, like, you know, even knowing that all that stuff is proactive and good, that this country seems to be wrestling with the ideas like we can bend our old document. wrestling with the ideas like we can bend our old document. We will, you know, instead of like evolving that, why not just bend this society back to the 1700s? Right. Without taking into consideration that most of the government has been turned out by corporate pimping and that, you know, all you're going to end up with if you do that explicitly is fascism. So, yeah, yeah, that's really what's going on now i i agree with you and there's enough dum-dums to be like you know but what about liberty oh shut the fuck up i'm sorry there's a no no i yeah i feel like the notion of liberty has really gotten twisted. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's like we have a right to spread plague.

Right. You know, don't tell us what to do. You're not you're not the boss of me. Whereas a positive rights constitution be like, we are kind of the boss of you and it's public health. So, yeah. Or, you know, we have I think I feel like when I think of are kind of the boss of you and it's public health. Yeah, or, you know, we have, I feel like when I think of that kind of constitution, I think of the idea that, I feel like the statement it's making is that we're all responsible to one another. I know you would think that people

would get the hang of that, but see, like, the nature of capitalism and the free market has twisted everything up and mind-fuck fucked so many people. It's all very calculated on some level, right? Yeah. Yes, it is. I think people have lost their way. And that's reinforced by the representatives of malignant business interest. But I think we're getting away from, you know, why you went to Siberia and how you. So when. What.

But I think what's interesting to me when I was thinking about, you know, how this evolved for you is that, you know, this was not, you know, what you set out to do. You set out to be an actor. Yes. And, you know. And a writer. Right. Yes. Yeah.

And this sort of evolved because i mean you've been you're working at it like when did you start you started acting in seattle i started acting uh yes i actually started acting when i was a kid my mom had a a shakespeare company for kids called the short shakespearean really yes uh it still exists actually they still they they, there's still, she handed it over to an amazing woman and it's been going now for almost 40 years. Children's theater is great.

Yeah, yeah. So I got to play, I got, she of course cast me in all the lead roles. So I got to play all the great Shakespearean heroines between the ages of six and 12. I really cut my teeth on the best. That's some heavy shit. Actually, we only did the comedies.

We didn't do Macbeth or anything. You didn't do Lear? I'd like to see a 6-year-old. I would actually like to see that too. With some 6-year-old kid with a beard we're doing that last monologue it would probably be quite moving actually it would be great that's a really good idea i feel like you're pitching a lot of excellent ideas run with them to run with them yeah i'm going to i gotta earn that money um yeah so that was i did that as a kid and then i acted in college. And then, yes, I took a little detour.

I spent a couple of years in Russia. What is that about? Who does that? Who does that? So you're in college for what? I double majored English and theater with a minor in Russian language because I really liked, you know, I loved Dostoevsky. It was my favorite.

And you wanted to be able to read it in Russian? I did want to be able to read it in Russian. And I thought it was a beautiful language. I also kind of grew up obsessed with Russian dancers, particularly Baryshnikov, who was a big crush. So you had a plan. I had a plan to meet Baryshnikov in russia i still haven't met him although i've met now his daughter who's a wonderful actress um i've actually never confessed to her my i'm sure she knows all the women my age or right had huge

crushes on her father but i've never talked to her about it um misha right on uh yeah misha yeah yeah i watched the turning point over and over um but you were but also russia has uh you know a long history of theater and film and have made it you know you know despite uh you know whatever horrors horrors they were responsible for governmentally, they definitely changed theater and they changed film and they changed dance. There's definitely a totalitarian work ethic, I guess, that really delivers the goods. I think the work ethic. I also think the spirit of creating art in the face of probably all of that horror. But yeah, obviously, they changed.

