Mai Khôi returns February 1 to Joe’s Pub with the final iteration of Bad Activist (photo by Nate Guidry)
BAD ACTIVIST
Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette St.
Thursday, February 1, $15-$25 (plus two-drink or one-food-item minimum), 7:00 publictheater.org mai-khoi.com
Back in September, I attended a friend’s wedding in rural Pennsylvania. Sitting at our table was a woman who was introduced to us as Mai Khôi, the Lady Gaga of Vietnam. We discovered later in the evening why, when, in full makeup and costume, she performed a song written especially for the occasion. The groom, Alex Lough, is an experimental musician and teacher, and the bride, Hanah Davenport, is a singer-songwriter and urban planner; at one point the party broke out into a Greenwich Village–style happening with a series of avant-garde presentations.
Born Đỗ Nguyễn Mai Khôi in 1983 in Cam Ranh, Vietnam, Mai Khôi was an award-winning pop star whose activism infuriated the government as she advocated for freedom of expression, LGBTQ and women’s rights, and the environment and against censorship, domestic violence, and Donald Trump. She also got into trouble by announcing that she did not want to have children.
She’s been playing music since she was six, in her father’s wedding band and later in clubs. She released her first album in 2004, and ten more solo records followed between 2008 and 2018; as her fame and fortune exploded, so did her concern for the welfare of the Vietnamese people. She challenged the police and the government, leading her to have to play secret shows for her fans. Shortly after the release of the 2019 documentary Mai Khôi and the Dissidents, which screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, she fled to America; she currently lives in Pittsburgh with her personal and professional partner, Mark Micchelli.
“Even though Mai Khôi primarily sings in Vietnamese, you can always understand the intention she’s trying to convey,” Lough, who is producing her upcoming album, explained to me. “Her band has a refreshing approach to protest music, like we haven’t heard since Rage Against the Machine. She has an incredible emotional range, from delicate sadness and vulnerability to screaming and extended vocal techniques. She is also able to freely move between her role as the frontwoman to blending in with everyone; it’s rare to see that kind of versatility in a vocalist with such a commanding stage presence.” The record will feature such tracks as “We Never Know,” “Innocent Deer,” and “The Overwhelming Feeling that We’re Already Dead.”
On February 1, she will return to Joe’s Pub with the biographical multimedia Bad Activist, which details her life and career through music, photographs, video, archival footage, and more. Directed by Cynthia Croot, the seventy-five-minute show features such songs as “Reeducation Camp,” “Just Be Patient,” and “Bitches Get Things Done,” with Mai Khôi joined by Alec Zander Redd on saxophones, Eli Namay on bass, PJ Roduta on drums, and music director Micchelli on keyboards, playing a mix of experimental jazz rock, folk, and deliberately cheesy pop; Aaron Henderson is the projection designer. Although the work has been performed and workshopped over the last four years at small venues and universities, this iteration is the debut of the full, finished production.
I recently spoke with Mai Khôi and Micchelli over Zoom, discussing music, repressive governments, cooking, and why she considers herself a bad activist.
twi-ny: The three of us were at the same table at Alex and Hanah’s wedding. How did you first meet Alex?
Mark Micchelli: Alex and I met in September of 2016; we were in the same cohort at the University of California, Irvine, where Alex finished his PhD and where I did my master’s. I moved out east, if you can call Pittsburgh east, first in 2019, and then he moved to South Jersey in 2020. And so we’ve been musical collaborators since 2016 and been around the world. We’ve done gigs throughout California and in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire, and South Korea.
Mai Khôi: In 2020, I got a fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh and I was invited to work with Mark. We began with my project Bad Activist.
mm: I had actually gotten an email from the University of Pittsburgh that said there’s this Vietnamese singer-songwriter who’s looking for a pianist who knows something about jazz and Southeast Asian traditional music. And I said, Well, no one’s qualified for that job, so I may as well try. When I was told that I’d have to learn the music in three weeks, I knew I didn’t have time to learn it in that amount of time. I drafted an email to basically politely decline and say, find another pianist. And then I thought I should actually look up what this person’s music actually sounds like. And now we own a house together.
twi-ny: When was the last time you were in Vietnam to either see family members or play a secret show?
mk: Oh, when I moved to the US at the end of 2019. I have not been able to come back to Vietnam since.
twi-ny: What will happen if you try to go back? Would they arrest you?
mk: Yes, they could arrest me. They could detain me. That’s what happened with an activist friend of mine. So, yeah, it’s still dangerous for me to go back, so I’ve chosen not to. My friend had the same situation, like me. She left Vietnam for two years, and then when her mother got sick, she wanted to come home, but the police arrested her, and she is now in jail. They sentenced her to three years.
twi-ny: What family do you have in Vietnam?
mk: My mother, my father. And I have one brother who lives with them.
twi-ny: If they left the country, say, to visit you here, would they be allowed back in?
mk: They don’t have any plans to leave Vietnam.
twi-ny: But if they did, would the government let them return?
mk: If the police want to arrest you, they can arrest you any time. But I think my family will be safe because they’re not involved in activism at all. They did try to convince me to not get involved. From the beginning, the police came and investigated them. After many visits to my parents’ house, they realized my parents have nothing to do with activism, so they leave them alone.
twi-ny: Are you in contact with them either over the phone or via social media? I know you’ve accused Facebook of being in bed with the Vietnam government.
mk: My parents still use Facebook; that is the main thing we use to see each other every day. Of course, I know the police always follow my Instagram and my Facebook and try to hack into them. But it’s okay. I still know how to use Facebook to spread my word and deal with the situation. Someone like my parents or other friends that are not activists, they will not comment on any sensitive things I post on Facebook. They don’t like some of the posts about politics anyway.
twi-ny: You’ve said, “No one can stop me.” Has the government come to you and said, If you take back some of the things you’ve said, we’ll leave you alone?
mk: They did try that in 2016 [when I was applying to run for the National Assembly]. They sent a person to talk to me to give me that deal. Like if you withdraw your nomination campaign, the system will make you even more famous. That was the deal, but I didn’t take it.
I refuse to talk with them about those kinds of things. When the government detained me a couple of years after, they asked me some questions and I just gave them information that’s already public.
twi-ny: What are some of the main issues you are rallying against, in Vietnam and America?
mk: You will see this when you come to see Bad Activist. I am focusing on freedom of expression. And recently, I’m doing some advocacy work for climate activists. Because I’m here, it’s easy to lobby Congress and the State Department, to work with the US government. [ed. note: Mai Khôi met with members of Congress last summer, before President Biden traveled to Vietnam.]
Also, I was surprised by the brutality of the police here, so I want to fight against that. It’s very similar with the police in Vietnam. In New York, when the Black Lives Matter movement happened, I went to the protest every week. I really feel the brutality of the police everywhere is just the same.
twi-ny: On February 1, you’ll be at Joe’s Pub, where you performed two earlier versions of Bad Activist in 2021–22. What do you think of the venue?
mm: They treat you super well. They know how to work with performers.
mk: In 2020, they started to work with the SHIM:NYC team for artists like me, to give us a chance to perform in an iconic venue in New York like that. [ed. note: SHIM:NYC is “a creative and professional residency and mentorship program for international musicians who are persecuted or censored for their work; are threatened on the basis of their political or religious affiliations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity; have been forcibly displaced; need a respite from dangerous situations; or are from countries experiencing active, violent conflict.”]
mm: We do have City of Asylum in Pittsburgh, which does something similar.
twi-ny: What makes you a bad activist?
mk: There’s some moments that I realized maybe I’m a bad activist because I am first an artist, but because I was born in my country, a country that’s not safe for artists, I decided to become an activist to protect my right to be an artist. So that’s why I don’t have good training to become a good activist. Sometimes I upset people. And sometimes I organize some things that aren’t . . . I just think sometimes I feel I’m a bad activist.
mm: I’ve had a lot of conversations with Khôi about this, and I feel like everyone who sees the show has the opposite feeling of Khôi about her and her activism, but everything she says is genuine. And I think the broader point is that despite her activism and since she has fled to the States, the situation in Vietnam has only been getting worse. And so I think reflecting on that failure is something that the show tries to come to terms with and talk about and that’s why the name is framed that way.
mk: Yes. So the point is, whether you’re bad or you’re good, you at least try to be an activist, to contribute something.
Mai Khôi has been playing music since she was six years old (photo courtesy Mai Khôi)
twi-ny: Activism these days seems to be more dangerous than ever.
mk: I don’t know. I just do things that I feel are the right thing to do and I do them. I always believe that doing the right thing will lead you to something good, even when you have to pay a price for doing it.
twi-ny: What’s next after Bad Activist?
mk: We have some ideas for a new project. It will be based on the activism and culture that I carry from Vietnam to here.
twi-ny: What do you do when you’re not making music or fighting the power?
mk: I have a hobby: cooking.
mm: Khôi is as good a chef as she is a vocalist, which is really unfair.
twi-ny: What are your favorite dishes to make?
mk: Bún bò huế (spicy beef and pork noodle soup), cá kho (caramelized and braised fish), and mì quảng (Quảng noodles).
twi-ny: One final question: Will we ever hear the song you wrote for Alex and Hanah again? And does it have a name?
mk: “I Hear the River Calling.” I don’t perform that song. It was a gift to them. But it might go on an album in the future.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Hope Boykin makes her Joyce debut with States of Hope (photo courtesy HopeBoykinDance)
STATES OF HOPE
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
October 17-22 (Curtain Chat October 18), $52-$72
212-691-9740 www.joyce.org www.hopeboykindance.com
“You have the best day ever,” Hope Boykin told me at the end of our lively Zoom conversation a few weeks ago. And I set out to do just that, as it’s impossible not to be affected by her infectious positivity, encased in a warming glow.
A self-described educator, creator, mover, and motivator who “firmly believes there are no limits,” the Durham-born, New York–based Boykin began dancing when she was four and went on to become an original member of Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson’s Complexions, performed and choreographed with Joan Myers Brown’s Philadanco!, then spent twenty years with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, first under Judith Jamison, then Robert Battle. A two-time Bessie winner and Emmy nominee, Boykin was busy during the pandemic lockdown, performing the “This Little Light of Mine” excerpt from Matthew Rushing’s 2014 Odetta for the December 2020 Ailey Forward Virtual Season, making several dance films, collaborating with BalletX and others, and preparing October 2021’s . . . an evening of HOPE, a deeply personal hybrid program at the 92nd St. Y that investigated Boykin’s truth and her unique movement language.
