Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. On today's show, we'll talk with Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 Songs that Explain the '90s. Now he's an author of the book of the same name, and we'll take your calls and your favorite songs from that era.

We'll also kick off this month's full bio conversation with biographer Patti Hartigan, the author of August Wilson: A Life. We'll talk about his life in Pittsburgh and his early years as a poet. We'll hear a live in-studio performance from Armenian-born pianist and composer Astghik Martirosyan. That is our plan so let's get this hour started with a new production of Waiting for Godot.

I think New Yorkers have a unique connection to the play Waiting for Godot. We are used to waiting for things like that subway that you think may never arrive, tickets for Shakespeare in the Park you hope don't run out before it's your turn, someone to deliver something in that 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM window that could come hours late. It's easy to relate to the leads of Beckett's classic absurdist play Gogo and Didi, two old-timey tramps bouncing off and bickering with each other as they stay put under a tree, anticipating a visitor Mr. Godot.

My next guest, Obie Award-winning Director Arin Arbus, approached Waiting for Godot by thinking of the play being about couples, which applies to my other guests, the leads, who are very dear friends IRL and collaborators Michael Shannon as Gogo and Paul Sparks as Didi. Sparks and Shannon previously starred in The Killer together, a play by fellow absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco. Both productions were produced by the Theater for a New Audience in Brooklyn.

Waiting for Godot runs through December 3rd at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, and I'm joined by team Waiting for Godot. Thanks for coming to the studio. Yay, Godot, right? Michael, you proposed this production for the Theater for a New Audience. What is something you understand better or differently about the player script now that you're performing it, rather than being in the audience and seeing it?

Michael Shannon: Well, I hadn't seen it since I was very young, a preteen, I think. I'd never seen it when I was a grown adult. My recollection of it was spotty, but I remember how much it moved me and it inspired me to get into the theater and start investigating it. I think for a play that's ostensibly about not much of anything happening, it's actually an incredibly precise play, and it demands great precision in performing it.

It is not a careless, aimless play in any way, shape, or form. I think I've had more difficulty with this than probably any other play I've ever done in terms of even just memorization. Paul was saying the other night that we've done a lot of shows. When I did The Killer, I had a metric boatload of dialogue in that, and I never went up, but this play demands the most concentration and focus of any play I've ever done in my life.

Alison: Paul, how about for you? Something that became clear to you about the play, about the way it was written, about a message that's really different than when you're performing it versus reading it?

Paul Sparks: It's funny. I think my impression of it before we did it, not having read it in a long time, I think you think sometimes, "Oh, it's My Dinner with Andre. It's just two people sitting around talking." It is intellectual, but it's such an emotional play. It's very demanding of all aspects of of yourself. Physically, I was not prepared for just how physical it was going to be. I think in this version that we've found because I think the play holds a lot of different versions, but the version we found, very physical, very emotional, very precise.

It's a huge undertaking. We just did a five-show weekend, meaning we did Friday night, then two Saturday, two Sunday, and we were both pretty wrecked, I think. Maybe still a little bit wrecked on Tuesday morning.

Alison: Arin, of course, play is very famous. Many people have done it. Many people have seen it. Although it's interesting to think [unintelligible 00:05:15] is 53, I think, so 60-some years ago, it really probably blew people's minds. What is interesting for you creatively, as a director, directing something that is so well known? What can you do that's interesting?

Arin Arbus: I actually try not to think about the history too much. I do my homework, and I'm familiar with the production history, but I'm really interested in discovering it, in the room, with the actors and with the designers beforehand. This play is extraordinary and unbelievably mysterious, and despite the fact that Beckett is one of the bossiest playwrights that I've encountered with his stage directions, there is a great deal of authorship that goes into this production from everybody who's involved.

I have faith that if we're really looking closely at the play itself, it will continue to surprise and reveal itself to us.

