[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. Happy Monday everyone. Thanks for starting your week off with us. I'm so grateful you're here. Here's what's on today's show. First, we'll talk about new science that shows how menopause affects the brain. We'll speak with photographer Nona Faustine, who's the subject of a new exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. We'll talk about the history of pranks and practical jokes because, of course, today is April Fool's Day. That's the plan, and that's later. First, let's get this started with The Notebook.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: 20 years ago, the world fell in love with Noah and Allie and in love with their love story. I'm talking, of course, about The Notebook. Now, two decades later, you can see that love story play out on stage with brand new original music from singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson. The plot remains generally the same with a new book from Bekah Brunstetter. Noah is a working-class boy who falls in love with wealthy Allie. Their love is challenged when Allie's parents disapprove and when her mom of course hides all those dang letters. This staged version is moved up about 30 years and has an interracial couple at the center of the story.

The musical features relative newcomers to Broadway alongside veterans like Roots star Dorian Harewood. The musical is heartbreakingly honest about the challenges of loving someone with Alzheimer's. The Notebook Musical is running now at the Schoenfeld Theater. I am joined now in studio by singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson and co-directors Michael Greif and on Zoom, Schele Williams. Hi, everyone.

Ingrid Michaelson: Hi.

Michael Greif: Hi.

Schele Williams: Hello.

Kousha Navidar: Hi, Schele. Actually, let's go around the horn. Schele, I'd love to start with you. Did you first experience The Notebook by watching the movie or reading the book and were you a fan? Schele you up first.

Schele Williams: I watched the movie and I was a fan.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Michael, how about you?

Michael Greif: I read the musical and heard some songs before I watched the movie or read the book.

Kousha Navidar: [laughs] Introduction as a part of the job. Ingrid, how about you?

Ingrid Michaelson: I watched the movie with one of my best friends when I was, I don't know, in my early 20s and cried and cried and cried. That was my introduction.

Kousha Navidar: We actually have a similar story, you and I. All right. [laughter] What was it writing a Broadway musical that really attracted you? Was that something you'd always dreamed of? Was this a new aspiration for you?

Ingrid Michaelson: Well, I went to school for musical theater and I always wanted to be on the stage. Then I quickly realized that I didn't have that Broadway belty voice. I started to write my own music, and then singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson emerged. I never lost that love of musical theater. Yes, the older I got, the more I thought maybe if I can't be on stage, I can create something. I was asked by one of the producers, Kevin McCollum, seven years ago, I think now, about working on this, and here we are now.

Kousha Navidar: Seven years is a long time.

Ingrid Michaelson: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: What was that process like?

Ingrid Michaelson: Long. [laughter] Long and wonderful and because of COVID, it was definitely made longer. We had some time to really not be able to do much except work on Zoom, which was actually quite productive oddly, not musically, but for seeing work. We really got to see-- over Zoom, it really-- you get to see what works and what doesn't work dialogue-wise, let's say. We got to have some really interesting working time that I didn't think we were going to get because of that pause.

Yes, it's been just magical and wonderful and extremely collaborative with Bekah Brunstetter, the book writer, and Michael and Schele, director. Our whole team, it's just been a big ball of collaboration and rethinking things and going back to the drawing board and coming back with new ideas and always with the same vision, collective vision, though. That was really a cohesive thing that we all shared was this love of the story, telling the story in a really beautiful theatrical interesting way.

Kousha Navidar: Michael, when you hear Ingrid talk about that vision, does that resonate with you? What was your vision when you were thinking about it when you joined?

Michael Greif: Oh, absolutely. I responded immediately to-- Ingrid and Bekah had already started speaking about depicting Allie and Noah at three different times in their lives, as opposed to two different times, which other versions do. They spoke very passionately about wanting to make this a universal story and finding ways to make it the kind of production that lots of different people could come and see themselves on stage with. I also immediately loved that they were centering the old couple in a way that when I looked at the other versions, I saw just how original and specific their take was about that.