Next up for Boykin is another intimate presentation, States of Hope, running October 17–22 at the Joyce. Boykin wrote, directed, and choreographed what she calls her “dance memoir,” which features an original score by jazz percussionist Ali Jackson, lighting and set design by Al Crawford, and costumes by Boykin and Corin Wright. The work, in which she explores different parts of herself, will be performed by Boykin as the Narrator, Davon Rashawn Farmer as the Convinced, Jessica Amber Pinkett as the Determined, Lauren Rothert as the Conformist, Bahiyah Hibah Sayyed or Nina Gumbs as the Daughter of Job, Fana Minea Tesfagiorgis or Amina Lydia Vargas as the Cynical, Martina Viadana as the Angry, and Terri Ayanna Wright as the Worried.
On a Wednesday morning, Boykin, evocatively gesticulating with her hands and smiling and laughing often, discussed transitioning from dancer to choreographer, making dance films, seeing Purlie Victorious on Broadway, avoiding ditches, and seeking radical love in this wide-ranging twi-ny talk.
twi-ny: You are in rehearsals for your Joyce show. Where are you right now?
hope boykin: I’m at the 92nd Street Y. I got here early because I was a fellow for the Center for Ballet and the Arts [at NYU] for 2022–23, and then they extended it through the academic year, then they extended it through the summer, but they have new fellows now. And so I will never take an office space and stairs down to the studio for granted again.
Now that I’m a New Yorker, I can say I was schlepping all of the cameras and the computers and the music, and so I found a corner here in the newly renovated Arnhold Dance Center. I give everybody a warmup at 10:15 before we get started. So I’m here early.
twi-ny: I’ve previously interviewed Matthew Rushing and Jamar Roberts, who are two other longtime Alvin Ailey dancers who became choreographers for Ailey while they were still dancing with the company. When you started at Ailey, did you anticipate becoming a choreographer in the way you have?
hb: I don’t think anything was in the way that I had; I definitely didn’t have that thought. I was always making work because at Philadanco!, Joan Myers Brown put into practice a summer event called Danco on Danco!, and so she allowed dancers in the company to choreograph on other dancers in the company, then in the second company, and there was also an evening that would showcase D/2, the second company. The concert was in a small theater. I mean, she gave us tech time and rehearsal so we could see our work on a stage.
That also happened at Ailey once I got there, but I feel like I was able to really create work there. And then I was also an adjunct professor and did choreography at University of the Arts. And so I was choreographing and then seeing things on stages there. But never would I have thought that I would wake up in the morning and say, This is what I do for a living. I mean, it’s a little bit wild. And then in this stage now, having the opportunity to do things under my own name — having commissions is incredible.
It’s not just satisfying because you’re able to travel, but you’re able to meet people and you’re challenged with different environments, you’re challenged with different artists, different genres of dance, and so that’s wonderful. But having your name on it, being responsible to make sure that everyone’s paid on time, having a physical therapy schedule, will that schedule work with the schedule that I made, it’s a different animal.
twi-ny: In some cases you’re choreographing on friends and colleagues you’ve worked with for years, and in other cases you’re working with completely new teams you’re not as familiar with. Is one harder than the other?
hb: That does get a little bit difficult.
twi-ny: You have to boss friends around sometimes.
hb: Well, yeah. You just have to remind them what you want and that as much as they know you and want the best for you, you may not have the answer for why you’re doing something right away, but they have to trust you. And they do. They ultimately do.
Sometimes, it’s funny; you still have to watch your words when they’re people who you love. I love to talk about the found family. And when you have people who are committed to you and they want the best for you, and they maybe think that their opinion’s going to help . . . what really helps above all is their support, not having to pretend or perform when you’re in front of people who don’t know you. You have to show up. You have to do the smiling thing. I mean, we always have to watch our words, especially now. I’m super conscious of how I speak to other artists, but I feel like I’ve always been conscious of that because of things I didn’t like. So I wanted to be one of those people who could tell you the truth and tell you no and tell you I don’t like that, let’s fix it.
twi-ny: Right. Tell them, “I still love you.”
hb: Exactly, “I still love you.” And so I feel that it’s easier for me. We were away during our technical residency in the Catskills, and I just had a yucky morning, and three of the women who I knew I could cry in front of and that they would pray with me did. We started late that day. I was weeping. I said, “I need some help.” They put their arms around me in a group, and then the day got started after that. It was just heavy times. But when you have people who’ve known you, they can also pick up some of the slack when you don’t feel a hundred percent; they fill in the rest.
twi-ny: In your PBS First Twenty episode Beauty Size & Color, you talk about “renegotiating and forcing a change of narrative,” which relates to something that comes up a lot in your work. You talk about finding your own path, that your path is different from someone else’s path. Are we on the right path as a society?
hb: Yes. It’s so interesting. Lately, especially because I’ve been applying for grants — I don’t mean foundational grants, I mean the creative grants — you are competing against hundreds of applications. You’re lucky if someone recognizes your name; maybe recognizing your name will move you forward, but maybe it also won’t. They’re really just trying to look at the topic. And if my topic of what I want to make is not radical enough, if it is not wild enough, if it is not socially piercing enough, if I’m not saying the words that people want to hear from a huge activist, I mean, I’m not saying that I’m not. I’m just saying if those words aren’t the words people want to hear, then it feels like I’m not in those rooms.
So I want to be clear about that. But it feels like you’re not chosen. And I think that love is the most radical thing we should work on. If we were radical with our love, we wouldn’t watch someone fall and then just look at them. We would pick them up. If we were more radical with our love, we would have compassion for those who didn’t have homes. If we were more radical with our love, we would not necessarily need to walk into a school with some sort of weapon. I’m going to tell you when it changed for me: There was a woman who looked fine. She did not look homeless. She was a young white woman, and she was walking in my neighborhood — I live in Harlem, but it’s gentrified. And then she pulled down her pants to take a wee.
And I said to myself, Excuse me, what are you doing? I didn’t judge; she looked perfectly fine. But at some point she was not able to walk into a place and say, May I use the bathroom?
twi-ny: Or someone said no.
hb: Or someone said no. I checked myself in the moment; instead of me saying, How dare you! I should have said, How could I help you? But please understand. I did not think that first; I thought that third or fourth after all of the other things. But if I were more radical with my love, maybe I would’ve said to her, How can I help you? Is there something I could do? I don’t know what her situation was.
twi-ny: Exactly. You don’t know.
hb: And so I want to speak about this love and trying to understand why I felt the lack and why I felt like I was in constant competition with things that I could not control. There are a lot of things I could control. So once again, let me be clear. I’m not trying to be a hypocrite, but if I’m in competition with you simply because you’re bald — I’m usually bald.
twi-ny: I know, I know.
hb: It’s a little bit long today.
twi-ny: Yeah, mine too. Mine too.
hb: But if that’s the case, I’m in the wrong business. I love to go into new studios and tell people, if it were about being tall and blond with a bun, I would not have been working for over twenty years. But I did. Which means that there is room for me; which means that there’s room for you. Now, it doesn’t feel like a lot of room at the time, but if I can make room, if my path is this wild and then I am able to do this, then that means someone else can come in and then they can, and then we can, and then they can. And then we can.
hb: Unbelievable. I’m sure that they thought that the musical, Purlie, was going to be a better moneymaker. What’s the reasoning behind us not seeing that? Yes, the musical, yay, we’re not cutting it. Yay. We love a musical, song and dance. But that piece of art. That was written, what? More than sixty years ago?
twi-ny: Yes. And it felt like it could have been written yesterday. The friend I went with, she saw the musical with Cleavon Little and Patti Jo. She even brought her program from 1972, and she asked, Why is this a musical? Now that she’s seen the play, it’s like, wow.
hb: Yeah, I’m friends with [Purlie Victorious star] Leslie Odom Jr. And he was like, “You think Ms. Jamison wants to come?” I said, “Yeah.” So I called her and she said, “You mean Purlie? I said, No, I mean Purlie Victorious. She said, “Purlie.” I said, “No, Judy. The prequel.”
twi-ny: And to be that funny sixty years ago about this topic. We laughed our heads off while facing this truth.
hb: It’s unbelievable. All of that to say there is a radicalness that can change our view on what truth is. Do you know what I mean? And I’m not thinking in this log line; I call it my log line. It doesn’t really explain the work, but I say in this evening-length, fully scripted new dance theater work. It’s not new because I’m making something no one has ever seen. It’s new for me. It’s a new way for me to express myself. It’s a new way for me to make work that I feel deserves to be spoken about just because it’s my experience. And once again, here I am trying to broaden a path that I feel like other people just need to — I don’t want them to walk the way that I walk. I just want them to feel they’re given the ability to actually walk forward and not feel stunted.
twi-ny: Kara Young, who plays Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins [in Purlie Victorious], she’s like a dancer at times; she speaks volumes with her body even when not saying anything.
hb: She’s studied and trained in all the disciplines because you can’t move like that, I’m sure, without that agility and understanding. [ed. note: Young studied at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.] It’s not just being flexible; it’s about awareness. I don’t know all of her story, but I could say I can’t imagine that she didn’t. But I do know that Leslie studied at Danco. That’s where I met him when he was fifteen or sixteen years old. So I know he’s a mover. And his agility — that scene where he kept running back to the window, oh my God. Oh my. The timing. I was like, look at my friend. But anyway.
[ed. note: . . . an evening of HOPE opened with Deidre Rogan dancing to Odom’s rendition of “Ave Maria.”]
twi-ny: One of the things you say is your journey is yours, and your journey is yours. We’re not all on the same journey, even if we’re spending an hour and a half or two hours together in a safe space. Your recent work, first with . . . an evening of HOPE, a beautiful and fascinating thing to experience, and now with States of Hope, is very personal. It can’t get much more personal. You’ve taken this other meaning of your name — the work is very much about moving forward, evolving; hope is an essential theme. And now you’re baring your soul out there. Every choreographer and dancer puts themselves into it, but you’re putting Hope Boykin into it. Is that difficult to do?
hb: It is and it isn’t. Sometimes people are like, “Oh, it must be very healing.” And I was actually having to hear it every day. Getting it out was the part that was the healing part’ hearing other people voice these things has become something a little bit different. Matthew Rushing came to Bryant Park to see me perform a solo. The year before I was rained out; everyone was able to perform except for me. It started raining more. So then the next year, I was just going to do the same work, but no one was available. So I ended up dancing it; I did a recorded voiceover, and then I performed. He was like, “Wow, you really laid it out there. You all right?”