I mean, they invented acting as we know it. Yeah, I loved living there. I lived in Siberia for a year, a little tiny town called Tinda. And then I moved to St. Petersburg. You love Siberia? I feel like you don't see that bumper sticker a lot. I heart Siberia. What was it like there? It was so unbelievably beautiful i can't i um i lived in this place called tinda on the

this river called um was there's this amazing lake called by call which is like the largest it's like a lake that's like an ocean which is one of the most incredible places on earth. And then I lived on this more river. And, you know, when I first got there, everything was covered in snow and ice. And then spring came and everything melted. And it was, it was just the, like the birch trees and the river and the like miles of step, I guess you call it. It was, it was one of the most physically beautiful places I've ever been. And you're, how's your Russian? It's, it's, it's okay. I had, so my brother followed me there and he was a journalist in

Moscow for 10 years and now he lives in Prague with his family and his wife who's Russian. And so my niece and nephew speak Russian and they, I thought my Russian was still really good, but they just mock me mercilessly when I try to speak, they imitate my accent. And, um, so I guess it's not that good. How many siblings you have? I just, I just, my brother, younger brother. And so then you go to St. Petersburg and you were there total for two years in Russia? Yeah. Wow, that's a long time.

Yeah, I actually fell in love with someone in Siberia and we moved to St. Petersburg together. And I got a job at a newspaper. And you were like what, 20, 19? 23. You fell in love with a Russian? 23, 24. I did, yeah. What happened to that guy?

He, this is going to sound like fiction, but he's a Russian Orthodox priest. Look what you did. He has a very long beard. Yeah, he was a really, he is. I don really, he is, talk about him in the past tense, he was a really brilliant guy, very into, honestly, like occult things. And then somehow that shifted into an interest in religion, which of course had been banned for so long, like while he was growing up and, and he just became more and more fascinated with religion while we were dating. And then several years after we broke up, he decided to become. So you, you dated a Russian witch who found that just a, you know,

piecemeal interest in a cult ritual was not working out. And there was a much deeper, more historical type of magic that seems to be more reliable. But you get to and you get to dress as a wizard. You've really you've summed it up. Good. Well, I'm glad I'm glad he found his wizard ship. Are you in touch no several years ago we he facebook friended me um and then we corresponded a little bit and then he disappeared from facebook oh i wonder what happened. Yeah. I'm not sure. Okay. It's so weird because rarely

does anything coming out of Russia disappear from Facebook. It seems to just, yeah, it's probably there somewhere. Take over Facebook. Um, okay. So you come back here and, and then you decide to commit to acting. Is that what happened? i came back um i came back to seattle because i was near my hometown and a lot of friends uh from college had moved to seattle hold on one second real quick were you studying acting in russia or no no i did not although i did i know but i did work um i went to the theater all the time and i worked as a theater reviewer for a little bit um so yeah but i was not studying you know john burnthal the actor oh yeah yeah he spent that's he learned to act in russia

oh he did was it um was it through that harvard program yeah or did he yeah yeah yeah no that program sounds incredible oh i wish i had been able the only problem was like he got back when he got back he was like you know like you know you guys don't know how to act you know harvard sent him there but he comes back and he was just sort of like you're a bunch of weenies you don't know what real men do when they act i i get that i mean really you go you well also they you know they get to rehearse their plays for seven months before they go on stage, where because of capitalism, we get the three and a half weeks before they throw you onto the stage and see what happens.

Three and a half months and then maybe a week if things don't go well. Right. Did you ever study Suzuki? I did, yeah. I'm so wild that I fucking knew that, man. You know how I knew? How did you know that? No.

I do know. You want to know how I knew? Okay. How you act out your crying and when you hold your core to find your center. When you put your hand on your stomach. Wow. And then the way you stopped when when you were doing the crying i'm like she did suzuki there's no way that woman didn't do suzuki because i had my uh my uh my

an ex-wife of mine studied it and i was able to see it uh you know i was able to go and watch it being done and i'm like that's that's got to be where she got that i feel so exposed i did how many people are like that suzuki lady uh that lady did the suzuki that's so wild i'm so happy that i was right yeah that's really you kind of took me off guard there that's what did it i was like did he do some kind of a deep dive? But there's no record of me doing Suzuki. I made sure to scrub the internet clean of all of that. I saw it in practice.

