[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart who's on medical leave. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. I'm glad you're here. Coming up on today's show, I'll speak with the playwright and choreographer of the new dance musical, Illinoise. It's now at the Park Avenue Armory, but they just announced that they are moving to Broadway. Very exciting. Artist Rusty Zimmerman will join us to discuss why he paints free portraits of South Brooklyn residents, and author Percival Everett is here to discuss his new novel, James, which is out today. That's the plan, so let's get started with a new play about a vanishing performance artist.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: In the new play, The Seven Year Disappear, a famous performance artist named Miriam vanishes just as she's about to announce her next big piece. She leaves behind her son, Naphtali, who is also her manager. Naphtali is stunned. He has no idea where his mom went. She stays away for seven years, and when she returns, she finds her son to be a very different person. Naphtali is played by actor Taylor Trensch, and we really stay with Naphtali's story as we learn what he goes through in the wake of his mother's absence.

Get this, everyone else Naphtali interacts with in this play, from his mother, to his lovers, to his friends, well, they're all played by Cynthia Nixon who shapeshifts from character to character. The play is written by Jordan Seavey and is staged almost like a performance piece in itself. There are video cameras, and portraits, and standing mics all utilized throughout the play, which really adds to the meta-commentary at work. The Seven Year Disappear is running now at the Pershing Square Signature Center through March 31st. I'm joined now in studio by star, Cynthia Nixon, Taylor Trensch, and playwright Jordan Seavey. Hello, everyone.

Cynthia Nixon: Hello.

Taylor Trensch: Hi.

Cynthia Nixon: Thanks for having us.

Taylor Trensch: Thanks for having us.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Four people in one studio. I think we call that a party. [laughter] This is exciting. Question for all of you to start. This play is about art and family, and in this play, those two things are really intertwined. What role did art play in each of your own lives growing up and in your family life? Jordan, we can start with you.

Jordan Seavey: Oh, sure. Well, so my mother was not a famous performance artist. However, she was a professional clown. She started as an actor, became a Fulbright scholar in mime in France, and that led her to clowning, clown college. She was in a circus for a while. By the time I was conscious, really, four or five years old, she had become a traveling performer. She took shows to colleges, and camps, and schools, and also what they call a party clown. She literally hosted parties. She actually opened up her own party place where she would host the party and she would also perform.

I grew up watching her perform a lot. She also gave me the gift of taking me to a lot of theater. I grew up in Brooklyn. I was really into visual art at the time, so she also put me in classes at the Brooklyn Museum. I was a big drawing kid. I was just so lucky to have it in my early childhood.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, it sounds like performance art right from when you were born was part of your own life. Taylor, how about you?

Taylor Trensch: I'm sort of an anomaly, I guess. Although my mother did sing Day by Day in her high school production of Godspell, not to brag. The story is, I don't know if I believe it, but I was five years old and read in the newspaper in the Tampa Bay Times that they were having auditions for The Wizard of Oz at our local community theater, and I loved the film so I begged my parents to take me and did theater ever since. No one else in my family was really all that interested in it, I think, until I started doing it.

Kousha Navidar: The opposite of Jordan, actually. That's interesting.

Taylor Trensch: Yes, for sure.

Kousha Navidar: Cynthia, how about you?

Cynthia Nixon: I guess a version of what Jordan said. My mother had been an actress, not a successful actress, but she'd gone to Yale Drama School. Paul Newman was one of her classmates. They did Laura and the gentleman caller in class and stuff. She studied with Uta Hagen. Then she tried really hard to be an actress for like 15 years and just did not have any success and finally gave it up, and then decided that if she wasn't going to have that in her life, she was going to have a kid and she had me. I was taken to Shakespeare in the Park from age six on. We were a musical comedy household, Sondheim all the time, Rodgers and Hammerstein all the time.

We would spend a lot of time going to plays and also seeing films old and new but particularly old, and dissecting them and figuring out not just that was fun, but actually, what worked and what didn't work. This story is very familiar to me. I think Taylor and I were both child actors. I think there is a kind of a-- no one in my family was in the circus, but my wife calls it circus family. We have our younger child, he has two dads, and one of them is, in fact, an actor and a mime.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, okay.

Cynthia Nixon: I think that I always longed for a circus family, and I had a version of that growing up.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. That idea of dissecting, I think is so interesting because this play dissects a lot in terms of performance art. Jordan, this play is about performance art and it pokes a lot of fun at performance art culture. What's something you really wanted to satirize about performance art and performance artists, maybe not mimes or clowns but all kinds of performers?

