The People in the Picture:

The People in the Picture: A Conversation with librettist and lyricist Iris Rainer Dart On April 24 th, 2011 as part of Roundabout Theatre Company s lecture series, Iris Rainer Dart spoke about The People in the Picture with dramaturge, Ted Sod. An edited transcript follows: TED SOD: I m going to start by asking you about your childhood. I know that you were born in Pittsburgh, your dad was a social worker and that you made your debut as an actress in one of the first integrated theatres in Pittsburgh. IRIS RAINER DART: Yes, I acted at the Irene Kaufmann settlement. My father was a social worker in the Hill District later made famous by August Wilson and his plays. August Wilson grew up in Pittsburgh in the Hill District where my father was a social worker. In fact, I just found out that August Wilson always used Doctor Goldblum as a character in his plays and I use Doctor Goldblum in our show because there actually was a Doctor Goldblum. What stuck in my mind was that my mother was always trying to fix him up with my single cousin. It is probably the same Doctor Goldblum used by August Wilson. I look back on my childhood and I remember it as being very happy. I tried to figure out why that was. We had very little money. Social workers should be the ones making a lot of money and unfortunately are not the ones who do. When I think about it, it seems to me that we always laughed. The Yiddish culture and the Yiddish language are so full of humor that it made my childhood happy. I always tell the story about the mother who raised me and the sense of humor she had. One day I walked in and she was putting twenty dollars in an envelope for the Rabbi and that was a lot of money for us. I asked her, Ma, why are you giving the Rabbi so much money? She said, Last year when he asked for money, I gave him ten dollars. I said, But next year, if I live and be well, I ll give you twenty. With my luck, I lived. My father loved comedy and he had a great sense of humor. He used to call me down to watch when Selma Diamond was on the Jack Paar Show. She was this kvetchy lady who was a comedy writer. I used to think, Why does he want me to be Selma Diamond? I want to be Sandra Dee. TED SOD: Tell us about growing up in a family that spoke Yiddish because this is not something that happens nowadays. IRIS RAINER DART: No it isn t. My mother was one of nine children who came over from Russia and her sisters were her best friends. She spoke a lot of Yiddish to them when they visited or when they were on the phone. I would be sitting on the floor playing and listening to them. I didn t differentiate between what was Yiddish and what was English. Our next door neighbors were not Jewish and invited me to their house one time for dinner. Our neighbor said to me, What part of the chicken would you like, honey? and I said, The fliegel. She looked like she had no idea what I was talking about. I thought to myself that everybody must want the fliegel so I said, I ll have the pulke. She said, 1

Just point to it dear. Afterwards I had said to my mother, Why don t they know what a fliegel and a pulke are? I was shocked. Yiddish was just a part of my life. TED SOD: In the playgoers guide interview we did, you said you were the age of Red when you began writing this. IRIS RAINER DART: What I meant was that when I started this play, I was a comedy writer like Red and now I am Bubbie. It s true. I have two grandchildren ages seven and five. They live in Israel now but are here for the show. My grandson has seen the show. He was sitting down here and I was hiding up there. I was sobbing because I knew that it is very important to pass this and all my stories on to him. One of the actors told me that there were two women waiting outside the stage door who were American Indian and they said, Thank you for telling this story; we want to do this too; pass our stories on. When I was in college, I wrote our varsity musical and my writing partner was Stephen Schwartz. I was 19 and he was 16. He told me this story about Joe Stein who wrote the book for Fiddler on the Roof. When Joe Stein was in Japan with Fiddler, a Japanese man came up to him and said, How will the Americans understand this story. It is so Japanese. I hope we have that universal appeal too. I think we do. I think every Bubbie, Nonna, Grandma or whatever would like to think that her stories are being passed on to grandchildren. TED SOD: Why did you start writing it? IRIS RAINER DART: It s been so long I can barely remember. I started because I always like to write about what moves me. I was a terrible actress and an acting major in college. I had an acting teacher who said, The more specific you are the more universal you become. As an actress I didn t understand that but as a writer I did. My cousin and I were very close and our mothers were sisters. She said to me, When one of us dies, I hope it s me first because I couldn t live in a world that didn t have you in it. I thought that was such a moving emotion and, in fact, that day will come when we have to part. I wanted to tell that story and it became the story of Beaches. I wanted something emotional because that is where I start. I married a non-jew and we moved to a neighborhood that was particularly non-jewish. I immediately found a synagogue in the Carmel Valley where we live and I became a religious school teacher there. I mostly wanted to get my daughter to go to religious school by saying, Mom s going, so you have to go to. Since I was teaching at the school, I was on every Jewish mailing list and every Jewish catalog. One of the catalogues that came was the Ergo catalogue that had Jewish films in it. I ordered a bunch of these Jewish films; some with Molly Picon, some made by Americans in Poland. I sat down on my bedroom floor with a VHS and watched them all. I was weeping. The first reason was because I understood the Yiddish without the subtitles and hadn t heard it in so many years. The second reason was because it was a form of cultural resistance in the years from 1935-1939 when they were making these musical comedies in Warsaw in spite of everything that was going on for the Jews at that time. It was them saying, You don t want us to be Jewish? We are going to be even more Jewish. Watch this. They made these wonderfully funny comedies and it moved me. I said, I have to write about this. What would it have been 2

