Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. On today's show, we'll hear from Richard Price, the author of the novel Lazarus Man, who recently joined us at this month's Get Lit with All Of It book club event at the New York Public Library, along with jazz musician Anthony Hervey. We also have debut novelist Eiren Caffall. She'll be here to talk about her new book, All the Water in the World. That's the plan. Let's get this started with the one and only Gypsy. Take it away, Audra McDonald.

[MUSIC - Audra McDonald: Everything's Coming Up Roses]

I had a dream, a dream about you, baby

It's gonna come true, baby.

They think that we're through, but baby,

You'll be swell, you'll be great

Gonna have the whole world on the plate

Starting here, starting now,

Honey, everything's coming up roses.

Alison Stewart: Gypsy, based on the true story of a momager who wants stardom for her two daughters, is back on Broadway, this time starring my next guest, Audra McDonald, and Joy Woods. Audra plays Rose. She's tough as nails with dreams of getting her girls on the biggest stages during the Great Depression. Joy plays her sweet daughter Louise, who stays in the background until she discovers that exotic dancing is her way to becoming one of the biggest burlesque stars of her day. That's what Rose wants, right? Maybe not. With a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Gypsy is filled with classics from Together, Wherever We Go, Rose's Turn, and Let Me Entertain You. Gypsy has been on Broadway five times, but this time with Black actors in the lead roles, it adds a whole new layer to the script. The reviews have been stunning, and we're pleased to welcome Audra McDonald back to the show. Hi, Audra.

Audra McDonald: Hi, Alison. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing well. Joy Woods. It's really nice to meet you, Joy.

Joy Woods: Nice to meet you, too, Alison. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: Audra, when did the park come to you?

Audra McDonald: Well, it first came to me, not in any official capacity, but a friend of mine, Late Gavin Creel, who just passed away this fall, a very dear friend of mine, who was over at our house for Thanksgiving about it eight years ago. When he walked in, he said, "Honey, I want to talk to you about something." Then after dinner, he dragged me into my garage. He's like, "Honey, here's what I want to talk to you about. I think you need to play Rose in Gypsy. I think you need to do it. You just need to do it. It should be a Black woman. It should be a Black woman. It should be you. You need to do it. You need to do it."

He just had had a vision and was just absolutely determined, and that's what got the ball rolling. Then conversations began shortly after that with the estates to make sure that they were interested, and they were. Stephen Sondheim was alive at the time. He said, "I think that's a brilliant idea." Then it took a while to figure out who the right person to direct it was. I knew in my heart that it needed to be George. The estates agreed. That took eight years, but here we are.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Gavin was such a sweetheart.

Audra McDonald: Yes, he was.

Alison Stewart: Joy, you were working on The Notebook when you realized that this was going to be you, your job. You win, you win the audition. What was it like to work between the two shows?

Joy Woods: I think the most difficult thing during that time, rehearsing the show during the day and doing the other at night, probably was just getting enough sleep to show up and be present for both. It was definitely the first few phases of that process was finding the similarities between the two and then trying to separate them as individual people, Allie and Louise, because they're both young women that have a moment in the show where they have a self-actualization moment and come into their adulthood or just personhood. It was very interesting to go from one chapter of your life to the next in such a way. Sleep and eating and water are important. Definitely the main thing.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn about yourself as you had to go between these two shows?

Joy Woods: That I don't sleep enough. [laughs] Other than that, George C. Wolfe, who directed the show, made it very clear often throughout the process that I needed to work on taking up space and just was very kind and gracious about giving me words of encouragement and self-confidence. I know that it's something I have to continue to work on throughout our career, as any of us do, as insecure artists that rip their wrists open and bleed all over the stage for people and hope that they like it.

Alison Stewart: It's so interesting you should say that because, Audra, I follow you on Instagram, and you had this great speech that you gave for-- It could be for anybody, but I think it was for women mostly about not necessarily being liked. Would you share a little bit about that? I was going to get this later, but this is just too good.

Audra McDonald: I had some people come to see the show the night before, and it was a group of people. We had them in the front couple of rows of the audience after the show and they wanted to chat about it. One of them said, "My husband just-- He said, I don't really like her. I don't really like this character." In the moment, I said, "That's valid, but Rose is who she is." What I was saying on Instagram, the reason I felt compelled to talk about it was not to shame the person who made the comment because it's a perfectly valid comment. It's not the first time I've heard that comment either. It was more about what happened to me in that moment and in the hours following when I went home. In the moment, I immediately defended her and just said, "Well, she is who she is."