Jordan Seavey: Sure. I didn't necessarily set out to satirize. I think art world satire is a bit baked in, yes. I love art and I love theater. I'm also in art and theater, and it's really hard to make new art. The worlds around artists are full of huge personalities who will often have to do whatever they can to make it because it's so hard to make it. I think I do a lot of thinking about why we make art, and why I'm pursuing it in my life, and the joy of the communities that make it, and the world is a little ridiculous. I guess I'm interested in the ridiculousness, and the warmth, and the love of the art world and the theater world.

Kousha Navidar: Is that idea of ridiculousness, but also big personalities what drew both of you two, I'm pointing to Taylor and Cynthia right now, about this play? Cynthia, let's start with you.

Cynthia Nixon: Yes, definitely. I feel like it's such a fascinating play. It's such a wild ride. Certainly, being able to play all these characters was really fascinating to me. I feel like, yes, in families, in theater families or art families, it is the family business, and it's really hard to draw the line between what is your work/art, and what is your family life, personal life like Nora Ephron, who was the daughter of screenwriters herself, would famously say, "Everything is copy. Everything is material for the art that you make."

When we would workshop, Taylor and I have been connected to the play for a number of years, I would talk a lot about Judy and Liza in our workshops because I feel like it's such a prototype, and wanting to pass on to your child or your children, this love of art. Also, at a certain point, there's this famous story about Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli performing together as they had since Liza was very little, but this moment, Liza tells a story about how all of a sudden she could feel Judy feel that Liza was now giving her a run for her money.

It wasn't just like, "Look at the cute kid." It was like, "I actually have to get in front of her a little bit, and sing a little louder, and shine a little bigger because they aren't looking at me anymore." I also think it says so many things about motherhood versus art, can you be a mother and be an artist, or does society allow you to do that? What is going to be sacrificed? You said in the introduction that the character Taylor plays, Naphtali, was not only her son but her manager, but he's also everything. He's her confidant. He's her whipping boy. He's her ideas. He's everything.

Kousha Navidar: What drew you to Naphtali, Taylor?

Taylor Trensch: What drew me to the play was getting an email that said, "Would you like to be in Jordan Seavey's new play with Cynthia Nixon?" I think any person who would say no to that should go to jail or to the hospital or something. [laughter] Then I read it and was so dazzled by what Cynthia was just talking about, this idea of what does a parent, specifically a mother owe her child? I think we are looking at that in a new way in society. I feel like there used to be such an expectation of what a mother's role was in her child's life. It's exciting to me that Miriam's pushing the boundaries a little bit, but this idea that a mother needs to be the caretaker and the provider of love, and warmth, and support. I don't know, I think it's really exciting that we're questioning that role in this play.

Kousha Navidar: Well, you mentioned that we're looking at extreme versions of that mother-son relationship, and we learned that Naphtali has really been the star of his mother's performance pieces through the years. Let's hear a clip from the show of them arguing about this.

[video playback]

Miriam: You have to put your trust in me. You always have before, Bar Mitzvah [unintelligible 00:11:00]. You put your trust in me in the Bar Mitzvah piece.

Naphtali: You do remember that was one of the most trying times in both our lives.

Miriam: Only you could be Bar Mitzvah at the Venice Biennale and find a way to complain about it. [laughter] The Shark Piece then. You put your trust in me in the Shark Piece.

Naphtali: I have permanent steel pins in my leg. Sure you want to use the Shark Piece as an example?

Miriam: I got hurt, too. I don't need to show you the scars. You do know there are worse things than being immortalized in seminal, genre-defying, era-defining art.

[playback ends]

Kousha Navidar: I listened to that and I think about something that both you, Jordan, and Taylor said, which is a goal of this, is to talk about what is something new you can bring to art. What are you challenging? Cynthia, this question's for you. It's about Miriam's character. Why do you think Miriam insists on including her son in all of these pieces throughout her life? What's she trying to achieve? What's the new thing you think she's trying to do?

Cynthia Nixon: Well, I think like any person who actually has to wholly-- I'm an actor, I just show up and everything is already written, but a person who is literally creating stuff just out of their mind and their unconscious whatever, I think you're always looking for, "What am I going to do my next piece about?" I think she's obsessed with her son. We didn't hear that, but she also makes apparently his birth into a performance piece. I think like any mother is in love with and fascinated with this little person that didn't use to be here and is now here and finds them endlessly interesting and wants to chronicle their life.

Also, again, it's where your art begins and where your personal life ends. It's the thing that's happening with her. As a performance artist with a very healthy ego, she thinks if I'm interested in it, everyone will be interested in it.