like to be an entertainer and then go into the Warsaw ghetto and then into the camps? Would you feel a responsibility to entertain? So, I called the USC Shoah Foundation which is Stephen Spielberg s group and I asked if they had any testimony from anyone who was a performer because I wanted to see what happened to that person. They said, We actually have someone who works in our office who is a survivor of Auschwitz and who was an actress. We will put you in touch with her. Her name was Silvia Grohs- Martin and I spoke with her. I was in Burbank at Denny s when I met her. Her given circumstances were such that I just burst into tears. We became very close friends. She came and stayed at my home for weeks. I helped her write her book called Silvie. I printed out 20 copies and sent it out to every agent and publisher I knew. She got a book deal and told me that she did perform in those places. She told me this amazing story from Auschwitz about two twin girls whose mother had just been taken away. They stood on a bench and sang My Yiddishe Momme. To get the true stories from somebody who had been there was extraordinary. TED SOD: You did an amazing amount of research for this piece. IRIS RAINER DART: I went to Poland, went to Warsaw, went to Krakow and went to Auschwitz. My daughter once said to me, Ma is there any book in your library that doesn t have the word Jewish in it? I could give my library to any of the Jewish libraries and it would be a profound collection of books. TED SOD: I sense it has changed your life. Can you tell us what it was like to live with this piece for as long as you have? What have you learned that was new for you? IRIS RAINER DART: I don t think anything I ve learned was new. We all grow and change; being a Bubbie changed me. One of my girlfriends who already had grandchildren said to me, You think you have fallen in love with your husband; but you haven t fallen in love until you ve looked into the face of your grandchild. I never could have written the song Child of my Child until I saw my grandson, Jonathan. When he cries, I cry. TED SOD: How did you find Mike Stoller and Artie Butler? IRIS RAINER DART: Mike Stoller has always been one of my favorite composers. I had just been ill with a big flu that laid me out flat on my back. I was reading a book about Irving Berlin and it said that Berlin was a tunesmith. He didn t know a lot about musicianship. He couldn t transpose one key to another. That was right before I went down to meet Mike. Mike was playing on a little, tiny keyboard. I always say that I felt like Lucy and he was Schroeder as I leaned on the little keyboard. He would write these tunes and just plunk them out for me. I asked him when I would hear the songs with both hands and he said, Not until opening night. Mike and I had written a few songs and I was so afraid that he wouldn t stay. I still couldn t believe that he said yes to me. I went down to Los Angeles. He was going through a Napster lawsuit and didn t have time to read the script so he said, Why don t you read it to me? I was just getting over the flu so with a lozenge in the back of my throat, I read the entire script to him. I had basically written it as a play even though I wanted it to be a musical. When I looked up, 3