When I went home that night, I started thinking, "Wow, I'm glad I'm not 25-year-old Audra," because 25-year-old Audra would have totally been like, "Oh, God, what am I doing wrong?" I got to make her more likable. I got to make her more likable. How do I make her more likable." Because of the fact that I had the incredible opportunity of working with Zoe Caldwell years and years ago in the play Master Class and she became a mentor and a friend, a very, very dear person, important person in my life. She had come to see me do Marie Christine, which was a musical version of Medea written by Michael John LaChiusa and, of course, the great Zoe Caldwell, who had won four Tony Awards and was one of the greatest Medea's of our time, great classical actress, Shakespearean actress.

She came because I asked her to come early in the previews, and she came backstage afterwards, and after being very lovely, shut the door and stuck her finger in my face and said, "Stop trying to make the audience like you." It was a huge, huge, huge lesson for me. She said, "The point is not for the audience to like Medea, it is for them to understand why she does what she has to do." I wanted to relay that, meshed in this lesson with what had happened a couple of nights ago for Gypsy. You're not meant to like Rose. You're meant to understand why she does what she does.

It's interesting. I'm not going to go there, but in a sort of way, I will go there. You don't ever hear people saying, "Gosh, I just don't like Macbeth. King Lear, he's just an unlikable character." Because honestly, given that it's a patriarchy, it's not supposed to be a problem if you don't like male characters. Well, they're just doing what they have to do. God forbid it be a woman, then all of a sudden it's like, "I just don't like her. She's not smiling enough or whatever." It's like, neither did Macbeth, neither did Lear, neither did Richard III, half of these people.

We learn about ourselves as human beings. We learn about our own humanity through all types of behavior that are shown to us on stage. That is the point of the-- The Greeks got it right. The Greeks knew. This is how you're going to get this out so you don't end up doing all these horrible things. You're going to learn about who you are on the inside. It's our jobs as actors to understand who these characters are, defend them to the hilt, and play the role.

Alison Stewart: All right. Joy, you listened to what Audra said. My guests are Audra McDonald and Joy Woods. We're talking about Gypsy. Joy, when we meet Louise, what do you think is important to her?

Joy Woods: Keeping peace, keeping the kids in check when Mama isn't around. I think when we meet Louise at my age, it's just before her birthday, and then we see her on her birthday, and they ask her to make a wish and blow out candles. I have a very specific picture of what I imagine in my mind when I go to blow out those candles and what I want from that day, just one specific thing. I think the rest of the show, she's trying to get that picture.

A kid wants to be an astronaut someday, and it's so far away. It seems so out of reach, but they still wish for it. In Louise's mind, it's just Mama standing behind her, showing her what her dreams are and Louise being included in that. It's just her wishing to be included in other people's dreams. I think that's where we meet her, and that's where we see her fight for and then slowly release the need for that, to be happy in the show. That's the coming into herself that I think Louise goes through.

Alison Stewart: Audra, when we meet Rose, what is the most important thing to her?

Audra McDonald: Finding a better life for herself and for her children. She's running them around to all these little kitty shows and performances, and performances at her father's lodge hall and whatever. If you want to look at it historically, there were Black lodge halls too at the time. I think the other thing that Rose wants, and that's a lot of hers throughout the entire show, she wants to reconnect with her mother. Her mother isn't dead. Her mother just has moved on. I think part of Rose wanting to make sure that these kids have something and become something, instead of some girls who cook and clean and sit and die, which she says, especially because they're Black girls. She doesn't want that for them. She wants more from them, therefore, for herself.

In doing so, she might get the recognition of her mother. I feel like she has this dream of her mother coming to see June at a show on the Orpheum Circuit somewhere and saying, "This is my granddaughter. This is my daughter. These are my girls." I think there's that wound that Rose very much wants healed. At any rate, she understands that on this particular day at the Uncle Jocko show, she just goes, "We cannot stay here. Staying here, sitting and dying here is going to be nothing but death. It's going to be death for me and for my girls," in a figurative sense. Death of a dream. Death of the ability to thrive. "I'm not going to do that." She says, "I'll be damned if I'm going to let them sit away their lives sitting in isolation at any point."