You did, apparently. Wait, was this your wife from Seattle? Nope. Ah, okay. So there is a lot of Suzuki in Seattle. No, it was my first wife went on to become a therapist, but she was studying to be an actress and she was kind of dug in with that. I mean, she was doing the Suzuki training and I never quite got it, you know, but over time, you know, she explained it to me. And then I went to see them, you know, where they, you know, let the family and friends come in to watch a performance to, you know, reassure you it's not a cult or something too fucking weird.

And, you know, you just, it's not convincing, right? No, no. Yeah. It's like, I got it. You know what I mean? I understood the technique, but it is sort of rare and, and it's specific. And I don't think a lot of people know about it. Right. Do you study at New York? No, actually in Seattle. We're just a couple amazing teachers at University of Washington that I studied with. First in high school, actually, and then in Seattle.

But it was interesting how effective it is because, like, you know, whatever you've, however you've trained yourself as an actress, you know, everybody takes a bit from here and there. But I was so clearly able to lock into those two actions, which were fairly, you know, intense and, you know, emotional and powerful. you cry as if acting that out, but also just the other device of centering, you know, in moments of emotion where I see you do it. You kind of align yourself. And that, you know, so it is a powerful method. It's interesting because I,

while I was working on the play, these two books were really important to me. One of them is called Trauma and Recovery, and the whole time I was rehearsing the play of thinking. I do talk about at one point in the play, like the places in the play where my throat, I could feel it tense up. I was actually pretty tense the whole time I was performing and kind of trying to figure out where that came from and why. And yeah, just thinking about it kind of in a way, thinking about the play as a little bit of an exorcism of some of that stuff out of my body. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. And like and I think that like from my recollection of Suzuki, that seems to be a very decent method to exercise. Yes, I think that's right. Well, it's very, yeah, it's very physical and there's a lot of releasing of things. Yeah. There's a lot of grunting and stomping.

But, but that's interesting. What are those two books again? One, one is called Trauma and Recovery. The other is The Body Keeps the Score. Trauma and Recovery is, I think, one of the most brilliant, I guess, psychoanalytic texts. It was actually recommended to me by my husband's therapist via my husband many, many years ago. But one of the things that talks about is it actually makes the connection between this therapist worked a lot, both with military veterans who were grappling with PTSD and with sexual

assault survivors. And she noticed the similarities between the two kinds of symptoms and what, what both groups were going through and sort of made a larger connection through that about violence in our culture and the way it affects both people who go to war on behalf of the country and the victims of violence and sexual assault in the country, which are often women. And she, yeah, she delves into that. That's interesting. In a really profound way.

And then that sort of combined with the idea of hereditary behavioral, like I think it was interesting in the show how, you know, you don't find it abuse that goes back generations that causes this depression or is it chemical and does it matter? Right. You know, it is what it is ultimately, but, you know, to have the framework to think about that, to think about, because that's fascinating. There's no way it isn't true that even if you break the cycle of abuse the emotional nature uh that is underpinning to somebody who is willing to put up with that or is an abuser is still going to be in you you just you know you just evolve to make different choices on purpose right yes you evolve to make different choices i will also say you have different i mean i question a little bit the phrase like someone who's willing to put up with it because

i feel like um i mean this is one of the things that i discovered making the play is like i i'm in part able to make many different choices than my grandmother because like the legal framework of my life is much different than hers i i have different laws protecting me yeah and also like the cultural um the culture has evolved thank god and yeah don't underestimate the power of terror fear right yeah it was my mistake oh yes right so i can reframe that yeah yeah yeah no i just but i think yeah i'm I'm, I'm, I'm only calling it out because I feel like it's what I grew up thinking like, Oh, what,