Because not only was it my voice, but you were watching me and hearing my voice. That was sort of the turning point for me. I had taken this memoir writing class during the pandemic here at the 92nd St. Y. And that was also another way that I understood that I could tell my story differently, that I could use prose as well as those poetic sounds. I call them my poetic moments. But I could speak. And I said, Well, what if I turned this around? I was acquainted with Mahogany L. Browne, and I was telling her I wanted to work on this project. And she was like, “Oh, sure, I can help you.” And so she’s called herself my script midwife, and she basically said, “Give me your text.” And she said, amongst other exercises and examinations, “How do you feel about this from this person’s perspective? Write this from your mother’s perspective.”
So then she is teaching me how to take a situation and bring it in together so that these perspectives can have a conversation. Then we named the people, and then the people got ideas. And then instead of them actually having names —because at first I thought they might have names; I just thought that we would hear their characteristic in their name. And she’s like, “Are you sure?” I’m like, “Yeah, I think this is the best way.” And then all of a sudden I was able to have one of them speak to the other. But that’s exactly what’s going on in my mind. Should I buy that purse? It’s pretty expensive. Well, did you pay the rent? Yes, I paid the rent. That’s the logical person. Well, did you buy groceries? Yeah, I bought groceries, dah, dah, dah. But you have that bag. You have another bag that looks just like that bag. So all of these ideas are floating around. Well, should you get it? Because if you just save that money, maybe you could put that money away. That’s the worry. You know what I mean? Maybe you could put that money someplace else. And then the Angry says, of course I buy the bag. I’m worth it. I want to buy it. And so all of these ideas — I’m not going to say people, but these states, these parts, these slivers of me are living together.
twi-ny: You’re talking about the Determined, the Conformist, the Cynical, the Convinced, the Angry, the Daughter of Job, and the Worried.
hb: And the Worried. Yes.
twi-ny: All parts of you and parts of other people in your life.
hb: Yes. Parts of me hearing other people. There are parts of me, but they also represent experiences that I’ve had. Matthew, when he was creating Odetta, he told the whole cast, “The turning point for me being able to make this piece was realizing that all of the people and all of my influences were inside of me, that they’re all an ingredient. And so there’s no point in trying to pretend that this doesn’t have some Ailey in it. It doesn’t have some Judy in it. It doesn’t have some [Ulysses] Dove.”
[ed. note: Boykin performed the “This Little Light of Mine” excerpt from Odetta for the December 2020 Ailey Forward Virtual Season.]
He said, “I’d be ridiculous to think that all of those influences weren’t coming out of me.” Because we’re always trying to do something brand new, right? But there’s nothing new under the sun. So we have to just know that all of those people are a part of me. So when my mother makes a statement to me, I make that statement to another person, who’s younger, because I learned that lesson. If I fall in the ditch — I’m from North Carolina; we had ditches. So if I fall in the ditch —
twi-ny: We have potholes here.
hb: Right? But if I can tell someone, “Hey, there’s a ditch about three feet from there, just go around it,” and they don’t listen, then they’re like, “Hope told me about that ditch.” It won’t be, “I didn’t know there was a ditch there.” And so all of those people have played a part of who those characters turn out to be and will be. It’s interesting, and it’s challenging, but I want to do it. I feel it’s important.
twi-ny: I’m looking at the seven characters, and I guess you’re the eighth.
hb: Oh, yeah.
twi-ny: All of us fit into every one of those characters. I was even thinking about the Book of Job the other day. So, in choosing the dancers, did you have ideas for who you wanted for each part? Did you have auditions, or did you say, Oh, I already know who’s going to be doing this and who’s doing that?
hb: There were a few people that I knew I wanted. There was all dance first. There were people who I know dance and then act; one of the dancers is on Broadway right now. Some of them have been in movies and television, but I’ve met most everyone through my relationship with the Ailey organization. Two of them are former students of mine from USC. So everything is dance first. And I let people know that we have to read and we have to act. And I let them know that I’ll help you do that. Not because I can, because I know people who can.
twi-ny: Well, that’s key.
hb: Yes, it’s key. Yes. And so a couple of the dancers had never read before. So I said, I want you to read this. And then I would say, “No, try reading it with this tone; here’s the back story for that person. Read it like this.” And then once the nerves are gone, and once they understood, all of a sudden the person who can physicalize pain without speaking can now speak pain and physicalize it at the same time, in my opinion, is probably going to be better than the person who has to learn to move. Because we do. We go onstage hungry, experiencing loss. I’ve danced directly after my father’s funeral. There’s just this thing. We are just experiencing things, but we don’t get to say it. So imagine if I can scream, “I’m still angry! I’m still angry!”
Hope Boykin will get personal in States of Hope at the Joyce (photo courtesy HopeBoykinDance)
Watching them do that is just amazing. The sweetness of Daughter of Job says, “Well, are you sure this is the way you want to move?” And then Cynical says, “Well, I don’t know.” So it wasn’t an audition per se, but some of them I needed to let them know, “I do need you to read this. I need to understand.” But I think it’s perfectly cast. I think there are challenges to everyone’s level. Another friend of mine said to me, “You realize that actors ask why. And dancers say okay.” So now I have to have these dancers ask me why all the time. And I’m like, “Can you just try it?”
twi-ny: At the Joyce, of all places. This is the big time for them, for all of you.
hb: It’s a big time for me. And I am excited and nervous, but it’s successful already because of the people in the room. It’s successful because they’ve already not just agreed but taken on the weight of this work in a way that is just — I’m just really blessed.
twi-ny: It’s got to be so gratifying for you.
hb: Yes.
twi-ny: You have said, “I’ve waited, sometimes patiently, for my turn, permission to be given. Who have I been waiting on and why? I can’t wait anymore.” What’s the next, as you call it, “hope thing” after the Joyce?
hb: I have some projects that are simmering, and they’re the ones that you can’t forget about, the ones you don’t need to write down, the ones that you are, like, Oh, I can see this happening.
You mentioned Beauty Size & Color. Three of the four cameras that were used to film that I own, the microphones are mine, the lights are mine. I mean, of course I had support from the spaces that we were in, but there’s something about being behind the camera that is so thrilling, because as a person who moves bodies in space, I see dance on film in a way that is scripted, much like what I’m working on right now with States of Hope.
So that’s just me dropping a little bit of some simmering plans, a scripted dance film that is moving while speaking. It’s not just moving instead of the word, but they’re working in tandem, which is why this States of Hope process feels difficult because everyone has to learn their lines, then you block them in the space. Or we work with choreography in the morning, and then I say, Oh, we’re going to do this choreography with this scene. And at first it’s like, Well, I can’t say that and do that. And then it’s like, Oh, okay, maybe I could say that and do that. Well, you know what? Then all of a sudden they’re literally moving and speaking at the same time. So the layers upon layers upon layers of trying to add to this presentation is what the challenge has been. But I’m happy right now. I don’t think it’ll be complete. I don’t think it’ll be finished by October 17. I think that I will still have to add and see things that I was like, Oh, I should have done that. But I have time.
twi-ny: So you’re still a little worried, who is one of the characters, and you’re happy, who is not. The happy person is not one of the people. But you’re not angry either.
hb: I’m not angry. [laughs] No, I’m not angry.
[Mark Rifkin, who wants you to have the best day ever, is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
A speaker, teacher, and author born and raised on the Upper West Side, Weinert attended Ethical Culture Fieldston, among other schools, and graduated from Barnard with an English degree. She worked in corporate book publishing before starting Narrative Healing, a wide-ranging program that uses storytelling “to heal and transform lives.”
Everywhere she goes, Weinert, who exudes a natural warmth and charm, builds communities of friends and colleagues, who mingle and then form bonds and relationships of their own. For example, it was through Weinert that I met Make Conscious founder Jessica Kung, who I wrote about in my most recent Substack post.
Weinert’s program consists of lectures, classes, workshops, and now a book, Narrative Healing: Awaken the Power of Your Story (Hachette Go, July 2023, $30), arranged around six cycles: Awaken, Listen, Express, Inspire, Connect, Grow. “In my earliest memory of writing, I am nestled under my covers, in a kind of bedsheet cocoon. I am seven, and I am spilling my guts out. I am sending an SOS into the universe,” Weinert writes in the introduction. “When I am writing, I feel heard and seen. My journal is a portal to something larger than myself contained within me, and I am hooked.”
Weinert shares personal stories from her life, along with those from more than two dozen contributors, in such chapters as “The Best Protection Is No Protection,” “Quiet Wildness,” “Mindful Eavesdropping,” “How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything,” “Talk to Animals and Plants,” and “The Message That’s Needed Most.”
You can become part of Weinert’s ever-growing community on September 28 at 6:00, when she will be at Shakespeare & Co for a book signing and conversation with Knopf VP and executive editor Jenny Jackson, author of the novel Pineapple Street. [ed. note: Jackson can no longer attend the event; in her stead, writer, poet, and journalist Carla Zanoni will join Weinert.] From October 13 to 15, Lisa will be joining Jamia Wilson, Kim Thai, and Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona for a three-day retreat, “Listen to Your Ancestors: Bring Their Voices to the Page,” at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck. And on October 17 at 6:00, she will take part in a virtual conversation with gun violence survivor and Everytown Survivor Network director Keenon James, hosted by Brooklyn-based writer Susan McPherson, author of The Lost Art of Connecting.
Lisa, who lives in Chelsea with her husband, photographer and educator Barry Sutton, and their ridiculously adorable Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Ocean, recently spoke with me over Zoom, discussing storytelling and trauma, writing by hand on unruled paper, the mind-body connection, getting married in Central Park during Covid, and more.
twi-ny: You’ve been writing since you were seven years old. Do you still have any of those old notebooks and journals?
lisa weinert: I don’t have writing from when I was seven, but I do from when I was twelve, and I pretty much have every single journal since then.
twi-ny: Do you ever look back at them? And if you do, what’s the feeling to see your younger self doing what your older self is eventually going to do?