The thing is, Rose has done all the things that a good woman at that time should have done. She did get married. She did have kids. She got married. That didn't work out. She had a kid. Then that husband left her. Got married, had another kid, had this super, supernova, birthed this supernova, that is June. That husband left her. Got married one more time, still didn't work. What she does know is these kids could be that ticket, and they have something special. She's got this supernova in her care. What is she going to do to thrust that upon the world and make them shine and thrive and move beyond?

That's what she wants at the beginning of the show. She doesn't even know how she's going to get it. What's very interesting to me with Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne was the way the music is created. Basically, everything she says in that first scene, she makes happen. Every single thing. "I'll get that money somewhere. I'm going to get my kids out and they're going to be stars. We're not going to sit here and die. We're not going to do it." Everything that she says and speaks into existence comes to fruition, for better or for worse.

Alison Stewart: Joy, you were talking about that scene where it's Louise's birthday and she's off to the side. I guess it's stage right, left. She looks very sweet. She's got her lamb and her toys and she's singing Little Lamb about. It's so beautiful, and it's such a soft song. What does that moment tell us the audience about Louise?

Joy Woods: What does Little Lamb tell the audience about Louise? I think what that song is meant to-- the message that the audience is supposed to get from that is that she is not okay with the happenings that go on that don't include her. She has all those stuffed animals and the gifts that she got from her birthday and sings to them as if they're her friends because they're inanimate and they can sit and listen to her and engage with her in ways that the actual people around her don't seem to have the time for.

At first, it's a happy thing. I think in the song, there's a turn where she's asking one of the inanimate objects, "You look sad. Is it your birthday, too? Because I'm also very sad. It's my birthday. I thought today would go differently, and my wish did not come true." That just moment of trying to remain happy, trying to make it work, and then that facade cracking and you seeing that it actually has affected her deeply. Then the next scene, she moves on. She's happy. She's doing something for Mom. She's holding another animal and just being okay with what goes on. I think that's a very wonderful beginning to Louise's journey and to see a foreshadowing of how she has to rip. She has to grab people by the collars and say, "Look at me."

Alison Stewart: Audra, there's a whole other layer to this show with the leads being black. It's incredible, actually, because as you really start to think about what it means for Rose, it means for her to take care of her children during this period. What is a decision that you made for your character, that you made for her, considering that this Rose is a Black woman?

Audra McDonald: Well, there's so many different decisions. I'll speak to two of the decisions that she makes. One is a decision I think made out of incredible luck, kismet, convenience, whatever you want to call it. She meets Herbie and is like-- We play it in the show that by the time we get to this particular theater where Mr. Weber, she keeps hounding the theater owner there, and he's just trying to get her out of his face. I don't think she thinks she's going to be very successful with that, but she's going to keep trying because she doesn't have an off button. She knows she's going to keep trying, keep trying.

Then Herbie comes into the picture and she sees that he sees her. That's the first thing. Mr. Weber doesn't see her. He sees a tornado, a black tornado who he's got to get out of the way and try not to have an altercation. Herbie sees Rose, and because he sees her, Rose seizes upon that opportunity. She's taken aback by the fact that he sees her and still wants to be in her presence even though she is a Black woman, which makes her think, "Huh, what's that matter all about? I see you seeing me. I'm going to grab on in whatever way I can." That's one decision that she makes as a Black woman, seeing that she's being recognized.

Another one which is very, very harsh is what she chooses to do with the little Black boys when they start to grow up, that she decides to make the act look like an all-white act. Up until that point, you don't see where they're performing really, because then we just have June in the front who's this very, very light-skinned Black girl who could pass as white and these little Black boys behind them. That was not all that unusual. In different places and vaudeville theaters that they could have performed, not only Orpheum Circuit, because you see, they're not on the Orpheum Circuit yet.

Herbie comes into the picture, and those kids start to grow up. Rose realizes that if she can make the act look more-- the radio trying to give air quotes, but-

Alison Stewart: We got you.

Audra McDonald: -"palatable" to a mainstream audience to get her on the Orpheum Circuit, she's got to switch it up. There was only one Bert Williams. There was only one Aida Overton Walker. There were very few opportunities for Black people to actually get on the Orpheum Circuit. Usually, it was just one act per show, whatever. The very harsh choice that she makes to yank those Black boys out of the show and replace them with white boys and basically step over into, "These are all white kids, all American white kids. I've got my little white girl "dressed up as the Statue of Liberties," belting hide seas, and I've got one kid that looks like Franklin Delano Roosevelt." No, not FDR, the other one, Theodore Roosevelt. You got one looking like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. I'd done before with my little Black boys when I thought that was cute when they were growing up, so I got to make them all white."