Kousha Navidar: Ingrid had mentioned something about taking a village and I think it's interesting this is a co-directing operation, right? Schele came on with you. What was it about Schele that you felt, "Oh, this is a partner in crime that I want."?

Michael Greif: Everything about Schele. [laughter] Schele and I have known each other for close to 30 years. We worked together closely on early productions of Rent, and I just knew that her sensibility would be perfect to complete this creative team. We really wanted a diverse creative team. I wanted to have a woman's point of view directing this musical, and I couldn't think of a better collaborator. I was completely thrilled when, first, Schele responded to the [unintelligible 00:06:01] the way I did, and then the producers and Bekah and Ingrid all responded so positively to Schele joining our team.

Kousha Navidar: Schele, would you say the same about Michael? Is it an equal love-love relationship for you co-directing?

Schele Williams: Oh, it's a complete love-fest. I respect Michael so much. He's a wonderful friend. He's a genius director. I learn from him every day. Some of my favorite musicals are musicals that he has shepherded onto the stage and have made remarkable impressions on generations. The opportunity to work alongside him and to grow as a director with him was certainly not one I was going to pass up. When I read The Notebook, it moved me so deeply and it really meant so much to me that Bekah and Ingrid, from the beginning, knew how important it was to ensure that more people could see themselves inside the story.

Kousha Navidar: When you talk about it moving you so deeply when you experienced it yourself, I saw a performance of it last week, which was lovely. Not a dry tear in the house, I'd have to say. A lot of expectations during intermission or before about what folks could expect because they had such deep relationships with this musical. Schele, I'm wondering, when you're adapting something as well-known and as well-loved as The Notebook, there are going to be people who come in with a really particular set of expectations of the show. You and Michael together, and Ingrid, what was your approach for dealing with that pressure?

Schele Williams: It's interesting. I don't know that we ever thought about it as pressure. What we approached the piece with was a great deal of respect because this story does touch on real people's experiences. Alzheimer's is a deeply personal and individual journey. We do have overlap, those of us who are experiencing it in our lives. We wanted to make sure that the show had some breath and some space and people could live inside it, and that's why I think it's different than other musicals. I was talking with Maryann Plunkett yesterday and she says, "I think of this as an offering." I thought that was such a beautiful word to describe what this is. People come to the show and I think sometimes they have a very big emotional response because we give them space to have their own memories inside it.

Kousha Navidar: That's really well said. One of the most moving songs that that makes me think of is I Want to Go Back which has the two younger Allies singing almost from within the mind of the older Allie about her descent into Alzheimer's. We have a clip of it actually, let's listen to it.

[MUSIC - Younger Allie and Middle Allie: I Want To Go Back]

Kousha Navidar: Like I was saying, this was one of those moments in the show that got a lot of people choked up. Ingrid, what were you trying to accomplish with that song? How were you thinking about it?

Ingrid Michaelson: Well, I didn't want our older Allie to sing while she was in this Alzheimer's state, which is not a state, it is what it is, right? This is not a spoiler alert, but in the movie, in the book, she has a moment of recognition near the end, but she doesn't really have any of those moments of recognition. I felt even though it's musical and we're singing on stage, something felt very false about having her character sing. I wanted there to be a fractal song of her younger selves and maybe possibly, this is what she's thinking. Is this what she's thinking?

Maybe it's something that we're mirroring onto her that we think that she's thinking, which I think is what we do a lot of time. I lost both my parents and my father had some dementia. I was projecting what I thought he might be thinking in moments. I wanted her two younger versions of herself to be singing these watercolor thoughts, memories, fractions of fractions of thoughts.