what was wrong with my grandmother that she stayed in this relationship. And now I understand that I understand it in a much, I have a much larger perspective. I understand it as it relates to the laws of our country, as it relates to our culture, as it relates to the misogyny in our culture. And then of course, it's just true for many women today. And because of the play, I've also, I've been able to talk to a lot of people who've been in relationships like this now and really understanding that you can think that you're a person who would

never end up in this kind of relationship and discover that you're absolutely wrong, you know, and that it doesn't always have to do with there being something. It's not always about you. You know, abusers are often incredibly charming people who don't show their true nature until you're, you're very much connected to them. Right. Right. And, and, and right. I mean, like, I think that when I was younger, I was emotionally abusive person, you know, and I, yeah, oh, for sure. Yeah. And I, you know, it took me, you know, a lot of, you know, heartbreak and, you know, willingness to,

you know, figure out where that comes from, you know, where that fear ultimately and that kind of inability to connect emotionally in an appropriate way comes from, you know, and it is family stuff. But over time, you know, not unlike recovery, you know, from alcohol and drugs, you know, you learn to make different choices and you you start to see you know if you're willing who you are you know in that dynamic and and what's that what what that is you know and how do you um i mean you don't have to say what it was but but is there a i guess like how old were you when you sort of started to realize that and did something push you toward that realization? Well, I mean, I was really just a defensive kind of ragey guy who

always thought, you know, he was, you know, he was being fucked with or manipulated, was not able to trust love or wasn't really capable of letting myself give it in a way. You know, it was all kind of childish stuff. But, you know, childish rage when you're 35 is a very ugly thing, right? Right. And I think ultimately the beginning of the education was, you know, once I got sober and I entered into a relationship with a woman who helped me get sober in a state that was already volatile, you know, I, you know, I made her miserable and, you know, and I was emotionally destructive and she had to, you know,

like extricate herself from me. Right. You know, right. Through Al-Anon and through understanding codependency and me understanding all these, whatever the labels are, it was like, that was the beginning of the awakening, but it took a while to sort of reel it in it's sort of about like deciding to kind of reckon with yourself right well you got to decide it as opposed to keep repeating it right you know you got you know because people are broken from a fairly young age you know and you know and it's like you know either you're you're going to be able to fucking stop it or not but like usually I think these injuries that create these monsters are put upon people when they're fucking children. Oh, yeah.

And then, you know, absolutely. And then the wiring is there. And, you know, and if you keep honoring the wiring and finding participants to honor that wiring with you, there is not much impetus to change. to honor that wiring with you, there's not much impetus to change until you like, you know, end up alone or crying or in jail or whatever the fuck range of abuse you're on, you know? I think the hardest thing for me is, and I've been in therapy for almost 15 years now, I, that, um, also like realizing that just knowing that isn't enough. There's a point when you're like, oh, I see. This is all, this is this wiring, as you call it, that was sort of installed when I was pre-language, probably.

It's so ancient. And I don't even know sometimes that that's what's happening. And now I see it. And now I understand that like, I'm being driven by these things that were planted so long ago, and that should be enough. And then realizing, oh my God, that's not, that's just like the very beginning of starting to like change some of that habitual. Because you have to make, you have to choose against your instincts, which are faulty. So it's very unsatisfying. The cure is making different choices for yourself and they don't feel great because

they're not honoring how you get fed emotionally. Right? Right. So everything feels a little flat. Yeah. Or like you're starving, right? Like you're emotionally starved. Right. Right.

Right. God damn it. I have to like be able to endure. Yeah. Yeah. Where's the drama? It's on the stage now. Good for you.