Then the other harsh thing she does is she takes Louise, pulls her out of the act, and puts her in the rear of a cow, so she's now hidden. This is now, for all intents and purposes, a white act. Then what's the first thing that we see happen to them after it becomes a white act? They get on the Orpheum Circuit. Those are harsh, harsh choices that Rose has made that she felt she needed to make. Again, in her mind, all for her kids, even when they auditioned for Mr. Gretzinger's Palace Theater, and the secretary is saying, 'Yes, all he wants is June, and you, mother." You also have all these wonderful lines of, "That's the mother. That's her." Whereas it may have had certain-- I'm sure it had layers when it was just a white woman playing it, saying, "She's annoying. That's the one I was telling you about."

If a white act comes in, and then all of a sudden this Black woman comes in and is not the maid or not just the help, "No, that's the mother. That's the one I was telling you about." The first thing they try and do is separate her from this. Once again, Rose makes a really harsh decision, maybe it's rash, to call him out on it and blow up an opportunity.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Gypsy now playing at the Majestic Theater. It stars Audra McDonald as Rose, the mom who wants stardom for her children, and Joy Woods is Louise, the wallflower, who makes it big in burlesque. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are Audra McDonald and Joy Woods. We are discussing Gypsy. All right. Louise in the first half of the show takes backstage. She's not a showstopper like June, but in the second half, Joy, you are a bombshell. You come out. First of all, how do you hide your talents in the first half of the show?

Joy Woods: I think the show was written well enough where it isn't something that I have to hide. I think there's a distinct difference between singing as an internal dialogue, singing out, Louise, singing out into the real world. I think the material does a great job at distinguishing between the two and what is what. The same goes for the dancing, what's happening in her head versus what's happening in real life. I guess that means I just am able to use a little less technique, I guess, and try a little harder to send a message that she's finding her bearings and getting into her body. Because these kids are growing up, they're going through puberty.

Alison Stewart: Sure.

Joy Woods: They're probably having growing pains. Their bones hurt, they don't know how to use their limbs. I'm pretty sure that Louise is no exception to that. That's more so of what is played into when she's growing up and coming into herself.

Alison Stewart: Audra, I wanted to ask you about the book because this is often called the great book for musicals. What is something that you as an actor would understand about the book? Why it's considered a great book that we non-musical people wouldn't necessarily understand?

Audra McDonald: I think I can best answer that by telling you what we did on the first day of rehearsal.

Alison Stewart: Sure.

Audra McDonald: On the first day of rehearsal, we were all gathered. After we did all the introductions and whatnot, George sat us all down, big tables where we were all facing each other. He said, "Okay, we're going to read this, but without music, but we're not skipping any of the lyrics when we get to the songs. You're still reading it. Read the lyrics." We read the whole thing tip-to-toe as if it were only a play. Joy, what do you-- I mean it--

Joy Woods: [laughs] We could have put that thing up that day.

[laughter]

Audra McDonald: That day.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Audra McDonald: It is seamless. It is seamless the way the dialogue goes into these songs. That's what's so brilliant about the book. Except for the fact that these legends of being Arthur Laurents and Steve Sondheim and Jule Styne, you almost cannot even see the connective tissue. When they are singing in the show, they are actually singing in real life. That's also what makes it so wonderful. That's what I would say. Then if you wanted to look just at the scenes, if you were to look just at the scenes, the stuff that is not sung, it's very lean. This is a lean, lean machine as far as the book is concerned. You were given very little dialogue and very little time and amount of lines in which to convey an emotion, to get to a thought, to have an idea, to react to something that has happened.

Arthur Laurents has made this very, very, very, very lean, which means there's not a lot of time for, I guess, doing obnoxious actory things. You've got to get to it, get to it. The amount of time that Rose and Herbie meet and find that they have an attraction and mutual interest, all of that is two pages at the most. It's so quick.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Audra McDonald: Also because the writing is so beautiful, they've done all the work for you. It's that great Terrence McNally line of follow the composer, the composer is God. The playwright can apply in many ways. The work has been done for you. It really has.

Alison Stewart: Audra, the last time you were on the show is for the Ohio State Murders by Adrienne Kennedy. It's a very serious and a very somber role. In this part, you really get to show off your comic timing. Is there any secret, is there any trick, is there anything people should know about comic timing?