The whole time our older Allie is walking through her memories, the other characters on stage, and she's searching these faces that she knows and she remembers, but she doesn't remember. It's there for a moment and then it's gone. Marianna had a lot of great insight because her mother also had Alzheimer's. She felt like this was such a tribute to her mother to be able to climb inside that experience as best that she could as an actor. I just didn't want her to outright sing until she has a moment of clarity. That was how we got around that--

Michael Greif: That felt like such a completely right decision because singing comes from a place of interiority, of a place of full recognition. Either if you're singing about your own experience or you're singing to another person, you're singing from a deep place. The fact that she can only attain that depth when she regains some memory, I always felt like exactly the right choice.

Kousha Navidar: That term you used watercolor really struck me. To me, when I hear it, I think of the idea of a watercolor splatter edging out over a painting, taking on gradients, and how deals with memory. Is that a fair way of summarizing--

Ingrid Michaelson: Yes. The book and in our play, that character becomes a successful watercolor painter. We really wanted that to lace throughout the whole show and water being such a big part of our show with the rain and we have actual water on stage and there's something that is so-- memory and water to me feel very-- they're cousins in a way. You can't really grasp it, but you can. There's just something that's so-- I don't know what the word is about water and memory, but the two things together to me feel like they go together.

There's a wash. I read something and every time you remember a memory, you're actually remembering the memory of the-- remembering the last time you remembered that memory. There's layers and layers and layers between what you think you're remembering and what you actually are. That's that watercolor feeling, that blurriness that-

Kousha Navidar: Fluid.

Ingrid Michaelson: -fluidity.

Kousha Navidar: Schele, you mentioned in a piece with the New York Times that your own mother has Alzheimer's. We're talking about how deep these connections are, how singing comes from a place, Michael, like you were saying, of deep intrinsic motivation. What does hearing that song bring up for you?

Schele Williams: The incredible lyric, "I am still in here," is something that I hold onto as a daughter because I know she's still in there. What I need my mom to be in the moment may not be what she's capable of being for me. I have to get inside her world and allow her world to be my truth but my mother is still in there. That is such a beautiful cry I think that Allie has in this.

I think for any child who's navigating this journey to know that the person you love is still in there is so hopeful and so beautiful because every day is a new education. There's all these new phases and we have to keep growing. It's amorphous, just what Ingrid is saying. We have to be very fluid with this disease. Everyone who is loving this person that has this and the person that has Alzheimer's is navigating this world that is changing for them every day, and so--[crosstalk] Go ahead.

Kousha Navidar: No, please. Sorry.

Schele Williams: No, I was just going to say I think that my job as a daughter is to create a safe space, and to accept this reality, and to love the person that I know is still in there.

Kousha Navidar: Watching the musical through the lens of the personal experience some folks might have with Alzheimer's, dementia, or just being a caretaker, I think adds a lot. There's something that stuck out to me that I wanted to ask about, whether it was intentional or not. Schele, actors play multiple roles in this show. From Allie's perspective, who's dealing with Alzheimer's, it could be interpreted as people in her present sharing the faces as people she knew from her past.

I thought the acting casting choice was interesting because actors play multiple roles here. For instance, Allie thinks her nurse in the present is her mom, which is obviously not the case, but that character is played by the same actor who plays her mom. Reading into that, was that intentional? It seems like a beautiful choice. Can you just talk about that a little bit?

Schele Williams: All of it's intentional.

Kousha Navidar: [laughter] I'm happy I brought it up.

Ingrid Michaelson: We're all bursting. We're like, "Of course [unintelligible 00:15:55]"

Schele Williams: It's interesting. Sometimes my mom calls me the name of her sister. I know that's also someone she loves and someone that she's familiar with. All of those things actually happen all the time. It was really important to recognize the familiarity of a caregiver. That is also the position that a mother plays in her life. That was absolutely intentional.

Kousha Navidar: Michael, when you think about it taking a village, what do you think you brought to the table in terms of coordinating everything with Schele to make sure that these intentional choices had room to breathe, had room to come out?

Michael Greif: I'm hoping that I was very helpful in putting the piece together in terms of recognizing where we may need to spend a little more time, which other sections we could move through rather quickly with. I like to think that I'm good with structure.