Kousha Navidar: We're hearing all of this litany, I suppose, of all of these performance pieces that the character of Miriam is introducing. They're funny, they're grounded in reality of what somebody might do in a universe, but they get a little extreme. Jordan, are there any ridiculous ideas that you came up with, with what those performance pieces could have been that didn't quite make it but we're in your mind?

Jordan Seavey: Oh my goodness.

Cynthia Nixon: Well, there's that funny thing in the lobby.

Jordan Seavey: Oh yes, I did write a bio for Miriam, it's in the lobby. That's right now the only place you can see it. It lists a bunch of her former pieces. I know this isn't exactly answering your question but Marina Abramović, the great performance artist really inspired a lot of aspects of Miriam and to name a piece or two of hers that I think about a lot. She and her former partner broke up by walking along the Great Wall of China from two different directions and meeting in the middle.

Cynthia Nixon: For how long?

Jordan Seavey: Three months. When they met in the middle, that was the official end of their both romantic and working relationship. I think Miriam's art, that particular piece just always sticks in my head. I think that's the world of performance art that I'm most interested in when it's taking something really personal and putting it in this huge geographic context and forcing people to pay attention to something so small and intimate by literally placing it on the Great Wall of China. I can't really think of a better piece than that other than the play I wrote. I'm hesitant to name more pieces of hers. That's a piece that really inspired me and therefore, Miriam, I would say.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Well, we have to go to a quick break. When we come back, we're going to dive a little bit more into the ways that this was staged and all of the different ways that Cynthia, you play different characters. We're joined by Cynthia Nixon, Taylor Trensch, and Jordan Seavey. We're talking about the Seven Year Disappear. We'll be right back after this.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: You are listening to All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart, and we are talking about the Seven Year Disappear. It's a play that's going on through March 31st at the Pershing Square Signature Center. We're joined in studio by Cynthia Nixon, Taylor Trensch, and Jordan Seavey. Who have two-- Taylor and Cynthia are starring in the play, and Jordan wrote the play. We are talking about the character of Miriam right now. Cynthia, you have to take on so many different characters. There's Miriam, but there are many others from Naphtali sort of lover, Wolfgang, to his actress friend, to art curators and hookups.

What went into the process of transforming into each character? How did you find the physicality? How did you find the voice? Walk us through that.

Cynthia Nixon: Well, first of all, I worked with the amazing Deb Hecht, who was an incredible voice person, accent person. She was really front and center in terms of helping me figure these things out. So much of when you're in rehearsal for a play, you feel so fake so much of the time because you're not there yet and so much of acting is believing in what you're doing. I found it really hard because I'm playing eight different people, and before you have found a character, it's just really hard to believe in what you're doing. Wolfgang, who you mentioned, he's German. We know he has a German accent, but pretty much everybody else was up for grabs.

It was interesting. I would've thought that there would be even bigger characterizations [unintelligible 00:17:18] Jones kind of a thing. I think that Jordan and our director, Scott Elliott certainly wanted to know what the character was, but not to have it be a limp and an eye patch and a stutter, do you know what I mean?

Kousha Navidar: Yes.

Cynthia Nixon: That it wouldn't be incredibly-- It would be a sketch. It was very challenging, but I guess body language is very helpful. Often, not for every character, but for most characters, I have one item of clothing, a pair of glasses, or a hat or a earring, or in one case, a lollipop. That helped. Also, you just start thinking about all these things. You start thinking about how this person sits and carries themself. Also, not only what accent they might or might not have, but do they have a voice up here or do they have a voice down here? Do they speak quickly? Do they speak slowly? Are they intimidated? Are they confident?

Kousha Navidar: One thing I hear you saying is that it was a bit of a runway before the airplane took off though, right?

Cynthia Nixon: It was a bit of a runway. Yes.

Kousha Navidar: How long was that runway?

Cynthia Nixon: Well, because particularly when we did a couple of workshops and we did some readings. It's really hard, you just feel completely naked when you're up in front of an audience at a reading and you just want to hang a sign saying, "Insert character here. There isn't one yet. Under construction." It was challenging.

Kousha Navidar: Taylor, we hear Cynthia talking about, bouncing around trying to figure things out. In a lot of ways, you are an anchor in the play. How did it feel for you occupying that role and being that kind of anchor for your partner to bounce off of?

Taylor Trensch: What a relief, God. I don't have to learn any accents. It's fascinating. I mistakenly thought, "Oh, what an easy job. I only have to worry about one person." As we started to rehearse the play, I realized he's a different version of himself with each of these characters. He has a very specific relationship to each of these people. We're also jumping around in time during the play. We mostly move backwards chronologically. Also having to factor in that at some points in the play, I am 30, and in other points, I'm 23. That's actually quite a big difference. Trying to figure that out was very tricky, but what an exciting challenge.