Lisa Weinert started writing when she was seven years old and has never stopped (photo courtesy Lisa Weinert)
lw: That’s such a sweet question. I referred to them quite a bit when I was writing the book. I went through a process . . . I had them in different places and I laid them all out and I actually organized them chronologically and labeled them. I think it did a tremendous amount to provide them with so much care and order.
I read through them thinking I was going to find some kind of gem or aha moment. But there weren’t so many surprises, I think at this point I’m very well acquainted with my younger selves; they’re like very good friends. So it was more like hanging out with some buddies.
A childhood friend once said to me, “You’re just going to be one of those people that you’re going to wake up in your forties and have so many unpublished books that are just in boxes because it’s just writing all the time.” And I think that’s a little bit the case. In rereading, I find there’s a lot of stuff where I’m like, Oh, I could probably do something with that now.
But I can say about my earlier journals, I found in a number of places, I would circle something with an arrow and it would say, “Don’t forget this” or “Read this,” and I had such a sense that I was going to read it again.
twi-ny: I still have my fourth-grade notebook. In it is a story I wrote called “If I Were a Pencil.” When I look back at it, I’m like, okay, first of all, there I am using the conditional subjunctive properly at ten. And I’m also writing about a pencil and what do I do? I become a managing editor for children’s books, using a pencil to write and to correct authors’ grammar and punctuation, or at least used to before the pandemic and working electronically from home.
lw: So beautiful. And in fourth grade!
twi-ny: Another thing I noticed in looking back at my writing was my handwriting. Did you get any feel for your handwriting?
lw: It’s very important to me to write with unlined paper. I find it very constraining, like somebody’s telling me what to do with lines. I’ve always written with big black artist notebooks and I like to write oftentimes in different shapes and do big circles or squares and end up drawing. So there’s a really dynamic quality oftentimes.
I think my handwriting now is practically illegible. Almost every morning I write by hand for a period of time. And when I’m working on something, my first draft is always by hand and then I type it into the computer. A lot of it is pretty illegible. I trust that the parts that are meant to be read will be legible.
twi-ny: That’s a good point. I scribble on lined paper and have trouble staying within the lines.
lw: I hate the lines. I feel like I’m all of a sudden in a dictatorship with my creative life. I want to be able for it to be big or small, whatever I want. Sometimes I just want to put a couple of words on a page.
twi-ny: Right. Yes. So in your case, the act of writing, especially since you say that you might add little drawings, it’s like the physical act of writing is a work of art in and of itself before it goes into the computer.
lw: Oh, definitely.
twi-ny: When you type words directly into the computer, you don’t get that. You can look at your words and know when you wrote them and what you were feeling when you wrote them.
lw: I’m an incredibly fast typist. I can type a hundred words per minute. Writing by hand slows me down in a way that’s really important.
twi-ny: You were born and raised primarily on the Upper West Side.
lw: Yes, we moved every couple of years. I had, I think, eleven different residences by the time I was eighteen. It was a combination of wanderlust and trying different things and opportunities. And I think my parents didn’t quite realize that it would have an impact on us in a certain way. This resulted in me seeking out consistency where I could find it and also in a really close relationship with my siblings.
twi-ny: You started Narrative Healing around 2014?
lw: The trainings began then. That’s when I started my yoga teacher training. And the first iterations of this workshop were actually a result of the five-hundred-hour yoga teacher training I did with YogaWorks. I brought together some writers and yogis and started exploring this kind of connection. But my program at Kripalu in 2016 was when this program really launched.
Lisa Weinert signs a copy of Narrative Healing for her mother at book launch (photo by Anita Ng Photography)
twi-ny: When did you decide to write the book? Did someone come to you and say, You need to put this in a book, or did you say it yourself?
lw: It was both things. On the one hand, as we’ve been discussing, I always had this fire to write, and to write a book. And with Narrative Healing, there was so much momentum to the program. It was just one of those moments in life where a lot of things were integrating and synthesizing within me, and these opportunities were coming my way. I had a brief conversation with a program director at Kripalu, and six months later I had a conference with 150 people; I was teaching a version of ths program at Wesleyan University for three years, and I had an event at the Rubin and so many other moments of synergy and opportunity. I saw the kind of impact it was having on people’s lives and that people were coming back and noticing the kind of feedback I was getting.
The desire to write a book was born from what books are meant to do. I wanted to be able to reach people who didn’t happen to be in the room with me. And it kind of came down to that. And I wanted to be able to endeavor to make the program really mobile and personal. So wherever you are, you could try it and explore with friends.
I was also really inspired by the publication journey of The Artist’s Way after interviewing Julia Cameron, learning more about that publishing history. I’ve been a fan of her and her work, but what really inspired me was releasing work into the world and letting it do its thing. What I started seeing in my program was people were coming and participating, and really deep, amazing friendships were forming rather quickly. They were staying in touch independent of me for years, and with me. But that was really it. People did ask me, and students would say, “Where’s the book? I want the book,” that kind of thing. But that was really the idea behind it.
twi-ny: I’ve experienced what you’re talking about in the friendship that Ellen and I have developed with Jessica Kung, who we met through you. You have a way of curating events to have people really become part of them and meet other people. At your book launch, Ellen and I both met people who we work with but had never met in person.
lw: That’s so cool. Yeah, that’s what happens. That’s the real magic of this whole thing.
twi-ny: Did you write most of the book during the pandemic?
lw: Totally. I basically worked on the proposal in 2019. I spent a long time with the proposal. It was a really big transition moving from a live experience to what worked on the page, especially in terms of accessibility. Because when you’re teaching and you see what’s happening with someone, I just immediately amend my instruction. So writing it all out was a big thing. And then Covid hit, and with what it was like to live in the city, and the protests, and BLM, I did a huge pivot with the proposal and the book and really changed the format in some significant ways. I wrote the entire book during lockdown, essentially when my husband was experiencing severe health challenges. It was a challenging environment when I wrote the book.
twi-ny: Yes. You discuss this a lot in your book, how writing is a solitary pursuit. You’re at a computer or at a desk writing by yourself, and now you’re by yourself during a pandemic where it’s not like you can, after you’re done, go out with friends; you can’t. Did you find it more difficult to write under these conditions?
lw: Despite having the book out now, and publishing two pieces in the last couple of weeks in MindBodyGreen (“How We Listen Matters — Here Are 7 Tips to Help Get Better at It”) and the TueNight Social (“Why Is Publishing Making Authors Sick?”), I hadn’t written very much before, period. I’ve been writing all the time, but I had not written for other people. I really hadn’t. When I was writing the book, the world around me offered me tremendous drive and focus. I live in downtown Manhattan; there were sirens everywhere. There was a very extreme situation, and within my home there was a lot of stress. So I had to really do my own personal practice to find the focus that I needed. I felt tremendous drive and I was really grateful for that.
I sensed I must really have to write this if I’m able to write it under these circumstances. I was very protected by the cocoon nature of that time period. There was a fearlessness that happened. I didn’t realize or think about how vulnerable the writing was or how much I was revealing or how the tone of it was; I was just really focused on being truthful. And I was teaching online at the time, so I was really clear about my students and who I was talking to.
twi-ny: I can feel in reading the book, and knowing you, there are times I’m like, oh, she went there. I wasn’t sure you were going to go there. And so really it’s a very open book about who you are and how the program works. Among the elements it deals with are the body and trauma. And so here we are in a pandemic, stuck inside, and we’re more aware of our bodies than we’ve probably been in a long time. We live near Bellevue, so we heard the —
lw: Sirens. Oh, that’s right. You’re right there.
twi-ny: It was scary. We live on one of the busiest streets in the city, and it’s suddenly a quiet street, an empty street, except for the sirens. It makes you aware of your health, your body; you’re worried about anything and everything, like, Oh my God, do I have Covid? So one of parts of the book that I just love is your focus on the body. The natural idea is that we write from our mind. But what you’re saying is that it’s your body that’s always telling a story. That was a revelation for me.
lw: Yeah, me too.
twi-ny: I have a lot of weird pains that doctors have trouble diagnosing. But my chiropractor always says that pain is your friend. It’s your body telling you that something needs to be fixed. So those two things, your take on the body and my chiropractor’s, made me really listen to what stories my body’s telling me. How did that come to you?
lw: I think you just really described it. I think the first thing is, there’s a lot of consequences to not listening to the story of our body. It can become a very ephemeral kind of conversation pretty quickly, but in a very practical way. If you’re not listening to the messages your body’s telling you, you’ll quickly find yourself in danger and at risk. You can think of it like walking through life with earpods and not noticing what’s around you.
And there was a eureka moment for me. I thought everything happened in my head. I’m from a very intellectual family; I had a career in corporate publishing, working with ideas and stories all the time, and I felt very confident about it. I kept getting promoted. I had this idea that I knew everything about this kind of thing.
Like you, I had a moment of physical pain. I had a really scary medical diagnosis that turned out to be false, but I didn’t know it at the time. And I discovered in that moment that I was unable to access my voice. And this diagnosis wasn’t because I didn’t advocate for myself. The point is I had the experience of really knowing that when I’m actually paralyzed by fear, it’s really hard for me to articulate what I think. I didn’t think all of this at the moment, but once I was recovering from that experience and I had major surgery, I started thinking that a lot of the storytelling that I knew that was in my head was useless. What’s the point of all of this if I don’t know the rest of this?
I had always wanted to do a deeper dive into yoga. It’d always been a big part of my life; when I started my yoga teacher training, I started learning from masterful teachers these concepts that our body is carrying stories and that our body carries stories both in narratives but also in the form of tension and hunger and desire and pain and all these other things. And that these are essential parts of living an integrated life as being sensitive and having an active conversation between those things because our mind and our body are actively connected. And I started studying this and learning and becoming really like, Oh my goodness, I’m just on fire about it. And then working with writers over the years who were writing narrative consistently, I think writers are more disembodied. We’re just head on the page and isolated.