Ingrid Michaelson: Helped me with a lot of song structure for sure.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, interesting. What specifically were some of the challenges in the song structure you worked through together?

Ingrid Michaelson: It's funny because while I am a musician, I barely read sheet music. I lost that many years ago. Michael speaks in a way that I understand. He's like, "This part needs to be a little bit longer. The words need to come faster. It needs to mirror the franticness that she's feeling because right now the words are too long and slow." I go off to the corner of the room, I figure something out. I come back, he's like, "Still more words. More words, more frantic." Come back. "Okay. There we get it." Then it makes sense with where she's coming out of the scene.

That's just one small example of a very specific memory I have of one of the songs and how it completely changed the whole beginning and how it becomes a patter song in the beginning with lots of words and it's spilling out of her. That wasn't my initial thought, but it made so much more sense coming out of the scene that she was coming into. Things like that were very helpful that Michael helped me with for sure.

Kousha Navidar: Was that a new muscle for you to play with [crosstalk]-

Ingrid Michaelson: Yes. I've never done this before.

Kousha Navidar: -on TV.

Ingrid Michaelson: I've never had homework assignments. You know what I mean? I've just written songs that are coming from someplace within me, and without a doubt, while these are homework assignment songs, we have to get the plot from A to B to B to C. My own life and my own thoughts and my own love and my own grief has been completely braided into all of the lyrics and the music as well.

Michael Greif: The thing that Ingrid is so remarkable about, I know Schele will agree with this, if you ask her to do something, she will find the completely unique personal way of dealing with it. It never feels like she's fulfilling an assignment. It feels like she's able to tap into her own artistry.

Kousha Navidar: Well, thinking about personal identity, thinking about identity in general, there's a question of race that comes up when we watch this show. Unlike the movie, which features a white couple, this version features interracial couples, the timeline has been moved up to the '60s and '70s instead of the '30s and '40s. Of course, race could still be an issue, and it definitely was in the '60s and '70s. Schele, Michael, I'd love to hear from both of you, what did you want to accomplish by centering this story on an interracial couple, or at least, how much was race a part of the conversations of the show? Schele, let's start with you.

Schele Williams: Race was always a part of the conversation because it can't be ignored. Every person that walks on that stage, we wanted them to present themselves authentically. It was our challenge to say, if we're going to do this in this way, where does a time period that feels appropriate? What was really interesting is we went on a deep dive, and there are these beaches along the Chesapeake that were Black beaches, interracial beaches, or illegal. However, there were these Black beaches that were alongside white towns, and they had these concerts and actually, had very beautiful, integrated communities.

It gave us a window into this plausibly happened in America. I have writings of people who are like, "I went to these beaches. I saw James Brown at Carr's Beach." There is a world in which this existed, where there was this affluent family that was a mixed family that she plausibly went to many restaurants along these beach towns that served a segregated population. We knew it could be plausible and it could be real in America in the right location, which is why we moved it to a coastal town and why we moved the time period. Then we said, "Now we have the opportunity to make this more universal for so many people."

Kousha Navidar: Michael, it sounds like what I hear from Schele is grounding it in reality all the time, trying to find the area where it's authentic, where it's true, where it could, like Schele said, plausibly happen, right?

Michael Greif: Absolutely, so people can really bring all of themselves to these roles. I also think moving the time period was remarkably beneficial, especially in the way in which the draft for Vietnam really separated economic classes. I remember my elder sister and her friends, and there being a real-time when that draft-- when those numbers came up and the effect it had on those lives and those families. I think one of the things that Beck has done so brilliantly is really separate those young men who could afford to not participate in that war and those that couldn't.

Kousha Navidar: We're talking about aging, and they're either in time period or just in the time of one's life. There's another clip I wanted to bring in a song that's specifically about aging. This is a song with all three Noahs. Let's listen to a clip.