Alison: Paul, Didi is the extrovert and Gogo is this introvert. You said in an interview, you compared Didi and Gogo to Tigger and Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. Why is that an apt analogy?

Paul: Well, I believe I heard Arin say that maybe Beckett had described Gogo as of the earth and Didi of kind of the air. There's a very manic energy to Didi. One of the things that I've been thinking lately about him is how interested he is in prosecuting each moment, his ideas. He's always trying to get to the end of it, trying to find the thing at the end. It's all an investigation for him. What was it you told me that Ionesco said?

Michael: Oh, yes. Ionesco-- don't get me wrong, I love the play I'm doing right now, but probably my favorite player of all time is a one-act play by Ionesco called Victims of Duty. There's a line in the play, "Every story is a detective story." I told that to Paul the other day because we go out and walk around before the show and get deep. I said every story is a detective story and in this story, Vladimir is the detective. This play is basically a series of mysteries that Vladimir is attempting to solve. That seemed to--

Paul: I think that the relationship between Eeyore and Tigger, they're on opposite sides of the seesaw. They need each other in order to have balance. So much of this play is about the way things settle into a balance. When one is down, the other is trying to pull the other up. I think that's a pretty apt relationship or analogy for all relationships that we do that in our relationships. We're always trying to equalize one another probably inadvertently, but that's the way it sounds.

Michael: Particularly in this modern society, culture, I think, is particularly apt because it seems like every other person you meet says, "Oh, yes. I'm bipolar." Well, here are the poles. Vladimir's up, I'm down. It's fascinating. A lot of people think that if you do this play, something intriguing to do would be to switch roles, play Vladimir one night, and ask around-- I'm like, that doesn't make any sense to me at all. I think they're two very distinctly different people.

Alison: Before I even read your description of Tigger, I had written in my notes bounce, that your run has a bounce to it. [laughs] There's just certain bounding about. How did you come to that physicality?

Paul: Well, I think to echo what Arin was saying about, we just look at the text and we try and hold its feet to the fire and see what we can learn about it. I think that in a way Vegette is describing, or at least my interpretation of how he describes Didi has so much to do with his-- he does bounce. He's always going, he's always moving. His body is jiggling. I think that that just has made its way into my-- it wasn't something conscious.

I wasn't like, oh, I've got a great idea for how I'm going to be. This has all been a surprise. I don't think either of us had any idea what it was going to look like.

Alison: Michael, has your Gogo always been introverted or did life send him down that path?

Michael: Well, I think he has a certain propensity for-- these characters are not necessarily singularities of people. It was interesting, we were doing an interview with the Dramaturg at the theater and you said, "How do you research the characters? Do you the build the history?" I'm like, I don't really think that's where it's at. I think what it is is, you go out in the world and you walk around and you see how this play is-- basically, everywhere you look, you see this play. It's happening all the time.

It's like Pacman. You collect all the little examples that you witness and you process them and you bounce what you're doing off of that cognition or witnessing of the world. That [unintelligible 00:12:07] to me is not a person. He's a state. He's something that resides in I think the majority of human beings.

Alison: Arin, I'm going to ask you a very simplistic question, only because we gotten two calls and a text about it. What pronunciation are you using for the name of the show?

Arin: We're using Godot, which is what Beckett wanted us to use.

Alison Stewart: Thank you very much for-- everybody, Godot. Got it? Arin, night and day are important elements of the script. When it's stay in the theater, it's really so well lit that the audience-- I could see across the stage. I'm assuming you all can see people in the audience. What went into that decision to have the house lights so bright?

Arin: I was very interested along with Ricardo Hernandez who designed the set and Chris Ackerlund who designed the lights, we were interested in creating an intimate relationship between the actors and the audience. The audiences on three sides. The audience is below the actors, above the actors, and at eye level with the actors. Everybody actually has a different vantage point on what is happening on stage.