But not only are you at risk of crossing the street and not seeing the car coming your way, but you’re at risk when you sit down at the computer not really having access to ninety percent of your creative energy, both in terms of actual energy and also memories and associations and senses. I discover every day again and again and again that when I incorporate a little bit of a mindfulness practice or a full yoga practice into writers’ lives, their writing changes in amazing ways — what they write about, how they write, how they feel about what they write. This doesn’t mean that great writing doesn’t happen elsewhere, but particularly for people living with physical pain or emotional pain or confusion, transition — who isn’t living that way right now? This is just a really helpful way to begin to integrate. And I think for us intellectual creatures in the West, writing has a way of acting like a translator between the mind and the body.
twi-ny: That’s a great point. Although I haven’t taken the program, I’m familiar with what you do. I follow your posts on social media and the articles you write, and I’ve told you before that what you do has impacted me in the way you describe. So coming out of a pandemic, I did a deeper dive into my mind and my body. I’ve been writing This Week in New York for more than twenty years, but I never used the word “I.” It’s not about me but the event I’m writing about. And it opened me up to the point where I now have a Substack where I write about extremely personal things. I’m sharing these stories that I’ve never told before. I’ve revealed things about myself that I never thought I would share in public. And people are reacting and responding in such positive ways. So I want to thank you again for that.
lw: Thank you for sharing. That means a lot to me. The other part that I want to add to this is some of the science behind writing as a healing practice. I think intuitively we might feel it or we might notice it in our writing, but this sort of thinking about writing as a way to connect the mind and the body is a two-way street. On the one hand, you might get a source of creativity and flow, but on the other hand, writing slows down and connects us to our mind. We understand as writers, you actually can’t really write clearly unless you’re connecting to your thoughts, but it can create a higher sensitivity to what is happening in the body.
So when you get those alarms, like something happening with the stomach or the back or whatever it is, you will more quickly address it, number one. And number two, there’s tremendous amounts of science, hundreds of research studies, that show a regular, consistent writing practice done in this way has a huge impact on rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, PTSD, trauma. There’s a lot of research that cancer patients who write regularly recover or react better to the medicine. So while we experience the impact in a singular way, when you start to study it, it’s really astounding how impactful it is.
twi-ny: It is amazing. And you make it clear that the writing doesn’t have to be for publication. One of the things the book gets into is that writing, meditation, and yoga, you don’t have to be an expert at any of those things. You don’t have to be, Well, I’m not going to write a book. It’s not about that. It’s not about getting published. What do you tell people who come to you and say, Oh, well, I don’t write, I don’t meditate, I don’t do yoga. This program, it’s not really right for me.
lw: Well, I’m definitely not trying to convince anyone to do this program. But I’ve been doing some corporate events recently where I’m walking into environments where people are not opting in but it’s part of a company program. I did a program recently at an art school and also at a law firm. I think in both cases people came but they didn’t really know what it was and were fairly skeptical when I arrived. And what I can say is people tend to feel better afterward. There tends to be an experience of relaxation and curiosity, whether people jump into a writing practice or not. I’ve been actually really humbled by how open-minded people are. I think we’re living in a time where people feel so bad and are so full of fear and trauma, and there’s so much division and so much stress.
And what this program offers is something that’s really pretty accessible, welcoming, inclusive, and free. And there’s just not that many things like that that you can try out that will make you feel better. Maybe you’ll take some of the classes, but they’re really pretty affordable. Someone who might not be a great fit is somebody who is really hell bent on having a New York Times bestseller. For those people, I tend to recommend someone who might help you more than what I’m doing. I haven’t ever been in a situation where I’m trying to persuade someone to get into it.
twi-ny: Yes, yes. So the genesis is 2014, and in 2016 you’re really getting into it. So much has happened between 2016 and 2023. Do you find that either the people coming to you or the kinds of stories that they want to share have always been the same, or because of all this daily pressure we’re talking about, racial injustice, the DEI movement, social media, are the students and their stories different from when you started even only seven years ago?
lw: That’s such an interesting question. I think I’ll have to reflect on that a little bit more. When I started the program, it was oriented in a little bit more of a medical way. There were a lot of people living with chronic illnesses, so the shares might be more about illness narrative and trauma, people who are identifying that way. I often teach with groups where I have a sense of where they’re coming from, with gun violence or corporate burnout or whatever it is. So there is what I think is sort of a difference that I wouldn’t have expected. People are very willing to share.
I’ve been in a number of situations where it’s a big group, and by big, I mean maybe more than thirty, but where people don’t know each other. I used to be much more careful about how I would curate the sharing, but we always have some kind of writing in these programs. And I’m finding people just shoot their hands up and have so much they want to say, so much they want to share, and it’s often emotional, about love. That’s what I’m seeing — love, grief. I don’t think the topics are that different, but I think it’s a little bit more on the tip of their tongue.
twi-ny: That brings me back to the essay you wrote for TueNight Social, “Why Is Publishing Making Authors Sick?”
lw: It’s such a great headline. I didn’t come up with it, but it’s really good.
twi-ny: Working in book publishing, I understand it, but it also addresses what we talked about earlier, the loneliness of being a writer, especially once the book is put into production and you’re getting toward the book being published and the marketing surrounding it. So this struck me. You have, from what I can tell, a tight-knit family. I know you have a caring husband, you have a large community of friends and colleagues who you care about and who care about you, but still you write in the article about feeling vulnerable and insecure as the book comes out. It almost seems like it was a surprise to you, and you used to work in the business. What do you think that was, and are there any easy answers to get over it now that you’ve gone through it?
lw: I think what that piece is really about is sharing honestly with people that you trust, which is really what the whole program is about. And the part that was difficult about it had less to do with any realities of my personal life or the skills of the amazing people that I got to partner with on this publishing journey. What I really felt was that the publishing process, the structure of it, taps into attachment wounds. And that with attachment theory, that felt like the real aha! moment, when you have a vulnerable story that you’re sharing and then nobody’s there with you. Your partner and your friends are not with you on the publishing journey because they’re just not inside of you, with you all the time.
It’s not something that you think to share because this wonderful thing is happening, and it’s not something that you’re complaining about. “My dreams are coming true but I feel miserable.” So I was really taken aback by how powerful it was, and it was a deep psychological thing that was tapped into that I know all writers connect with because of the kind of feedback I’ve been getting. During my years of working in corporate publishing, I witnessed authors being like this, and I truly didn’t understand it. I was surprised because I’ve witnessed authors, I’ve coached them, I’ve supported them. And I would be frustrated, honestly, as a publicist, saying, “Why aren’t you doing more right now? This is what you’re supposed to be doing. You signed up for this.”
I used to give talks at writing conferences where I had a line I used about comparing publishing a book to having a baby and that once your baby’s born, you don’t drop it on its head, you’ve got to take care of it. That’s what I would say to authors. But then I started understanding. I wrote another piece for a newsletter for my community that many healthy cultures, after a baby is born, the parent, the mother gets to rest for a while, and loads of other people started the forty days, come in and help. And what I didn’t understand, it started happening to me. I mean, I had some expectation; everyone has a particular story, but the second it was finished, I was profoundly depleted and exhausted. I’ve been working on this since 2016, through the pandemic, and then all the extra stuff you have to do, and now I’m being asked to write extra pieces and go do this and go do that.
I had underestimated the actual exhaustion, depletion I would feel. And also in terms of attachment theory, having that one trusted person who’s your secure person; the way our publishing system is set up, just the dynamic of it, you really don’t have that because you get passed along like a conveyor belt. My husband was very supportive throughout, but he doesn’t know anything about publishing. I have lots of people I’m close with, but what I found was that doesn’t prevent the feelings you have inside of “I’m not doing enough. Oh my gosh, I needed to do a million things as of yesterday and now I’m not taking care of it, and now it’s not good enough and now it’s not going to do this.” I didn’t think I was going to have those thoughts because I thought I knew better. I thought I was immune to that.
And I just was really, really run down. And then I got Covid and got super sick, and I noticed that it was late August, early September when my energy came back and feel very motivated and excited. I’ve written a couple of pieces and I think there’s a real truth to this gestation period, or the fourth trimester, where you need to rest and you need to be taken care of. And what I talk about in the piece in terms of an antidote was something I found very compelling, the idea of having a publishing buddy and somebody who, not necessarily a family member or friend, but somebody who truly could believe in your work. One person you go to, who you check in with daily, someone who can respond and give you support. It’s made me really motivated within Narrative Healing to continue to create creative support. I guess I have so much to say about this.
The other part about the support system is there’s just very little community out there for authors after the book comes out that’s not extremely expensive or competitive, and that’s not what your nervous system needs. Your nervous system needs to feel safe. You’ve done enough. The emails and text and calls I’ve gotten since that piece has come out have really overwhelmed me. And authors who look on paper like they’re killing it are emailing me, “I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life. I thought I was the only one.” And so I think it’s tapped into something. It’s not at all a takedown of publishing. It’s more how we haven’t addressed it enough. What kind of care do you need at this point? And having been through a wedding also, it’s not that different from that, leading up to it, it’s not necessarily a stress-free time for a lot of people, even though it’s a wonderful occasion.
twi-ny: I like the comparison to giving birth because a lot of people now, they celebrate their book’s birth date on Instagram and Facebook. I remember how excited you were when you posted a video of you opening your first box of books. Opening the box to take out that first printed book is, in a way, like a baby coming out of the womb and now it’s out in the world. It’s very moving to watch the pure joy of that. But then knowing that it’s not as joyous the next day, dealing with these other aspects that you didn’t anticipate.
lw: It’s also like that six months later, actually. I think many writers going from such a cocoon state of me in my apartment creating this thing to being out in the world is just a big adjustment.
twi-ny: Yes. You also mentioned your wedding, which my wife and I attended. It was such a wonderful experience. It took place in the North Garden of the Conservatory Garden in Central Park, and you had different people from different parts of your lives share stories about you and Barry under each of the floral arches. We walked around the fountain and listened to the stories; it was very moving and intimate, especially because the pandemic was far from over. But what was it like for a writer who has edited or worked with other writers on their stuff? You’re now listening to stories about you; you are the subject. What was it like walking around and hearing what these people had to say about you and Barry?
lw: In some ways, it was a similar experience. Coming out of Covid, it was the first time I’d been around that many people in two years. And then it was sort of the same when my book came out; I guess I’ve been in seclusion a lot the last couple of years. It was very similar. I think for both the wedding and the book, I had a very big laser focus on service. I never wanted to have a wedding. I’m not somebody that ever wanted to get married. I never dreamed about it, never thought about it. I always wanted to have a book, but I never wanted a wedding. And then I met this person, but also Covid. And I felt this different urgency to — not urgency, but responsibility, of sharing the joy and bringing people together and doing it safely and doing it with care.
