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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I am Allison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in SoHo thank you for sharing part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on demand, I'm really happy you're along the ride today. As you've been hearing, WNYC is following the indictment of former President Donald Trump.

Will keep you updated whenever there's new developments, so definitely stay with WNYC. On today's show, we'll play selections from this month's get-lit with All of It event at the New York Public Library with Rebecca Makkai, the author of I Have Some Questions for You. We'll also hear from musician Dar Williams who talked about her career and played a song in support of transgender youth to mark today's transgender Day of Visibility. We'll also talk about the history of soap operas, their impact on television, which brings us to our first guests. Let's get this started with the new musicals set amid the world of daytime dramas. It's called White Girl in Danger.

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Alison Stewart: The writer and composer behind last year's winner of the Tony for Best Musical is back. Michael R. Jackson's A Strange Loop was a meta-story about theater revolving around a young black queer theater usher writing a musical about a young black queer theater usher. Jackson is making meta moves again, this time tackling the world of daytime television melodrama and soap opera.

The musical is called White Girl In Danger. On the surface, the show is just what the title suggests. Three white girls in the fictional soap opera town named All White, who always seem to be in danger, whether it's drug abuse or the all-white serial killer, but the lead characters who are all white get all the stories while the other actors called the Blackgrounds cycle through stories of slavery and police brutality. That is until Keisha Gibbs comes along.

When the ammunition all-white writer cast Keisha as the Black best friend of the three white teenage girls named Megan, Maegan, and Meagan. Keisha has a plan. She's going to swipe the spotlight and storylines right underneath them, but will this put Keisha in danger? Will she turn her back on her friends and family? Will she fall prey to the serial killer? White Girl in Danger is now running at second stage at Tony Kiser Theater through May 21st, playwright and composer, Michael R. Jackson is with us today. Welcome back to the show, Michael.

Michael R. Jackson: Hi. Awesome. It's good to be with you.

Alison Stewart: Also, joining us is director and Tony-award nominee Lileana Blain-Cruz. She made her Broadway debut when she directed The Skin of Our Teeth last season. Lileana, welcome back.

Lileana Blain-Cruz: Hi. Thank you. So good to be here.

Alison Stewart: Last but not least, we have the musical lead, Latoya Edwards join us today. She plays the character of Keisha Gibbs. Latoya, welcome to the show for the first time.

Latoya Edwards: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: All right, Michael, because the internet, you never know what you read is true or not. Is it true that you interned on All My Children?

Michael R. Jackson: It is true, when I was in college.

Alison Stewart: Why did you seek that internship?

Michael R. Jackson: Because I had moved to New York with the dream of becoming a soap opera writer. I just figured I needed to get into the soap world any way I could. That was the internship that was available, so I jumped at it.

Alison Stewart: How did you originally develop an interest in daytime dramas?

Michael R. Jackson: When I was a very little kid before I was old enough to go to school, both my parents worked. My mom and dad would drop me off at my mother's aunt's house, my great-Aunt Ruth. She was like probably 60, 65 years older than me. We had nothing in common. There were no other kids. I did whatever she did during the day, which was watch television. What she primarily watched during the day were her stories as she called them. I just got hooked into them that way.

Alison Stewart: Oh, my grandma, Edna had her stories for sure. Night Fridays, channel seven. Lileana, what was your experience with soap operas growing up or even before this work?

Lileana Blain-Cruz: It's so funny. I would just remember the theme songs. I would just remember the dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, just like that playing over and over again in the living room. Never quite being sure what was going on, but it definitely felt dramatic. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Latoya, same for you, your experience with soap operas before this?

Latoya Edwards: My mom actually was a big soap opera fan. She loved Passions, Days of Our Lives, and As the World Turned. We had a ton of bonding moments just with me eavesdropping and trying to see what she was watching.

Alison Stewart: Michael, when did it come to you? You started thinking, "You know what? I can take the story arcs of soap operas, daytime dramas, some of the tropes, and really have some fun with them." Maybe think about weaving them into a musical.

Michael R. Jackson: Well, it actually started more with the lifetime movies, which I think of as a subgenre of soap operas. I grew up watching those as well, or what used to be called in the '90s Monday night movies or Sunday night movies. I just had this funny idea, when I first got into grad school of just doing a spoof of these lifetime movies, which for me, the thing that the common thread that ran for all of them was that there was always a white girl or woman who was in some peril who was either in her own creation, because someone was after her, or doing something to her.