I think people are seeing different things depending on where they're sitting. They are all in the same room together. As you pointed out, the audience can see much of the other people who are sitting there with them. I think this play is normally done in an end-stage configuration, a proscenium configuration. I was excited by opening it up a little bit. I think when I was younger, I was really interested in moments in theater where audiences, their heartbeats synchronized, where everybody was experiencing the same thing at the same time.

I'm still interested in that and I think that happens in this play, but I'm also really interested in allowing audience members to have their own distinct journey through the play. I think that's what the design does in this production.

Michael: I think we really want the audience to be complicit in what's happening, that we don't want them to feel like they're separate from us. We refer to them often in the play. We want them to feel like they're creating this with us.

Alison: My guests are Michael Shannon, Paul Sparks, and Arin Arbus. We're talking about Waiting for Godot at the theater for a new audience. It's through December 3rd. Paul, something I got from your Didi is he's just almost psyched to wait for Godot. There's something thrilling about it for him. He's really into this idea of waiting for this person.

Paul: In his first line, he talks about hope being so important. Actually, Gogo says, "Nothing to be done." His response is like, "I'm beginning to come around to that." I think it's a real fear for him that there's nothing to be done. There's no hope, and that he's been trying his whole life to keep that away from him. To resume the struggle of hope and what is hope.

Even though he's with someone who is constantly challenging that, saying, "Okay, now we're happy. Now what? Now what? Okay, if Godot will comes, then what?" I think for me personally, I think one of the things that's interesting and has some synchronicity about this show is that Mike and I have known each other a long time. Our essential selves are very similar to these two guys in some ways.

I think that having a hopeful persuasion is something that I do have as a person and it is also complicated. I think that yes, he is excited about hope, but he is also a little manic about hope. I think even in the second act when he comes out and he's running in circles and saying he's happy, I can feel his fingernails dug into the ground. I'm feeling good, now what? When is the other shoe going to drop? It is a caustic relationship that he has with hope, I think, and with the idea of Godot coming.

Michael: It's like the hope that I imagine someone like Alex Honnold the mountain climber has with his fingertips on the side of the mountain like, "Well, I should remain hopeful otherwise I'm going to fall and die." Gogo's like, "No, I don't need any more chalk. It's fine if my fingers slip and I--" The play is about survival and death basically. There's two ways to navigate life.

One is to really struggle and hope. The other is to succumb and have low expectations. That way you aren't as vulnerable perhaps to being disappointed. I feel like a lot of people are making those decisions on a day-to-day basis.

Alison: Michael, when you're on stage before the show, the play officially starts. Maybe that is your official start of the play. What is your character thinking about and what are you thinking about? Because you're there for a piece of time.

Michael: I haven't scripted it really. I'm still exploring it. It is different every time I do it, but I'm looking at all of you as you come in. My earlier point. It's like, here they come. Here they are. Who's here? Oh, I wonder what that person's going to think. I like being out there because I think it goes to that point of saying, this is not a contained thing.

This is not a thing that starts and ends, and it's not a thing that you're just going to get to watch. You're here too, and I see you so good luck. Mike Shannon sees you.

Alison: You've been warned. Arin, did you all, and anybody can answer, have conversations about what this idea of waiting and loss of time? It felt very different to me after the pandemic because there was that sense of, is this going to end? Is this not? Is it Tuesday? Is it Saturday? Is it morning? Is it night? Were there any conversations about the pandemic in your lead-up to working on the show, Arin?

Arin: Well, we were actually supposed to begin rehearsals for this show in March of 2020. We had a long experience of waiting to get to our first day of rehearsal. I think these characters, they feel so familiar to me because they are as confused as I am in my life. They are waiting for someone who doesn't show up, uncertain if they're in the right place on the right day, unsure of what happened yesterday and what's going to happen tomorrow. It really feels like the condition that we actually are all in.

Alison: Really practical question. Stage directions are very specific, as you pointed out that Beckett's bossy hand raised and admonition in the middle of a sentence. What do you do when you come to that point?