he was crying. I thought, I think I got him. He said, Well, I m in with one foot. Let s try it. Every time my husband would say, Mike Stoller called, I would think that he was going to change his mind. I d call him back and Mike would say, Send me more. What are you waiting for? I want more. Finally, we had a few songs written that we liked and I suggested we make demos of the songs to start showing to people. I had met Artie Butler briefly through a friend and I asked Mike Stoller, Do you know Artie Butler and do you like him? in an email. He wrote back, I do know Artie Butler and I don t like him. I love him. He lives down the street from me and we ve been friends for 50 years. Mike said he would call Artie to ask if he would do some arrangements for us. Mike grew up in the black culture and wrote Hound Dog when he was 19. He and Jerry Leiber had been working together for 60 years so it was already a miracle that he said yes to me to write the lyrics. Mike said, Artie is much more Jewish than I am. He plays Bar Mitzvahs. Let me ask him not only to arrange for us but maybe he would co-compose. I said, I don t want to lose your voice. The way you write melodies is so special. He said, I promise you it will be seamless. So, Artie came on board and we did an early reading not long after that. Their wives came and neither of them knew who wrote which song. He was right; it was seamless. They are both wonderful and hilariously funny. The work is so much fun. We laugh so hard we can t speak most of the time. TED SOD: Did your agent bring the project to Leonard Foglia, the director? IRIS RAINER DART: Yes. My agent is the agent for Leonard Foglia and he said to me, I want you to meet this director and maybe he can help you put this together. Lenny read it and said he wanted to direct it. I was thrilled. I had seen Master Class and it was one of my favorite theatre pieces. I knew he had a lot of heart. TED SOD: How did it get to the hands of Todd Haimes here at the Roundabout Theatre Company? IRIS RAINER DART: We had done many readings that we put together ourselves and finally, I met Tracy Aron. I told her I was doing this reading and I had to rent chairs and find music stands. She said, Why don t you just let me do it for you. I said, Really? It was so wonderful and she said, I ll go to your agent, I ll option the piece and then you don t have to do any of these readings anymore. She really got it. The thing about notfor-profits that we have to remember is that we have to support them. Todd Haimes was able to take a risk with this piece. This is not something that was a movie like Catch Me if You Can TED SOD: or a comic book IRIS RAINER DART: right or Sister Act. Because we support not-for-profits, they are able to take risks. Believe me, I was an arts commissioner for the state of California for eight years and I know how arts groups are struggling. It s up to all of us here to support them. 4

TED SOD: You did readings here at the Roundabout and you were matched up with Paul Gemignani. IRIS RAINER DART: Yes. Paul Gemignani is wonderful. He s done 40 musicals and that s the guy you want to work with on your first musical. He had so many good ideas and was so funny and was our age, so he fit right in. TED SOD: How did you know when it was the right mix of people collaborating? IRIS RAINER DART: Paul Gemignani, the music director, brought so much to this piece and so did Andy Blankenbuehler who did the gorgeous dancing in this show. And of course there is our Italian, Catholic director Leonard Foglia who has been amazing. He has brought so much life to this piece. When he first read the script he said to me, This is my mother, my sister and my niece. I get this completely. You don t have to be Jewish. I was delighted to hear that. Everybody in this group gives a lot of attention to detail; Lenny, of course, does and so does Donna Murphy. I was on the phone with her and she said, Tell me about Raisel s childhood. What was it like at the dinner table? She wanted to know everything; nothing that you see onstage but what made that character that character. Her work is phenomenal. TED SOD: Tell me about working with Artie and Mike. When I approached Mike Stoller, he said to me, Are you sure I m the guy you want? He was thinking about his pop songs. I said, Didn t you write the song Is That All There Is? to which he said, Yes I did. I told him that was the feeling I wanted for this show. It s so European and melodic. You just know who your favorite composers are. He never disappoints me. Artie Butler works with music first. He ll say, Don t tell me lyrics. Just tell me what is happening in the scene, who the characters are and maybe what you think the title is. Then he d call me the next day and say, I was up at 4:00 in the morning, which is always a good sign. I live in central California and he lived in southern California so we would do this over the phone. We were like teenagers; we were so excited about everything. It was the opposite with Mike. I would send him the lyric and then drive about five and half hours down to Los Angeles once a month for three or four days. I d say, Did you do it? and he would say, Yeah, I did it. He d sit down at a little keyboard and he would play the perfect tune. I m not musical but if I was, it would have been the tune I would have written. When I look back, if someone would have said to me, Do you want to drive to L.A. once a month and have lunch with Mike Stoller and Artie Butler? I would have said, Yes. But to write songs with them; Mike and I would be on the phone for an entire day just switching words around. I used to call him the prince of patchke because he would be moving things around saying, No, put this here. Shouldn t it be 5

but instead of so? It was so happy-making because again they have a lot of attention to detail. TED SOD: There were so many times in this piece when I burst into tears because you capture human emotion in such an exquisite way. I want to talk about the song where Bubbie talks about losing her memory. IRIS RAINER DART: Selective Memory. TED SOD: Yes, which is something that all of us of a certain age are dealing with. Can you talk about it? IRIS RAINER DART: Well, I am 67 years old so that is one way that it came about. I do walk into the kitchen and don t know why I am there; quite often actually. TED SOD: I m also curious about the inter-generational story line among the three women. Was that something that you wanted to write about because you became a grandmother or did it just come about as you were evolving the story? IRIS RAINER DART: I called a woman who was at the Yiddish Institute at Brandeis. They had a film library there and I was asking this woman some questions. I asked, In the 70s, would there have been a film festival of some kind? and she said, No, in this very dismissive way. I continued with, Well, are you sure? Could there have been one? I was thinking about that being a part of the story. She said, Absolutely not. I said, Okay, but why are you so insistent on that? She replied, The 70s were too close to the war. They didn t want to talk about it. I can imagine and have also read that children of survivors didn t want to have to deal with it. I thought that was interesting. They also said that grandparents were freer to talk with their grandchildren about things than they were with their own children. It wasn t so loaded. The grandchildren were more open to hear the actual stories. That s what led me to the relationship between the grandmother and the grandchild; the daughter would be the conflict that came between them. AUDIENCE QUESTION #1: I live in Brooklyn and my grandmother lived with me my entire life. I had a thought when you were talking about the language and not knowing the difference between Yiddish and English. I recently had to ask older cousins, Did my Bubbie speak English? I wasn t sure and I couldn t remember. IRIS RAINER DART: What was the answer? AUDIENCE QUESTION #2: They said a bissel. I lived with her and I have her wedding ring on but I couldn t remember. It just related to what you said about the Yiddish and English languages overlapping. Also, I saw these ladies reaching for tissues and I didn t think I d need any but I did. I see the generational story as being very important. I got from my 6