Congratulations. But no, but you, I mean, you talk about that and I feel bad that I kind of, you know, that I mean, you know, correcting language is important in the sense that, you know, me saying someone who's willing to put up with it. It is it is not, you know, taking into consideration what abuse does to people and what fear does to people and what, you know, you know, honoring, you know, that victimness does to people, you know, in terms of, of they might not see a way out for themselves. Right. And, and the fact that they might be right. I mean, that was one of the discoveries for me too. Um, actually when I listened to Jessica's case to the case we talked about earlier and, and, and learn the statistic that like the most dangerous moment for a woman in that situation living with an abusive partner or a person living with an abusive partner is the

moment that they decide to leave. That's just statistically when they're most likely to be harmed or killed. So there's also a kind of unassailable logic at work, which is like, I'm actually in a position and there's no good answer. Like, I stay and I'm in danger. I leave and I'm in danger. So also just realizing the enormous stakes of making a decision to leave someone. I mean, obviously, this is a spectrum, right? There are, you know, there's leaving an emotionally abusive partner and then there's leaving a physically abusive partner. But yeah, just sort of realizing like all of the, all of

the factors that are in play that make it about so much more than like whether someone's willing to leave or stay. Right. And, you know, and like, obviously, obviously all of this is discussed in relation to your family, in relation to this case and in relation to what type of protections the constitution provides for us. But like, I don't want this, like, I feel like we're talking about this and people are gonna be like, God, I'm not going to see this show. This is like, holy shit. I can barely get through this conversation.

But I just want to make clear there's a lot of levity. There's a lot of fun in the show. There's comedy. There's, you know, there's provocative things. And you bring a high school student up to debate with you on whether to abolish a constitution or keep the constitution. on whether to abolish a constitution or keep the constitution what are the benefits of keeping it because there are people that are protected that would be harmed if you abolish it in the interim of creating the new one like it's all very fun and good and exciting there's a gay man on stage that comes out and talks you know there's a lot there's something for everybody there's

there is something for every i mean i hope i did it and it is also very funny i mean i really thought it was going to be a comedy when i started like i said i thought just like the 80s permed hair and the the fun 15 year old girl and i thought it would be like a cheeky comedy or something and i think that spirit remains no no i think structurally it's uh not a it's not a tragedy it's not a drama i mean no you know structurally the arc is you start where you start you move through you know sort of the the impetus for the conversation then you end up you know kind of like uh united with a 14 year old talking about you know mundane things in a way yeah exactly yeah and she's fantastic and also hilarious i

don't i don't i don't i don't think I saw it with the one who was in the special. Did I? I think I saw it with the other one. So both you can actually see. So Rose Delly, who originated the part, is is in the film. And then you can also see Thursday Williams, who performed with us at New York Theatre Workshop and on Broadway, who's really a killer debater. at New York Theater Workshop and on Broadway, who's really a killer debater. Terrifying. Like when she showed up in the room,

she came in to audition and said she just got done debating at NYU Law School and she'd been in the Sonia and Celina Sotomayor Institute. And, you know, she explained strict scrutiny to us and we were like, oh no, this girl's like the smartest girl you've ever met. And she really upped the, the debate got a lot better when she joined our team. And so you can see her debate too, actually. At the end there.

Yeah, at the end. And then you can click on another special material and you can see me debate to abolish the Constitution and Thursday debate to keep it. Oh, okay, great. Yeah. see me debate to abolish the constitution and thursday debate to keep it oh okay great yeah yeah i think like my inability to debate speaks to like my uh emotional uh sensitivity and immaturity and slight propensity for abusiveness because within two turns of a dip of a debate i'm like go fuck yourself you know what the fuck who the fuck are you? Who are you? Yeah.

That's not debate. You won't win the debate that way. I know. It's ultimately childish business. I've been doing EMDR a bit. You know that? Oh, my mom has been doing that. She says it's fantastic.

Oh, has she? Oh, good. Yeah. Around her childhood trauma? Yeah.. She says it's fantastic. Oh, has she? Oh, good. Yeah. Around her childhood trauma. Yeah. She's found it really helpful. It's good if you have real incidents. For me, it's like the childhood stuff.