Audra McDonald: I don't know that I'm the person to ask. The thing is, what I do know and what I have learned is that if you ask for the laugh, you're doomed.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow, that's smart.

Audra McDonald: Don't ask for the laugh. There is a great story. I don't know the name of the actors that were doing this, but basically, I want to say it was Maggie Smith. Maybe it wasn't Maggie Smith, and then maybe it was, I don't know, some other British actor. Anyway, someone said they kept-- In the scene, they were supposed to ask for the tea, but there was a laugh that they were getting and they stopped getting the laugh. The actress said to the actor and says, "Because you stopped asking for the tea, you're now asking for the laugh."

There is truth in comedy. There is truth, truth, truth in comedy. As long as you are staying in your truth, the comedy can come from that. The reason Rose runs on stage in the middle of their number, the kid's number, while they're auditioning is because she's freaked out that they don't necessarily think that it looks like a train. She runs out and says, "Woo-hoo, watch this. It's a train." She's really wanting to hammer home that this set piece that they have is a train, but she's doing it at a ridiculous moment. In Rose's mind, she's like, "Oh, God, is he going to know? Is he going to know?" She does the train, all that stuff, to try and telegraph to Mr. Gretzinger that that's what it is. The audience laughs, but in Rose's mind, she's not trying to get a laugh. She really wants to make sure he understands that's a train so you understand what this big dramatic finish is about. That's truth. You know what I mean?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Joy Woods: Like, everyone has stomach problems but me.

Audra McDonald: Yes, it's the same thing. Rose is dead serious about this. "How come I don't get stomach problems?" It's a completely inopportune moment and selfish thing to say in this moment. If I say, "Here, let me get a laugh at this point," it'll never, ever happen.

Alison Stewart: Joy, your character undergoes this transition from a nice girl, maybe a bit shy, to this va-va-voom burlesque dancer. As you said, she's getting older. She understands her body now. What do you understand about burlesque training from doing this show?

Joy Woods: I think working a crowd, for sure. Gypsy is known for her gimmick, being working with an audience and talking to them. I think I'm still definitely learning a lot and excavating what those strips really are because they happen so quickly. I think I'm still getting into the muscle memory of how the actual changes into one costume to the next goes. By the time I get out on the stage, I'm like, "Oh, my God, I made it. I made it. Let's just get to the next one." I'm in the process of learning how to slow down and be where I am in the moment. I think the most that you can do in burlesque is less and just pay attention to what's happening out there, because it's a conversation.

Alison Stewart: That was smart.

Joy Woods: Yes. Learning how to listen to them and respond in that way rather than just be a thing and show them a thing. It's film acting 101, but it's where I'm at right now. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: It's all good. It's all good. Audra, what is something that your director, George C. Wolfe, told you that you bring with you onto the stage every night?

Audra McDonald: Oh, that how long is your show?

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Audra McDonald: That's the great thing about George. I tell anybody who's about to work with George for the first time, I was like, "Either try and write down everything he says or record it all because they're all just these incredible gems and little nuggets of nuclear truth that you just want to hold on to forever." There's one-- [laughs] I don't mean for this to be funny, but this is the one that's in my head right now. Because as you start to run a show, you have to find different veins to open to get the emotion out night after night. Because we're doing it night after night after night, so sometimes you can dry up. George has a famous thing that he says. He says, "Remember, there are two pauses in the play, and neither one of them are yours." [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Yes, I like that.

Audra McDonald: Which is great, because what he's basically saying is, "Don't luxuriate in anything that's happening. You don't have to try to cry." He says, "You just have to use the language there that has been given to you, the great language, to get across what you need to get across to use that. Don't pause." He says, to quote Zora Neale Hurston, "You have to go there to know there. Don't feel like you have to find all the emotion first and then say the line." That's really powerful. He's like, "That's what that language is there for you to do." That's scary, as an actor. Like, "Well, I'm not feeling weepy yet, and yet I have to say this line of I'm so sorry." Just say the line. Go there to know there. The pause is not yours. Don't take that pause, and let the language do the work. Trust the language.

Alison Stewart: This is not a Gypsy question. Are you going to be on The Gilded Age when it comes back?

Audra McDonald: [laughs] Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm having a good time on that. Yes, yes, even though the corsets are very painful. Very painful.

Alison Stewart: Gypsy, it's at the Majestic Theater. I've been speaking with Audra McDonald and Joy Woods. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Audra McDonald: Thank you so much. Thanks, Alison.

Joy Woods: Thank you.