[MUSIC - Dorian Harewood, Ryan Vasquez, John Cardoza: Time]

Kousha Navidar: Michael, you had mentioned a big choice in this musical being having three Noahs and Allies instead of two, as we saw in the movie. In this clip, we hear solo and we hear communal voices. Ingrid, this is a question that I had for you. How did you strategically think about when to solo a voice or when to have it be a backup or communal? We hear that interplay come in and out, and it seems to add to the story.

Ingrid Michaelson: In my mind, I had an idea of what was right, and then we would get in the room with the actors, and sometimes I was wrong, and we would figure it out with the actors and with Schele and Michael and Bekah. That's what I said earlier about full circle, the collaboration, and the collaborative cloud that we were in. I asked the actors, "What's working? What's not working?" We figured it out together, and it just became this really beautiful puzzle that we all figured out how to make these three voices all be unique in their own moment, but yet mirror each other and be very similar. It was trial and error and figuring it out together.

Kousha Navidar: I love the way this conversation is going. It's like every layer of community that it took to make this musical's branching out a little bit because now we're talking about the actors coming in. I guess, what made the team work together so well? Was it that authentic self? Was it just magic in the air?

Ingrid Michaelson: I don't know. This is my first musical. I just--

Michael Greif: It comes from a commitment to the material and a trust in how good the material is. It certainly makes me and Schele's job, or our job, a whole lot easier when everyone believes that what they're doing is of real quality and really worth spending our time. I also want to include Katie Spellman, our wonderful choreographer, who has really been important in the musical staging throughout. She's a very key member of this community.

Kousha Navidar: That's wonderful. Yes, go ahead, Ingrid.

Ingrid Michaelson: I know we're probably running out of time. I just wanted to say that while there is Alzheimer's and there is deep feelings, there's also young love, and there's also regret and there's also reuniting. I feel like one of the things about this story that I loved so much was that there are so many different entry points for people to connect and to see themselves and to see their loved ones. Then creating a palette of actors that look all different.

That just felt so universal and so beautiful to me. That story of young love and old love and commitment, it just is such a beautiful, timeless, universal story, and we all can connect to it in some way. I think everybody on the team knew that and felt that very strongly. Bekah and I wrote towards that. Michael and Schele and Katie moved the piece closer towards that, and we all were on this train together of, let's take this beautiful human story and put it on stage for beautiful humans to watch and experience together and have this cathartic experience together every night. That's what's been happening.

Kousha Navidar: Schele, I guess we'll leave with you. As you hear Ingrid talk about having all those different entry points for audience members, what do you hope people walk away with after they watch this musical?

Schele Williams: With a lot of hope. There's a lot of joy in our show. There's a lot of laughter. The first thing people people do. It's like within the first two minutes, you're laughing. That's what is so beautiful about the emotional journey of the show. Ingrid's got a song called Sadness and Joy, and that feels so true to life. It feels so true to, I think, the experience that we navigate as humans throughout our lives, but it ends with joy.

I think at the end of our journey, there is this-- some people have this cathartic experience, and they feel great emotion, but there is so much hope and so much love. Every time I watch the show, I think very deeply about the life I want to live, the choices I want to make, the impact I want to have on the humans that I've been blessed to touch every day, that every day is an opportunity to be better and to leave a great impression on this planet. I think that that is what I hope people walk away with, that they feel joy and hope.

Kousha Navidar: Well, The Notebook, the musical, is on Broadway now at Schoenfeld Theater. We've been lucky to be joined by Ingrid Michaelson, who wrote the music, Michael Greif, who is a co-director, and also has a lot going on right now as well. The Notebook, Days of Wine and Roses, and Hell's Kitchen, all projects coming, congrats on that, and Schele Williams, who's got The Wiz coming up as well. Congrats on that. It's playing right now at Schoenfeld Theater. Thank you all three so much for joining us.

Michael Greif: Thank you.

Ingrid Michaelson: Thank you.

Schele Williams: Thank you.

 

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