Kousha Navidar: One thing that I definitely noticed among the audience when I saw this play were those moments that were a bit disconcerting about watching Cynthia play all these characters who have sexual relationships with Naphtali when she's also playing Naphtali's mother. Jordan, I guess for you, how did you want these edible undertones to complicate the story and the audience's reaction to what they were seeing on stage? How'd you think that through?

Jordan Seavey: Definitely. The origin of this play is I had a dream that my mom was a famous performance artist who disappeared for seven years, didn't tell anyone, including me. I just believe in listening to your subconscious-- I think a lot of artists work from that place. Sure, it's filled with a lot of Freudian complicated uncomfortable-making notions, but that was the intention. I think the heart of the play is a mother-son relationship and pushing the boundaries, not to a literally incestuous point, but exploring the underpinnings of what that love is between a mother and son and what they owe to each other meant that he had to-- Miriam disappears, but to Naphtali, she never fully disappears.

That's one of the conceits of the play, really, is that he sees her everywhere and in all the other people he meets. She had to play his lover, and the audience has to sit and receive what that feels like. It's just not what we're used to.

Cynthia Nixon: It's also a great metaphor. For every relationship you have with anybody in your life, your mother is embedded in there. She's your first relationship. Every other relationship that you form after that is in some way a reaction, like seeking that relationship again or rebelling against the things you didn't like in that relationship. Every relationship is with your mother, really.

Kousha Navidar: In this case, even the relationship with the father, or lack thereof a little bit because something Naphtali really wants to know is who the father is, and Miriam won't tell him. Here's a little taste of them arguing about it from The Seven Year Disappear.

[video playback]

Naphtali: Mom, I don't even know who my father is.

Miriam: That subject is off-limits.

Naphtali: Why?

Miriam: It's just it's private.

Naphtali: Why? Why is this one subject off-limits? Your entire life is in defiance of privacy. You want me to trust you and you won't even tell me one single thing about my own father?

Miriam: He left us. That's all you need to know.

Naphtali: Is that all I need to know?

Miriam: He's a non-issue. He gave me two wonderful, beautiful things, Judaism and you, and then he left us. What more is there to say?

Naphtali: Okay, so he left and then you stole me away?

Miriam: Stole you away? I did not steal you.

Naphtali: You moved us from city to city, state to state-

Miriam: That's worse.

Naphtali: -country to country, and then you would disappear.

Miriam: Disappear? I would--

Naphtali: Yes, mom, you would disappear. You are addicted to your work.

[playback ends]

Kousha Navidar: Taylor, a lot of the most gripping moments from the play actually had to do with the absence of the father. I'm so curious for you, what do you think Naphtali thinks he will discover about himself or his mother by learning about who his father is?

Taylor Trensch: I'm not sure, and I don't think he really knows either. It's just such a huge part of a person's identity is where do you come from. I honestly have no idea. Also, listening to these scenes, I understand why Adam Driver walks out of interviews with people because it's like, "Oh God, that's what I sound like?"

Kousha Navidar: We're enjoying it. [unintelligible 00:23:42].

[laughter]

Taylor Trensch: I don't know what he expects to learn. I cannot imagine what that feels like. It must just feel like there's this giant open chasm in your life to not have any sort of context about where you come from.

Cynthia Nixon: It's also, we're dressed in the same outfit in the play, and I have shoes that have a little bit of a lift in them, so I'm closer to being Taylor's actual height and stuff. We look very similar. It's like persona. It's like what's me and what's you? Then for Naphtali, it's like, "But I'm only half you." I'm half of this other person. I need to carve out some part of me that doesn't-- everything doesn't come from you. There's this whole other thing, but you've purposely kept me in the dark about it.

Kousha Navidar: Ooh, it's that chasm that you were referring to, Taylor, right? One of the chasms that we see Naphtali try to fill is through politics, which is an interesting turn in the play. Jordan, I think while the whole audience was watching when invoking the 2016 campaign and the Hillary campaign specifically, which Naphtali chooses to join, it became a very visceral moment, I suppose, a very grounded moment. Why did you want to set this story, part of it, in the midst of that campaign?

Jordan Seavey: As a liberal person, just in my own politics, I'm constantly trying to unpack that campaign and the effect that the person who wanted is having on our country. I grew up a child of the '80s and early mid-'90s and, I don't know, I was just really taught about love and caring for other people. I feel like 2016, those kind of root American notions of love thy neighbor came into question. I'm always trying to unpack where American politics are going and my own feelings about them. I guess that's what [unintelligible 00:26:03].