Arin: I think we started with the recipe. We really tried to understand what was there, and occasionally, we deviate from that. We're really doing the play.

Michael: There's certain things that I try to do, and then, at a certain point, I didn't want it to be so rigid. It's still basically the same. When I apologize to Didi in Act One, he takes one step silence. I've started taking one and a half steps or two steps, depending on what feels right.

Paul: During the rehearsal process, Michael was the representative from the Beckett estate who was keeping us-- I've found that there's a lot of clues about what's actually going on. Sometimes when we're lost in a scene and the scene didn't seem to be working, or we're trying to figure out what's going on. If you refer back to, this is what he said happened. What exactly does he say happened?

I've heard a couple of people who said, wow, this is such a modern take on the show and everything-- You guys just did a bunch of different things. Actually, I think you'd be really surprised at how almost exact a lot of the play is to what he wrote, except for Mike's half-steps that he's added.

Alison: Got to push boundaries.

Paul: Yes, a little bit.

Michael: Sloppy.

Paul: Yes, sloppy.

Alison: Arin, what is these two gentlemen's friendship offer you as a director? How did it open up what you could do?

Arin: Their friendship is quite extraordinary. I think a lot of the time people do this play, and a director will find two great actors who might not know each other and try and jump into a rehearsal room and make things happen. I think that would be really challenging. This is about people who have been together for 50 years. Michael and Paul know each other incredibly deeply, they are totally different from one another, and they have this incredibly rich relationship on stage that also has a lot of love in it. I think it's truly a special thing to witness.

Alison: There's a lot of intimacy. It's unspoken, and you don't necessarily know where it's coming from, but it's probably from your-- how you feel about one another. Michael, what's something that Paul does really well in this play?

Michael: Everything.

Alison: I need one thing.

Michael: I always get a little cagey about letting people know too much. I think it's hard to overstate the sheer amount of physical and mental endurance that you're going to see from Paul Sparks in this play. It's funny sometimes I have to hide the fact that I'm rooting for him because I'm not ever supposed to be on his side so much. There are parts of the play that I just know how phenomenally challenging they are and I'm just silently in my head, there's this huge cheerleading section like, go Paul, go Paul. You can do it. Come on.

Well, meanwhile, I'm just standing there, staring at him, disinterested. I really do mean that. There's not anything on the list where-- the report card is all A's. There's not a subject where it's like, he could use a tutor on this or something. No, he's reading, writing math, science, gym class. He's killing it.

Alison: Can I ask you that question?

Paul: Sure. Well, Mike is unique. First of all, he is probably the most honest person that I know. He reeks of honesty on stage, which I think it's profound to witness, it's profound to work with. I don't have a scene partner that I've ever worked with that I've enjoyed as much. He's really funny and warm. I think that what he's done with Gogo is-- I had no idea what to expect.

I think that a lot of the trust that I have with Mike, it's just a unique thing and it has a lot to do with the fact that we know each other, we know each other's kids, we appreciate each other, we know about our lives and our hardships, and we know all those things. This is one of those unique plays where you can really bring all that stuff on stage. The place is so big and strong. It can handle a lot.

One of the things that it can handle and demands is that you bring yourself to it. I wouldn't do this with anyone else. I'm not interested in doing it. I'm interested in exploring this play with Michael, and that's what it is, and it's a lot. Plus, he's fun to try and move. He appears like a stone on stage. It brings me great joy to try and tickle the stone a little bit, and see if I can just-- and he does break. His jaw twitches a little. It's good.

Alison: Waiting for Godot is at the theater for a new audience through December 3rd out in Brooklyn. My guests have been director Arin Arbus and actors Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks. Thank you so much for coming into studio.

Paul: Thanks for having us.

Michael: Thanks for having us.

Alison: Thanks so much. Up next, music journalist, Rob Harvilla turned his popular podcast 60 Songs That Explain The '90s into a book. He joins us to discuss how some of those songs explain the era.

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