grandmother stuff I couldn t get from my mom and my daughter has gotten stuff from my mom. I appreciated this play. Thank you. TED SOD: I think it is an interesting idea that both of you have talked about the freedom between grandparent and grandchild. IRIS RAINER DART: It was just less loaded that way. I don t think my Bubbie spoke English either as far as I can remember. AUDIENCE QUESTION #3: The set design is phenomenal. IRIS RAINER DART: I know. The designer is Ricardo Hernandez. I remember the first day I walked in and saw the model. I was just blown away. I think it is gorgeous and perfect. TED SOD: The use of picture frames is excellent. That is a collaborative process with the director. IRIS RAINER DART: I remember when Lenny Foglia was just beginning work on the show, he kept drawing little picture frames on the script. He said, I m a visual person, so I knew it would have something to do with frames. This is what happened and I think it is magical. AUDIENCE QUESTION #4: I grew up in Warsaw and my uncle was one of the organizers for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. My oldest brother, who was born before the war, was given away to woman for a period of nine years. After the war, she became our grandmother. She stayed in our country and was a really great woman. My parents spoke Yiddish in Poland and they came to the United States in 68. IRIS RAINER DART: Amazing. Thank you for sharing. AUDIENCE QUESTION #5: I did not know what was happening to me watching this show until my wife grabbed my hand because she could see how moved I was. I was holding back the tears. In the second half, you decided to have a family secret that was revealed. That just took the whole script over the top. It couldn t have been done without that; it wouldn t have been the same. What made you treat it as a family secret? IRIS RAINER DART: Well, I did so much research on these families and their lives were so complex after the war. There were so many good gentiles who helped these children and were a part of their lives. Coming back from that, every story I read was different and painful in some way, so I felt as though that could be the secret that they had. Also, in order to resolve the relationship, that story needed to be told. 7

AUDIENCE QUESTION #6: Was that story about the Polish family who took in the child based on anyone specifically? IRIS RAINER DART: No, not specifically; but there were many cases like that. AUDIENCE QUESTION #7: I live with my 95 year old mother-in-law who is from Poland and my wife takes care of her. I can t remember the last time I was sobbing in the theatre. It just doesn t happen to me and I was surprised by the way the story developed. How did you have the courage to include the scene with the Polish family and the separation of the child from that family? I thought it was emotionally wrought. When you are producing a musical comedy, there might be people telling you to avoid that. But it was very significant and indeed deepened and broadened your story. There must have been pressure for you to lighten the tone. How did you resist that and why? IRIS RAINER DART: Well people always ask me, Do you write comedy or do you write drama? and I say, I write about the human condition which is ultimately funny and tragic; sometimes in the same moment. I would have been cheating the story and the character of Red if I didn t go into that story. That s what makes Red who she is. Ripping her out of the hands of those people and pretending they didn t exist is what made her who she became. AUDIENCE QUESTION #8: I m curious about how long it took to make the piece? IRIS RAINER DART: It took 15 years. I measure it by daughter who was 10 and now she is going on 26. TED SOD: You tell a wonderful story about your husband. IRIS RAINER DART: Yes. We would talk about it all the time and my husband would always get very quiet. I asked him why he would always clam up when I started talking about the musical and he d said, Why would I want you to work on a project that would take you away from the family? You would have to be in New York. I told him, By the time this musical sees the light of day, our daughter Rachel will be in college in New York and you will want to go there. Of course, Rachel has since graduated from Tisch and Rachel always says, Who called it? Mom called it. Here we are all these years later and Rachel is done with college and living here. My husband wants to come to New York all the time to see her; so it worked out perfectly. 8