Cynthia Nixon: Jordan said this thing one time about how The Seven Year Disappear, Miriam literally disappears a year into Barack Obama's presidency. It is, I think in his mind, a metaphor for liberal America, if not progressive America, but let's just say liberal America. We have a first African American president, he's great, done. I can just kick back and not think about it. Then Trump was elected and, zoom, everybody was back and in a complete panic.

Kousha Navidar: Do you also feel like maybe there's a part of politics that one can lose themselves in? Maybe there is this sense of-- Naphtali suffers from addiction during the play, right?

Jordan Seavey: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: Is there maybe a metaphor in that sense of campaigns are a place where people go to seek something higher than themselves?

Jordan Seavey: I think so, and they do often lose themselves. You know the art of politics. There's something about politics. I think often, people enter with the best of true, true, good intentions, and it is a complicated field. You have to make a lot of compromises, and I think people often do [unintelligible 00:27:18].

Cynthia Nixon: I think that there are a lot of people like Marina Abramović and Ronald Reagan and the AIDS crisis and things that haunt this play. I think Hillary Clinton haunts this play. I think this sense of a powerful, unapologetic woman in charge that reminds people of their mother is one of the disparate reasons that Hillary didn't get elected, was like, "I don't want that naggy mom who thinks she knows better than me in charge of everything."

Kousha Navidar: It permeates [unintelligible 00:27:50].

Cynthia Nixon: It permeates, right.

Kousha Navidar: I hear that. You had mentioned intention. I want to pivot to intention, working on a two-person production because this is a genuine two-hander. We've got two people up on stage. Taylor, it's just you and Cynthia you together every night. This is a question for each of you. Taylor, how has Cynthia supported your performance on stage and as a stage partner?

Taylor Trensch: Oh, gosh. I could cry thinking about it. The only reason I get to be in this play is because of Cynthia. She very generously, kindly suggested me when she was given the script. I'm forever eternally grateful to her for that. I've been very lucky to work with a lot of tremendous actors, but I don't think I've ever been on stage with somebody who is so present in every moment and generous. I feel so safe and supported and there's just such trust, I think, between the two of us. It's really hard to do a play, just two people yapping for 90 minutes nonstop. It's been a real dream come true.

Kousha Navidar: Is there a moment every night where that trust comes through for you? No spoilers, but is there a choice that you see her making that you really appreciate?

Taylor Trensch: Yes, during our extended physical gymnastics routine. No, that's not important. [laughter] I guess it starts at the very beginning of the play. I think I can say this, we begin when the audience is coming into the theater. We're doing an homage to a Marina Abramović performance where we're seated facing each other, just staring into each other's eyes for 15 minutes. I think that is where we get to establish. It's actually a really nice way to establish this connection and a really nice way to relax before doing something very difficult.

Kousha Navidar: Cynthia, how about you? What does Taylor do that supports you?

Cynthia Nixon: Everything. Taylor is an extraordinary performer. I had cast him in a reading that I had been directing five years ago, and I've seen him on stage in a number of things, and I'm always just completely wowed by him. I think the thing that really grips me about him, well, first of all, he's just such a consummate. He's like, "boom" in front of an audience. Also, he runs such a gamut of just sweet, innocent, every man, every boy. Then his face lights up and this whole grab bag full of deviance and revenge and pain and [groans]. It's exactly what you need for the part. I feel like so much of acting, particularly when you're acting with someone so much younger, it's like you throw the ball as hard as you can. If they can throw it back, you'll catch it and throw it. Oh, you're off to the races. It's great.

Also, Taylor was just, I feel so safe. There are so many lines in this play. The first thing, I would be like, "God, I wonder what comes." He would always be there to cover my butt. Thank you, I caught myself. In one point, we're two people working on the Hillary campaign and I went sky high. I could not think of the line, just complete blank early on. I apologized to Taylor after I got off stage and we have these computers, and he said, "I was typing as fast as I could." He was typing out my line and trying to get me to look at it. That's just a perfect example.

Kousha Navidar: It is a combination of great talent for a wonderful story, and we're so thankful to have you come on to talk about it. The play is The Seven Year Disappear. It's on through March 31st at the Pershing Square Signature Center. We've been joined by Cynthia Nixon, who plays Miriam and more, Taylor Trensch, who plays Naphtali, and Jordan Seavey, the playwright of this play. Thank you all so much for coming in today.

Taylor Trensch: Thank you.

Cynthia Nixon: Thank you.

Jordan Seavey: Thank you.

 

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