And so I felt very clear about why I was there, and it was super-overwhelming. I kind of knew what one or two people were going to say. Other people, I didn’t know what they were going to say, but I totally trusted them. I just remember having my hand on my heart the whole time to just make sure that I was breathing, and that was kind of it. And letting myself off the hook if I wasn’t fully experiencing everything because it was so overwhelming. The book experience has been very similar in terms of things being really overwhelming. The launch party that you came to was almost like a reunion from the wedding. It was so many of the same people, and just trusting others to help me care for this thing, understanding that we don’t do it alone.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Lou Reed, Run-D.M.C., Salt-N-Pepa, the Ramones, Count Basie, Beverly Sills, Pat Benatar, Louis Armstrong, Kurtis Blow, Blue Oyster Cult, Joan Jett, John Coltrane, Aaron Copland, Neil Diamond, George Gershwin, Stray Cats, Barbara Streisand, Billy Joel, Taylor Dane, Simon & Garfunkel.
Those are only some of the artists who have been inducted into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame (LIMEHOF). The next to join that prestigious roster is Robin Wilson, lead singer of the Gin Blossoms, who will be inducted on August 25. Wilson was born in Detroit and raised in Arizona, but he moved to Valley Stream on Long Island more than twenty years ago to spend more time with his son, Grey Wilson, and his ex-wife, Gena Rositano, a longtime stage manager at Saturday Night Live. On Valentine’s Day, 2021, Wilson had a serious fire in his home, forcing him to temporarily relocate to Hicksville, but he returned to Valley Stream, where he played a series of free house shows during the pandemic.
Robin Wilson and Gena Rositano with their son Grey at SNL (photo courtesy Gena Rositano)
I grew up in Malverne but went to high school in Valley Stream with Rositano and have closely followed Grey’s development as a musician in his own right; he is now part of several bands, including the Mercurys, the Afternoon Grifters, and Theo & the London Outfit.
Wilson, fifty-eight, became a Gin Blossom in 1988, one year after the group formed. The band’s major label debut, 1992’s New Miserable Experience, was packed with hits, including “Hey Jealousy,” “Until I Fall Away,” “Found Out About You,” and “Allison Road,” and has sold over five million copies. The follow-up, 1996’s Congratulations I’m Sorry, featured “Follow You Down” and “Til I Hear It from You,” the latter recorded for the 1995 film Empire Records. In addition to performing with the Gin Blossoms, Wilson joined the Smithereens after the 2017 death of Pat DiNizio; he writes songs with the band and alternates on lead vocals with Marshall Crenshaw.
Heavily tattooed and wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, a black T-shirt, and black shorts, Wilson zoomed in from a hotel gym in Indianapolis, where the Gin Blossoms were scheduled to play the penultimate show of their summer tour at the Indiana State Fair that night. After a short break, they’re going back out on the road, stopping at the Paramount in Huntington on September 12.
At the LIMEHOF induction ceremony on August 25 in Stony Brook, Wilson will play a set with a pair of fellow Smithereens, guitarist Jim Babjak and drummer Dennis Diken, along with Joe Jackson bassist Graham Maby and special guest Grey Wilson.
During our talk, Wilson was generous with his answers, giving them careful consideration while being open and direct. Below he discusses fathers and sons, the modern concert experience, cover songs, living in Valley Stream, and more.
twi-ny: We met briefly when your son Grey’s band the Mercurys played the Klub 45 Room in Times Square and you joined them onstage. You played the Gas Giants’ “Quitter,” which was a blast.
robin wilson: It was such a blast.
twi-ny: Grey has also played with the Gin Blossoms. What are those experiences like to have either you jump onstage with him or him jump onstage with you?
rw: Well, it’s a thrill for me because music is the predominant force in my life. And for it to become equally so in my son’s means a lot. It fills me with pride to see him take my lead and to try to follow in my footsteps.
My father was a stuffy Republican accounting professor who wanted nothing to do with me, and we had nothing in common. I never had a moment like that with my dad. There’s no parallel experience that I’ve had with my father. So it means a great deal to me to be able to perform with Grey from time to time.
twi-ny: You went to school where your father taught.
rw: We lived in Tempe. He was a professor at Mesa Community College. Which was nearby. He started teaching there in 1971 when we moved from Detroit to Arizona. And so I grew up on that campus and that was one of my first jobs, working in the cafeteria there. When I got out of high school, I was a student at Mesa. For a long time.
Since my dad was a professor, tuition was free. I went to school there for five years. I never quite got an associate’s degree. For the first few years, I changed my major a bunch of times and kind of floundered around. But by the time I finally found direction, I was studying physics and other of the physical sciences, like chemistry and calculus and geology. And then the band took off, and so I never got to finish my degree. I was very proud to walk into my physics professor’s office one day and say, I can’t finish this semester. Our band is going on tour.
twi-ny: That’s a great excuse.
rw: You know it; it was great. And I remember when I dropped out of college for that first tour, my dad told me, “Robin, you’re a fucking idiot.” [ed. note: After New Miserable Experience went gold, Wilson’s father conceded, admitting, “Robin, I feel like a fucking idiot.”] So I know what it means to my son to pursue music and what it means to dream of a life creating and performing music. I want him to succeed, and I want to give him the tools that he’ll need to accomplish his goal.
twi-ny: I’ve seen Grey play live and on YouTube and Instagram. He’s quite accomplished. He’s got a great stage presence, and he can play that guitar.
rw: Yeah, he can really play. And so I’m always really proud to have him join us onstage with the band. It’s gonna be great to have him performing at the Hall of Fame induction, too.
Bill Leen, Scott Hessel, Robin Wilson, Jesse Valenzuela, and Scott Johnson of the Gin Blossoms (photo courtesy the Gin Blossoms)
twi-ny: The Gin Blossoms have been together for about thirty-five years now, including four core members who have been together since 1992. What is the secret to the longevity of the group?
rw: Well, it’s a combination of factors, the most important of which is compromise. Knowing when to keep your mouth shut and just do your job. That goes a long, long way in the rock band environment. That combined with the fact that we have really good songs and we can go to any city in America and sell a thousand tickets and people can sing along with our music. It’s just such a gift to have been able to accomplish that sort of commercial success that it would be stupid just to turn your back on it. You’d have to be really, really unhappy and miserable to want to just blow the whole thing up just because you don’t want to go do rock shows.
It’s not easy. Most of what we do is the traveling. There’s at least ten or twelve hours of travel for every hour we spend onstage. But that ninety minutes a day onstage makes up for all the other bullshit. And my bandmates and I have been able to put our grievances behind us for the most part and accept that everyone in the band is allowed to have their own experience. So we just try to do our jobs and stay out of each other’s way, not create trouble. And we’re grateful that we could still do it at this level,
twi-ny: Touring has obviously changed since the band started. What are one or two things that stick out to you that are either better or worse than they were in the late eighties, early nineties? Fans are throwing objects at lead singers for TikTok. Have you encountered anything or like that?
rw: Well, that kind of thing has happened randomly throughout our career, but it’s just a random occurrence. It’s not a part of any sort of trend. The main force that makes it different now than what it used to be is this device that I’m talking to you on, the smartphone. When we first started touring, we didn’t have GPS. We had a road atlas that was about this thick.
twi-ny: I remember those.
rw: And that would go underneath the driver’s seat. When we would pull into a new town, we would have to pull that out and look through a map. You had to be able to read a map and find your way through a new city to get to the gig. There wasn’t a way to just pull up Yelp and find someplace to eat. You had to ask if there was a restaurant nearby or physically drive around looking for somewhere you could eat.
And then, of course, the worst thing about the phone, this new media, is social media. It’s just a fucking cancer. It makes everyone think that they’re the star of their own reality show and that everything is about them. I don’t mind people taking pictures of the band while we’re performing. I don’t mind video of the band while we’re performing. But what I cannot stand is when someone will stand right in front of me and take a selfie of themselves. That’s just so incredibly rude and so self-absorbed, and it takes you out of the moment, you know? Here’s a picture of me not listening to my favorite Gin Blossoms song.
I just don’t get it. And again, it’s just so rude. The way I think about it is, imagine if your child was onstage in the school play and someone stood up in front of your child while they were delivering their lines and started taking selfies of themselves and started distracting your child. How outraged would you be? Because this person is doing that. It would make you sick to see someone do that.
We didn’t enjoy concerts any less in the eighties and nineties before everybody had a camera with them. We enjoyed concerts just as much when we were forced to use our brains to remember them. And these people who say, Well, I’m entitled to capture the moment. Well, capture it with your brain, you lazy asshole. It’s so stupid. So that’s maybe the main thing. Like I said, I have no problem with people taking pictures or video of the band, but it absolutely disgusts me to see people taking pictures of themselves while standing in front of the band.
The Gin Blossoms’ most recent album is 2018’s Mixed Reality
twi-ny: As someone who goes to a lot of shows and often is up front, I can tell you it’s also distracting for the audience. If I’m standing behind someone and they suddenly turn around and their face is in my face so they can take a picture of you behind them onstage, it takes me out of the concert for that split second. And so it’s also annoying on that end.
rw: Yeah. But virtually everything else about the concertgoing experience is the same. I mean, how people react to the music and the performers, what the music means to them, the way it inspires genuine emotion. All of that is the same. The thrill of the light show and the sense of community and all of those things. None of that has changed. The only difference is that everybody’s got the phone, and the phone is a way to take you out of the moment.
twi-ny: Over the years, the Gin Blossoms have developed that real sense of community you just mentioned. Your songs really touch people. And I think that reaching them on an emotional level is really part of what’s kept you guys going so strong. I’ve also noticed on the current tour, you’re playing some great covers: Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away,” and then one of my favorite old songs, the Plimsouls’ “A Million Miles Away”; I saw them play that at the Whiskey a Go Go back in the early eighties.
rw: It’s just great music. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed those songs. And those are all certainly songs that I love to play. I like to play cover songs; I wish that we actually played more covers. I don’t necessarily want to do more covers per show, but I wish we had a larger repertoire of covers we could dip into. But not everybody in the band really loves playing cover songs. They prefer to play original music. And I can appreciate that.