Initially was just going to have a parody of those narratives, but then these conversations around diversity, equity, inclusion, and so forth, representation began to bubble up, and suddenly there were these two molecules came together to make the show.

Alison Stewart: Latoya, your character, where is she in her life when we meet her?

Latoya Edwards: You meet Keisha essentially at the turning point of how she feels about the Blackground. She has become exhausted with the stories that she has been told that she could tell which are stories of police violence and slavery. She doesn't really get to stretch herself within what she can do, but she sees that the Allwhite characters are able to have a wealth of range within the stories that they tell. She sets out to get that for herself. That's where you find Keisha.

Alison Stewart: What part of that story spoke to you?

Latoya Edwards: Well, I think just being able to stretch myself as an actor really spoke to me with regard to this character because she does essentially get to go through all of major character stories such as being the heroin, being the villain. She goes through the gamut of all of those tropes. Also realizing that Keisha didn't want to be liked, she wanted to be seen.

That's a really strong distinction because when you want to be liked, you will do things because other people will like them, not because you necessarily like them, but in Keisha's quest to be seen, she does things that other people may not like, but she knows is the best thing in pursuit of her goal. I just never seen a character like that. I was really interested in just stretching my artistic growth with what Michael had put on the page.

Alison Stewart: Lileana, you had the task of taking this world that Michael's created. Then also the scaffolding of the daytime drama and the nighttime soap opera. What opportunities did you see as a director for experimentation and to get creative?

Lileana Blain-Cruz: As you can imagine, Michael R. Jackson's imagination is wild. I feel like as a director it was a really wonderful space to think about what is the playground, how do you understand the television quality of it, how do you understand the melodrama of it while also keeping the theatrical part of it as well. I've got an incredible design team, just want to shout out, Adam Rigg, Palmer [unintelligible 00:08:24] Josh Higginson, Jennifer Shrivers.

They've all done really amazing work at creating a landscape that is both flexible and also transformative because I think something that Michael has embraced in the soap operatic form is how there are so many twists and turns in the plot. [laughs] In some ways, the space theatrically needs to be able to move with that kind of agility. Through all of these very different genre-bending collisions. That's been a joy as a director to experiment and find playfulness within.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the musical White Girl in Danger with its writer and composer, Michael R. Jackson, director Lileana Blain-Cruz, and actor Latoya Edwards in the lead role as Keisha Gibbs. Michael, all these characters live in the same world but are living different lives as actors and as characters. Tell us a little bit about where the idea of the Blackground comes from for folks who don't know the terms.

Alison Stewart: I just want to make the distinction that they are the characters, they're not actors. It's a tricky line because they're self-aware of the stories that they're in, but they are the characters. The idea of the Blackground just came from me thinking about-- I watched a movie-- it was this movie that came out in 1997 called Friends 'Til the End with Jennifer Blanc and Shannen Doherty. That was a take on the single white female storyline. In that movie, you might see they would have a teacher who is played by Harry Lennix, who's a Black teacher who's just there for one scene or two scenes to yell at Shannen Doherty for not doing well on a paper she'd written or something like that. Then watching other movies where I would notice these Black characters who would be there for under five lines or to really just be in the background.

I just became interested in what is the lives of these extra characters who were always bumping around in these predominantly white stories and what might they feel about the ways in which they are positioned in these storylines and what do they want for themselves. The idea of the Blackgroiund was born out of that.

Alison Stewart: Lileana, what's a piece of staging or direction you gave your actors who are playing these characters? Like Michael said it's a distinction. What as piece of staging did you think about or direction you thought about that helped us, the audience understand how different these worlds are between these sets of characters, the all-white characters, and the Blackgrounds?

Lileana Blain-Cruz: I feel like one of the things that you think about in terms of who's in the foreground and in the background. When you think about camera, angles, you think about who's centered in the midst of it and who are we watching in relationship to. We got to do that a combination with both the video work, both in-- Michael's written these amazing group of commercials and promos for the TV show.

You see a massive change between the first act previously before the show starts and at intermission about who gets to be centered in those commercials and in those promotional videos. That's a visual cue to us about how things are shifting and changing. Then staging-wise, you get to see who is living on the periphery and who gets centered. Then you watch that transformation shift super dramatically in a big surprise charity event that starts the top of the second act after intermission, which I think is really exciting.