I've done a little bit on that, but it's sort of broad. Like it's emotional neglect and inconsistency and chaos. But just working it around like lately I've been doing it around that last week of Lynn's life when she was sick in the house you know here not knowing that she was dying and you know treating it as like a flu or something and then you know eventually you know on the day that she was supposed to go to the doctor you know she collapses and that was the end of it. So like, you know, the feelings around that are so specific.

And so I've been doing it around that and it is helping me, I think, integrate it, you know, so I can just, you know, live with the loss, you know, but, but I think it's very effective for that kind of stuff. If you have a point of entry. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that makes a lot of sense i i um i actually my mom taught me this thing which i don't which is called uh it's sort of silly but it's called a butterfly hug where you put your you cross your arms like this on your chest and do this oh yeah, yeah. And I have actually found it somewhat helpful. Where'd you learn that?

Is that from when you were a kid or is it a new thing? No, no, it's a new thing. It may be related to her. EMDR thing? I can see that. With the EMDR, I'm not sure. But it's like somehow it kind of grounds you, I think. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you go like this, yeah. And it kind of. Wow, that's interesting yeah because the emdr i do is not with the light thing with the moving eye movement it's like these buzzers that you hold there's a couple of different machines and i'm not exactly sure that i understand the magic of it but it seems to do something the process of it does something so when before you did this show you you worked with Annie Baker though, right? On a big thing. Yeah, we've done, I was in her play, Circle Mirror Transformation, which was

sort of her first big breakout play in New York in 2009. She actually wrote a part specifically for me, which was a great honor. I actually, at the time I met her, she was like a 25 year old kid who like came up to me at a theater and said, she had her like beautiful long hair and her little converse. And she said, she introduced herself and said she was writing a part for me. And I was like, okay, thank you. That's very sweet. Yeah. Thank you little girl. That's nice. Yeah. Good luck. And then of course she turned out to be this bona fide genius. I know. I've interviewed her.

I like her stuff a lot. I know. I love that episode. I listened to that episode. And then we worked together. I mean, we're good friends, but we also worked together on I Love Dick. We wrote an episode of that show together called the short history of, of weird girls, which was,

is still one of my favorite things I've ever written and working with her was really fun. I was in and out of that series. I should go watch it. Yeah. Short history of weird girls. A short history of weird girls. All right.

How's Annie doing? She's great. She also, she has a new, not, not as new as mine, but she has a beautiful daughter. Oh, that's nice. And I get, yeah, I get to, we live fairly close to each other, so I get to see her. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

You theater people. Yeah. Sticking together. We do stick together. And I have to, like, I remember vaguely, I think I remember, maybe I just read it. But you won an Obie Award for your performance, or that play won an Obie Award? Yes.

Yeah, that, yes. I won an Obie Award for the performance, and then the play won as well. And that was your second one? Yes. I won, a few years earlier, I had done a play called The Drum of the Waves of Harakawa, which is a 17th century Japanese play by this guy, Chikamatsu.

I had done downtown. Was there Suzuki in it? There was actually no Suzuki in it. We issued Suzuki for that production. Outside of Suzuki, what was your other primary training as an actress I I mean I didn't actually I mean I I took acting all through college because I majored in theater and then when I lived in Seattle I studied there was a great Russian teacher there Leonid Anisimov who came and taught for almost six months in Seattle, taught Stanislavski and sort of claimed, I think it's probably true, Stanislavski's later writings were not translated.

So Stanislavski, who founded what we know as modern acting, apparently he had this whole new way of teaching at the end of his life that, that, that Leonid was supposedly teaching. And it was a really beautiful method. And then I studied with this other Russian guy, Gennady. So he had the untranslated writings. He knew. Apparently. He's like Joe Smith in the plates. Apparently. Yeah.

Got it. I mean, who knows if he has them or not? I mean, there's so much lore in Russia. There's so many things that have to be passed around. Yeah, yeah. And then I studied also this kind of Meyerhold technique with another Russian teacher who came to Seattle. And then the rest of it. What kind of hold?