And so, again, what I was saying earlier, the most important thing is to compromise and not make it so any one person in the band is absolutely miserable about the way the shows are done. Everybody’s entitled to have some fun during the show. So if one guy doesn’t want to play a lot of cover songs, well, his feelings are very important to me. So we try to keep it to a minimum. We find the place where we can compromise on these types of issues.
twi-ny: Which doesn’t always happen in a band.
rw: Yeah, it’s very, very difficult to find that. And it’s especially hard when you’re a young band and you’re just coming up and you’re on the charts for the first time. But part of keeping a band together for thirty-five years is learning how to communicate with each other and learning how to find those compromises and the middle ground.
twi-ny: Speaking of original songs, your last album came out in 2018. Anything you guys are working on?
rw: Yeah, at some point. We haven’t got a firm date set to record a new record. But I would suspect that we are going to be in the studio sometime in 2024, have something done by the end of the year. You know, we’re not super anxious, but some of us already have songs that we want to record, and we know we can’t really go much longer before we start to feel bad about it. We don’t owe anybody anything.
It’s not like we sell a lot of records anymore. But as musicians of a part of a certain generation, we feel like we owe it to ourselves to create new music from time to time to challenge ourselves, to create something that we feel holds up with the rest of our catalog. So we know we’ll do it for our own reasons on our own schedule. There’s no record company hounding us to get it done or anything. We’ll just do it when we feel like it. I suspect that it won’t be too long from now before we get another record done. [ed. note: The Gin Blossoms sold a majority stake in their music publishing rights and artist master royalties in 2021 to Primary Wave.]
Robin Wilson and Willie Nile join Theo & the London Outfit for a Valley Stream house concert under the Arizona state flag (photo courtesy Theo & the London Outfit)
twi-ny: So getting back to August 25, you’re being inducted into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. What was it like getting that notification?
rw: Well, it was really amusing. I mean, of course I’m filled with pride and it’s very gratifying. But I’ve had such a contentious relationship with Long Island; my being there, my living there is just such a strange, unlikely circumstance. And it took me so long to get used to it. If you knew what my bandmates have heard me say about Long Island over the years, we’d be laughing as hard as we were when we found out about this, because it was just very difficult for me to get used to being and living on Long Island.
But eventually, it did take, and I’m proud of my home there in Valley Stream, and I’m proud to be the only guy on Long Island who flies an Arizona flag on the front porch. I think it’s really funny when my neighbors come by while they’re walking their dogs and they say, “What is that flag?”
twi-ny: What country is that?
rw: What’s funny to me is, that’s Arizona, that’s the forty-eighth state, you know? So I’m there on Long Island representing my home state of Arizona, which I miss terribly. And now I’ve become a big part of this community.
The company that I’m in with this honor is incredible. It’s humbling and very gratifying. And I’m especially proud for my New York family, the Rositanos, all of my nieces and nephews, my ex-wife and my son, my sister-in-law, my brothers-in-law, and their families. I’m really proud for them, of all the Christmases and holidays we’ve spent together, and now they get to take pride in this, and their pride in this means more to me than anything else about this honor. So I’m very excited for my family, the Rositanos, and I hope they can all be there for for the ceremony.
twi-ny: Is that what brought you to Valley Stream in the first place, family?
rw: Yeah. My ex-wife, Gena, is from Valley Stream. She and I met at MTV. She used to work at MTV.
twi-ny: Yes, I remember.
rw: That’s right. You know Gena. And so she and I met doing The Jon Stewart Show on MTV. [ed. note: You can watch that full episode, also featuring Long Islander Howard Stern, here; Gena was one of the stage managers on the program.]
twi-ny: They just had a reunion, with Jon and everyone.
rw: Yes, that’s right, for the cast and crew. In 1996, Jenna and I had Jon Stewart ordained as a minister, and he performed our wedding ceremony in Valley Stream. It was my connection to Gena and specifically my son, Grey, that kept me there in in Long Island. I could have moved home to Arizona. I always thought I would, but when it came time to actually pull the trigger, I couldn’t leave and I wanted to be there for my son.
And so I’m a Long Island guy now, go figure. And my son, he is in a couple of bands that play around Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and whatnot. And then he’s also a DJ on the radio station at Nassau Community College, WHPC 90.3; his show is called “Alternative to What?” It’s Tuesday nights at 7:00, so everybody tune in and hear my son on the radio spinning the alternative hits. That’s 7:00 on Tuesdays, WHPC 90.3.
twi-ny: Excellent. I do want to ask you one other thing, and it has to do with Valley Stream. I was born in Brooklyn and went to school in Valley Stream. And so my wife has listened for decades to all the things I’ve said about Long Island, probably some of the same things that you would tell your bandmates about Valley Stream before you moved there. As a teenager, I couldn’t wait to get out of there to come to New York City. But a lot of my friends still live in Valley Stream and the surrounding area and love it. You’ve really settled in, huh?
rw: Yeah, I really have. You know, It’s a great little town. It’s got tons of great pizza; Ancona’s would be my favorite. There’s really great Pakistani food everywhere. It seems like we have a really large community of really good immigrant cooks everywhere. It’s a very diverse community.
twi-ny: That was not the case when I went to school there.
rw: On my block alone in Valley Stream, there are three families from Guam. You know, I went my entire life in Arizona without ever meeting anyone from Guam. And there on my street in Valley Stream, there are three families from Guam. So there’s something about it. My theory is that these families are moving to America, and they land at JFK with all their bags, and they get out to the curb and they look around and they go, Well, let’s buy a house. And they end up there in Valley Stream.
And I think that’s part of the strength of our community, the diversity and the variety of food and of viewpoints and such. I know that it wasn’t always like that; when I first moved to Valley Stream it was a very different place, in terms of the racial makeup. I very much enjoy how diverse and cool it is now, and how many different cultures are represented just on my block alone.
It’s great to be part of the community. I love my neighborhood. I love all my neighbors. I got to know everybody during the pandemic. I was doing shows for my neighbors during the pandemic; I would be out in my front yard and I would put on concerts. I am really happy. I’m really proud to live there. And so I hope that they can take pride in this honor too.
twi-ny: You recently played a show with Willie Nile and Grey at your house.
rw: Yes, indeed. That was the first one I had done in a while. And so if anyone’s interested in seeing the livestream performances that I’ve done from my home studio or in my front yard, you can go to the Gin Blossoms official YouTube page and see the shows I was doing for my neighbors during the pandemic.
It was the best part of the pandemic for me, performing for my neighbors; it really meant a lot to me that I was able to bring the neighborhood together in a time of isolation. I really enjoyed the pandemic. I mean, obviously it’s not something you would choose to happen, but I managed to make the most of it.
I enjoyed being home for the first time in my adult life. I enjoyed being home for more than a few weeks at a time. I really enjoyed getting to know my neighbors and performing for them, and spending time with my son. I made a lot of carnitas and I played a lot of video games, and I created a lot of content for the Gin Blossoms YouTube page. That’s really kind of when I truly became a citizen of Long Island, during the pandemic.
So, hi to Gena and Grey and all the Rositanos. I’m looking forward to seeing you guys soon. I’m gonna be home for a couple of weeks, for the first time since last winter. I actually have more than five days off starting next week. So I’m looking forward to spending some time in the studio with my son and riding my bike in Valley Stream State Park, just relaxing and enjoying my home.
twi-ny: Well deserved. And congratulations again on the Hall of Fame. I don’t know who’s going to have more fun, you or Grey, but it’s great for both of you.
rw: Definitely Grey; everything’s more fun for Grey than it is for me.
twi-ny: Thanks, man. This was great.
rw: No, thank you. Peace and love for everybody on Long Island. Rock away!
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
A vulture spies human feet under a wall of plants in bloodred pond in Ebony G. Patterson installation at NYBG (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
. . . things come to thrive . . . in the shedding . . . in the molting . . .
The New York Botanical Garden
2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx
Tuesday – Sunday through October 22, $15 children two to twelve, $31 students and seniors, $35 adults, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-817-8700 www.nybg.org ebonygpatterson.com online slide show
“I’m going to give you a show that you’ve not had before,” artist Ebony G. Patterson promised New York Botanical Garden curator Joanna L. Groarke upon preparing for the exhibition “. . . things come to thrive . . . in the shedding . . . in the molting . . . ,” which has just been extended at NYBG through October 22, 2023.
The Jamaica native has done just that, presenting a wide-ranging display that incorporates sculpture, installation, video, collage, and an interactive element, “Things to Be Remembered,” which asks visitors to answer the question “What have you . . . missed . . . felt . . . loved . . . learned . . . witnessed . . . needed . . . heard . . . that you never want to forget?”
“Ebony is the first visual artist to create art at the garden through an immersive residency,” NYBG CEO Jennifer Bernstein said at the preview in May. “This exhibition celebrates the allure of the beautiful while contemplating what lies beneath the enticing surface, the complex tensions of the natural world, and how they reflect the entanglements of race, gender, and colonialism.”
The exhibition features nearly five hundred black foam turkey vultures congregating around the lawn outside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and inside the massive greenhouse, as if they’re anticipating a kind of destruction, along with hand-cast glass sculptures of body parts and extinct plants, out in the open and hidden within the confines. You can also hear Patterson’s voice in the soundscape. In the LuEsther T. Mertz Library Building, there are works from Patterson’s “studies from a vocabulary of loss” series, consisting of framed collages with cut-paper flowers and reaching hands, plastic insects, feathered butterflies, and such words as liability,should,wreckage, and goodbye kiss.
The library rotunda is home to . . . fester . . . , a stunning ten-foot horizontal piece laden with woven jacquard fabrics, vertebrae, hand-blown black and white glass plants, and more than a thousand red gloves spreading out onto the floor; yet more vultures hover on ledges above floral patterned wallpaper. Visitors can walk inside the three-channel video installation The Observation: The Bush Cockerel Project, a Fictitious Historical Narrative, in which costumed characters wander through a primordial garden, climate change surrounding the proceedings like, well, vultures.
In putting together the show, Patterson, who lives and works in Kingston and Chicago, was concerned with loss, healing, and regeneration; the intersection of art, horticulture, and science; living and dead plants as ghosts and skeletons; and the materiality of objects, recognizing that both Jamaica and America are postcolonial societies facing problematic issues of income inequality and social injustice.