I think the other thing that we do, and this is in combination with Montana Levi Blanco who's the costume designer, is I think like everything lives in a large glittering place to some extent. I think the actors were amazing at finding that really wonderful blend of both the circumstances are very [inaudible 00:12:37] for them, but they're also simultaneously larger than life. One of my favorite scenes is Latoya and Molly Hager who plays the evil twin sister of a character of the Megans, and they have this fight after Keesha's wedding is interrupted and it is so massive and big [inaudible 00:12:55]

Literally, it's a cat fight and they slap each other across the stage, and it is huge and melodramatic. For me, that felt like it, one, invites the fun of the piece, and yet that fight is very real for the two of them. That for me is a exciting collision of the real and the melodramatic in a really satisfying way.

Alison Stewart: Latoya, what is a costume that you get to wear or a costume change, big or small that really when you went through it, when you first put it on, you thought like, "Okay, this is getting at the heart of my character."?

Latoya Edwards: I think either Keesha's first outfit that we see her in which is a great example of the purity with which she's going towards her goals. I also think the number that she changes into for the Battle of the Bands is also a really great indicator of where she is in terms of what she's trying to accomplish. Honestly, all of them feel like Keesha, and they feel simplistic, but also grand at the same time which is just a beautiful thing. I'm really grateful for Montana and just the work that he and the rest of the costume team put together or did for Keesha and her character.

Alison Stewart: Michael, there's just one funny throwaway line. Keesha, in the beginning, has got a backpack and got white sneakers on and white jeans, and it's just looking very, very sweet and she changes into character shoes. At one point in the [unintelligible 00:14:30] and your character's shoes look stupid.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: I think I'm getting it right. That is just a very funny fine line. I was really curious about that moment.

Michael R. Jackson: I think I'm always looking for like a joke or something. When she changes into what are called her character shoes, it's another one of those moments that's supposed to really underline the fact that we're in a world that has some self-awareness but also gets carried away. One of my favorite soaps when I was growing up was called Another World and the theme song was that, When I'm with you, you take me away to another world. I love these moments of getting carried away into the story. It's many little references and micro references.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the new musical White Girl in Danger with Michael R. Jackson, Lileana Blain-Cruz, and Latoya Edwards. We'll have more after a really short break. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are Michael R. Jackson, the composer in playwright, Lileana Blain-Cruz's director, and Latoya Edwards is the star of White Girl In Danger, running at Second Stage's Tony Kiser theater through May 21st. Lileana, there's a madcap nature to the show. People are running around, popping up through doors, appearing out of nowhere. How did you think about the pacing of the show and what you wanted to do with the pacing of the show?

Lileana Blain-Cruz: It's like a rollercoaster ride. So much of it is like shapeshifting, and that felt really important to me. When we were doing musical workshops at the show, there was a real solid drive to the momentum of it. In fact, one of the first iterations I'd seen when I first got really excited about the piece was Michael R. Jackson being like, "We're at [unintelligible 00:16:32], we have no time. I'm going to speed through this whole section to do this whole musical."

I was like, "This is so thrilling. I have no idea how the hell this can all happen. That's thrilling to me." That spirit of it felt really important to me that we keep the-- Nobody can hold on to what it's going to be and it keeps shifting. That was something that was exciting to do with Raja Feather Kelly as well, who I think also got the Scooby-Doo references that are part of this world that make characters run around in madcap ways that I think is-- Michael, you've talked a lot about Jem and the Holograms. There are so many references inside of this universe that I think it's part of the fun to keep that momentum moving around in exciting ways.

Alison Stewart: Michael, as you do have a really good time with easter eggs and language, at one point Keesha takes on the name Keesha Erica Kane Gibbs. It's a little bit if you know, you know. Then you put the suffix on a whole bunch of names that people will recognize like Shannen Doherty [unintelligible 00:17:37] and Tori Spelling [unintelligible 00:17:38]. Did you have a favorite? Was there one that you went back and forth on?

Michael R. Jackson: I think I love all of the-- Once I realized that that convention was going to happen during the show, it was for me a game to figure out which ones could be the most surprising. There's a courtroom scene where there's a bunch of them that just all come at you at once. I won't give it away, what the nature of that is, but it was fun for me to reach back into my childhood and go, "Oh, which one of those names are going to really resonate with certain people in the audience that they may have forgotten about but that still have this weird pop cultural memory?"

Which is what so much of the show is about, is remembering these pieces of pop culture that you're an adult now and you may not think about them, but they weirdly still have an emotional resonance in you because of how we consume so much about culture and entertainment.

Alison Stewart: Latoya, with the pace of the show and you're in so much of the show, what challenges did you face as an actor keeping up with the story, keeping up with the pace? How do you take care of yourself?