Meyerhold? What is that? and then and then the rest of it i just kind of hold my hold what what is that meyer holds who was a also a famous famous uh russian actor um and acted with stanslavsky and uh had a another kind of method that was a more physical method of acting that he he developed it's interesting that like you seem to you you've got, you, you bypass the whole Americanization and legend of, you know, method bullshit and somehow managed to tap right into a direct descendants of the source material in Seattle.

So you didn't have to go through that whole fucking ego cluster fuck of the Strausberg, uh, when handman, it's true, Stanfordynn Handman, Stanford Meisner and their fucking people. You were like, nah, I got done. Yeah, I never took a Meisner

class. Yeah. Apparently I got the direct. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, but again, everyone's taking the claims. You got the pure stuff. I allegedly got the pure shit. One generation removed. But it was close.

It wasn't like some second generation Jewish guy that came up through the Lower East Side and decided that he was an acting wizard. Good. Not that I have anything against them. No, I know. They were great acting teachers. They were great. Those Americans. Yes, they're just all great people. I'm just full of the beans sometimes. I like throwing mythic people under the bus for a second.

No, they should be thrown under the bus. A little bit. That's what I say about my Russian acting teacher. I think he was the real deal, but who knows, right? Everybody is just making shit up and pretending like they're the expert. I don't know if he was the expert, but I liked him. And I do feel like I still have my notebook from that class, and I refer to it a lot. That's good. You got a craft in place.

And how many plays have you written outside of what the Constitution? place and how many plays have you written outside of uh what the constitution um probably i've had four produced in new york and there's probably 12 there some of which i i did in seattle and some of that have never been produced okay i want then one last question like are you are you bummed you didn't win the Pulitzer? Because that must have been a hell of a day. I mean, you got to be a little bummed. I mean, it's like you're so close. Somebody somebody wrote, you know, I've been getting a lot of hateful comments because I call the Constitution a living document in this ad. So on Facebook, the liberty people yeah a lot of a lot of conservative

and and people who consider themselves originalists i guess have been just calling me like a moron and a communist and all these things and um someone really wrote a long thread about how i lost the Pulitzer. And that should disqualify me, I guess, from speaking about anything. It's amazing the research these fucking monsters will do. Like they could be putting their, you know, their anal weird compulsive behavior to such good use, but it's like, no, let's teach the lady on television a lesson. Yes, yeah. The person compared it to the Titanic's like, no, let's teach the lady on television a lesson. Yeah.

Yeah. The person compared it to the Titanic saying like, well, you don't like congratulate the captain of the Titanic because the Titanic went down. I guess my Pulitzer nomination is like that because I didn't win. Yeah. I mean, of course, I wish I had won. It would be really fucking awesome to say I was a Pulitzer winner. fucking awesome to say I was a Pulitzer winner, but the woman who won Jackie Sibble's Drury is, um, uh, Jackie Sibley's Drury, I just mispronounced her name. Um, she's,

I mean, I couldn't lose to a more brilliant person and that makes it a little easier. I think if I had lost to somebody I didn't respect so deeply, I wouldn't. Oh no. And it's great that you were, you know, recognized and all that. It's so unnerving that people, how people focus on, you know, one thing to attack an entire lifetime of work without taking into consideration or even knowing what people really do. It's such a gross element of our current culture. But I love the work and it was great talking to you. Nice seeing you again. Nice seeing you too. Thanks for having me on. It really truly is a pleasure.

I'm a big fan of your show and it was exciting to get to do this. I'm excited for you. And I thought it was exciting. Got some good laughs. You're a good laugher. That makes me happy. Say hi to Annie Baker for me.

I will. All right. Take take it easy bye-bye okay as i said before what the constitution means to me is now streaming on amazon prime no music today i'm not at home boomomer lives La Fonda lives Monkey lives I'm just hoping for okay That's it Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode

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