Latoya Edwards: That is a great question. I'm still learning what I need to be able to do this show at the level that I would like to sustain it at. Honestly, this is one of the hardest things that I've ever done, and I am surprised at how well my body has been keeping up. In terms of the pace, I think Michael just has a great way of writing shows that once the show starts, you're just on that ride.

You don't really feel the pace of the show until it's over and then you're like, "Whoa, I can't believe that I've done all of these things in however much amount of time the show lasts for." It's just a really great way to zone in, forget about any outside influences, and just zone into what Keesha needs and what I, Latoya, can help supply her to be able to get what she needs done. Every day, I'm still learning what I need to maintain. Like I said, I'm pretty proud of the way my body has been managing thus far.

Alison Stewart: There's this omnipresent writer of this soap opera who is really deciding the faiths of the characters. For a long time, we don't see this writer. I'm not going to give anything away. Sometimes, he's on a telephone. Sometimes, this person, it's a big booming voice. Lileana, you and your team, how did you want to convey the writer at least in the first half of this show where we don't see the writer?

Lileana Blain-Cruz: One of the reference points that we talked a lot about was the Power Rangers voice of God dictating when they were going to go off to fight battles, that there's this disembodied voice. Another reference was The Wizard of Oz and The Wiz, just feeling that there's a larger force, God-like force that is having an influence on the world. Since they are all characters inside that writer's mind, it felt important to emphasize that larger-than-life, otherworldliness as part of the conceit.

Alison Stewart: Michael, we're introduced to the three teenage girls, Megan, Maegan, and Meagan, alongside their love interests, Matthew Scott, Scott Matthew, and Zack Paul Gosselaar all played by Eric Morris. What was the decision to have one actor play all three male leads and their different iterations?

Michael R. Jackson: Well, because we also have a convention, the Megan's mothers as well is played by one actress, Liz Lark Brown, who plays their mothers, Diane, Barbara, and Judith. The thought behind that was that like, "I really wanted to populate the world with as many characters as possible and as many stories as possible." Having one male lead, in particular, came from me watching a lot of these lifetime movies, both when I was growing up, but also when I had started doing more research on them to see ones that I maybe hadn't seen. A bunch of them had, both the same archetypes in them, but they also, sometimes, have the same actor playing the same archetype.

For example, in For the Love of Nancy, you had Mark-Paul Gosselaar playing Tracey Gold loving brother who's worried about her and her eating disorder. Then in She Cried No, you had Mark-Paul Gosselaar playing this sexual assaults her boyfriend to Candace Cameron Bure. I just was fascinated in like, "What if it's the same character somehow, that somehow they're just always popping up, but in these different iterations."

That just became this fun little convention to consider because also, with the moms, it was the same thing. Judith Light was in so many of these movies. Sometimes, she'd play like a villainous. Sometimes, she'd play like a heroine, and I just imagined that like, "What if they all were the same body?"

Alison Stewart: Michael, we're talking about how fun it is and colorful and zany. Just as you get us, as you do, we're in, we're having a good time, and then it gets really thoughtful and serious. You really make the audience stop and have to think about things. We'll leave it there. I don't want to give too much away. When you are writing, how do you know when it's time to stop and have those moments of reflection, that you know that you're going to send the audience out thinking?

Michael R. Jackson: It's not ever really a conscious decision to do that because I don't want to be didactic really. I think, particularly, with A Strange Loop and then with White Girl in Danger, which in some ways, I think of as a companion piece to A Strange Loop, it just became clear that the message that you get toward the ends of both of those musicals comes from the authors of those universes, and those messages are as much a part of the story as anything else that's preceded it.

Also, at the same time, those authors don't get the final word. Because of the characters that they have created and the thoughts that are in their mind, they also have a life of their own and discoveries to make. It just seemed very specifically with both those pieces and with White Girl in Danger, in particular, that you had to hit that moment or else the whole thing would continue to spiral in on itself.

Alison Stewart: Would you just sing the hook of White Girl in Danger just so the audience can understand it and be stuck with it for the rest of the day?

Michael R. Jackson: Sure. "White Girl in Danger, she's doing drugs, but she won't do her homework."

Alison Stewart: It's the best. Michael R. Jackson is a composer and playwright of White Girl in Danger, I've also been speaking with its director, Lileana Blain-Cruz, and its star, Latoya Edwards. Thank you so much for making time today.

Lileana Blain-Cruz: Thank you.

Michael R. Jackson: For having us.

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