“What does it mean to think about the word gardens associated with places that are working-class spaces in contrast to a place that is a wealthy neighborhood?” she said. “What does it mean to think about a garden as a site of survival, as a site of social survival? What does it then also mean to think about gardens as it relates to communities that are given particular kinds of care in terms of what is thought of as a space of investment of possibility, and what does it also then mean to think about those gardens that are not given consideration for possibility of care but thrive regardless because that is what happens in nature? Things live on, irrespective of what one puts in nature’s way.”
The centerpiece of the exhibit in the conservatory is an immersive structure topped by a white peacock, as if the rest of the installation bursts from its feathers, ending in a bloodred pond in another room where a wall of plants has seemingly fallen from the sky, a pair of white glass legs sticking out like the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East after Dorothy’s house crushes her in The Wizard of Us. Patterson, who had never before been to NYBG before beginning this project but is a regular at the Hope Botanical Gardens and the adjoining Hope Zoo Kingston in her hometown of Kingston, had only recently seen a rare white peacock there for the first time in her life.
“In seeing this peacock, the peacock was in molting, and it was in a dark enclosure, and the peacock just kind of hovered in the space, ebbing and flowing,” she explained at the preview. “It almost seemed like it was a haunt. And so thinking about what the peacock is — this incredibly beautiful bird with all of its pageantry — and to see it at its ugliest moment remained with me for a year. And so in thinking about that, I couldn’t help but think about the question of what does it mean to witness your ugliness. And so for me, unpacking the garden, in a moment of molting, in a moment of transformation, is about witnessing our collective ugliness, that even in the ugliness, beauty is possible, and in that possibility, we will always find new ways ahead.”
Ebony G. Patterson’s “studies from a vocabulary of loss” are framed collages containing words amid flowers, hands, insects, butterflies, and other elements (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Patterson was also inspired by her residency at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Arkansas, where she developed such works as . . . bugs, reptile, fruit, and bush . . . for those who bear/bare witness.
At the preview, I had a chance to speak with Patterson, whose other projects include “Gangstas for Life,” “Disciplez,” and “Invisible Presence: Bling Memories,” a performative piece with embellished coffins.
twi-ny: The first time you ever came to the New York Botanical Garden was in 2019. What were your first impressions walking the grounds?
egp: Yeah, I mean, the sense of sprawl, and there’s a particular kind of splendor that also exists here, as a place like this does because of its expanse. And then also too because part of its mandate is to create a space of beauty. But then I think the other thing that I was also struck by was the demographics. So I was also also very aware of, oh, who are the people that spend time here? Who are the people that spend a lot of time here? And then I had to say that in thinking about the project, I thought about those people a lot. I thought I would hear stories about women who would come during particular seasons, to see particular flowers, and fussing about the fact that a flower doesn’t grow the same way the next season.
But I think about those people. And also too in terms of how this is such a heightened visual experience. Not everybody goes to museums. For some people the garden is their ultimate visual experience. So what does it mean also to disrupt that for a person so that they also think about this place differently in the same way that one would think about an exhibition very differently when one goes to a museum? Each exhibition presents something different. And I sat with that a lot over the course of thinking through the ideas here.
twi-ny: And you were given pretty much carte blanche to go and do what you needed to do?
egp: Correct. Yes. And the gardens . . . I mean, there were some things that I had proposed that I wanted us to explore that were a little difficult to do, given the time. So there is carte blanche and there is carte blanche, right? But that being said, a lot of this is truly a collaboration because as much as I use plants and I think about using plants in relation to history, all of the knowledge about what it means to grow a plant at a particular time, what it is, how it lives with something else, is not something that I consider at all.
And I come from a place of thinking about things as a painter. So I rely very heavily then on the knowledge of the people who are here, in the same way that I would rely on the knowledge of somebody who works in glass. I love glass materially, but ask me, can I go and forge it, do what’s necessary to make it whole myself? No. Can I sew? It’s the same . . . We all rely on the knowledge base of other people to make things possible, and artists are no different in that history.
twi-ny: Mentioning museums, “Dead Treez” was at the Museum of Arts & Design in 2016. Do you see a direct link between the NYBG show and that one?
egp: Oh, absolutely. When MAD gave me that opportunity in the Tiffany Galleries to make a garden inside their galleries, that was such a huge shift in my own practice. But then also too for MAD, it was a new point of departure for them, for them to be inviting an artist to curate a selection of objects. But then I had the show that was also running concurrently [“. . . while the dew is still on the roses . . .” at Pérez Art Museum Miami], and I was like, “How do I make these two things speak to each other?”
So I think for me, the Museum of Arts & Design project that I did in those Tiffany cases is essentially the seed that’s continued to grow over these years. It’s the very thing that ended up also growing the Pérez show, which was centered on this notion of thinking about a night garden. And then what does it also then mean to pull that all out into the living space? But also, too, the garden isn’t an art institution, but then at the same time, doing this at an art institution just would not be possible, it just wouldn’t.
[For a more personal look at the arts in New York City, follow Mark Rifkin on Substack here.]
Jody Oberfelder, Grace Yi-Li Tong, Paulina Meneses, and Ashley Merker will perform Rube G. — The Consequence of Action at Gibney this month (costumes by Claire Fleury / photo courtesy Jody Oberfelder Projects)
RUBE G. — THE CONSEQUENCE OF ACTION
Gibney Dance Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, White Box Studio C
280 Broadway between Chambers & Reade Sts.
Saturday and Sunday, March 4-5, 11-12, 18-19, $15-$25 jodyoberfelder.com gibneydance.org
New York–based director, dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Jody Oberfelder is the September 2023 entry in the Modern Women: 21st Century Dance Coloring Book calendar. On that page she says, “Standing on my head I see the world upside down. When I’m right side up, I look again with a different perspective.”
The quote is apropos of her latest piece, Rube G. — The Consequence of Action, making its world premiere March 4-19 at Gibney.
“Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions but don’t believe that I ever existed as a person,” Rube Goldberg once explained. “They think I am a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery. My name to them is like a spiral staircase, veal cutlets, barber’s itch — terms that give you an immediate picture of what they mean.”
Reuben L. Goldberg (1883–1970) was an engineer, sculptor, inventor, author, and cartoonist who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his political cartoon “Peace Today,” a depiction of an American family and their house perched atop a giant atomic bomb that is tilting precariously at the edge of a cliff. But Goldberg is best known for his drawings of crazy contraptions in which a series of odd items must connect in a chain reaction in order to make something happen, like dominoes but with objects and animals.
In Adam Felber’s 2006 novel Schrödinger’s Ball, a character explains, “You know: a lever is pulled, causing a boot to kick a dog, whose bark motivates a hamster to run on a wheel which winds a pulley that raises a gate that releases a bowling ball and so on? Until, at the end, finally, the machine does something incredibly mundane, like making a piece of toast. Yes? Well, as it turns out, that’s the world.”
A fun, immersive, interactive view of the world and our place in it, Rube G. — The Consequence of Action features Grace Yi-Li Tong, Paulina Meneses, and Ashley Merker, joined by Detroit native Oberfelder, weaving in and around an audience of forty people sitting on stools spaced two feet apart, with music by klezmer trumpeter Frank London. There is light touching as the performers ask audience members to give them small pushes, as if we’re all objects in a Rube Goldberg machine, which the Rube Goldberg Institution for Innovation & Creativity says “solves a simple problem in the most ridiculously inefficient way possible.”
In May 2019, London put together “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” at the New York Public Library, in which he selected a wide range of artists to pay tribute to such Jewish cultural figures as Hannah Arendt, Benjamin Cardozo, Morton Feldman, Susan Sontag, and Kurt Weill; Oberfelder was assigned Goldberg. She spent the next four years researching him, leading to the short film Rube G., the performance Rube G at Roulette, and Amphitheater in East River Park.
On a recent Monday afternoon, I was a “test guest” at a rehearsal for the new work, experiencing the piece and then talking about it afterward with Oberfelder, Yi-Li Tong, Meneses, Merker, and fellow test guest EmmaGrace Skove as Oberfelder took notes; she was particularly interested in a comment I made about one section reminding me of a pinball machine. Following the discussion, I spoke with Oberfelder — whose oeuvre also includes Madame Ovary,4Chambers,Throb,The Soldier’s Tale, and The Title Comes Last — about Goldberg, working with new dancers, making connections, and her affinity for site-specific immersive presentations.
Jody Oberfelder watches team rehearse at Open Jar Studios in Midtown (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
twi-ny: In creating this work, did you have a specific fascination with Rube Goldberg himself or the Rube Goldberg machine?
jody oberfelder: I’m thinking of it in a larger context, like how one thing affects another. Frank London actually gave me the assignment in 2019. He had a thing about Jewish thinkers, philosophers, poets, writers. He had like twenty people on a program at the New York Public Library. And he assigned who got what. So I got Rube Goldberg. I knew about Rube Goldberg because when I was working on The Brain Piece, the neuroscientist who was teaching a class in illusion showed us the the Okay Go video [“This Too Shall Pass”], which is quite amazing. I think everybody knows about Rube Goldberg without knowing they know about Rube Goldberg. But now I’ve been researching who he was as a person and how he was of his time. The humor is very much Jewish humor too, like his comic strip “Foolish Questions.” He asks about how things affect each other and that’s a question that’s been in my choreographic toolbox. What interests me is intersections of people and ideas. And my medium is bodies. So this is really nice for me, instead of doing a purely conceptual piece to just work physically with awesome dancers.
twi-ny: You said Frank approached you in 2019, but I would’ve thought that it came out of the pandemic lockdown, when people couldn’t connect. But it was already in process.
j.o.: But that was different; it was more celebratory.
twi-ny: It has the same name, but it’s not the same?
j.o.: That one I called Amphitheater, because I knew I would do Rube G., and then we did the show at Roulette. It totally was about Rube Goldberg.
twi-ny: And you did the film also.
j.o.: The film was a total pandemic film. People said, Look, can’t we wear masks? I’m like, no. Because one day nobody’s going to want to see masks. I look at that film and it was everybody in their little boxes, they would go outside to dance. And I just strung them together with the same words that catalyzed this piece. Like “bounce lever carousel” is one, “slide slice.” So I just came up with the action words from studying Rube Goldberg machines that were posted online, the ones that people work on for a really long time and they jump up and down at the end. In fact, some of the sound score was ripped from YouTube. You can hear the dominoes falling.
twi-ny: So these are new dancers for you?
j.o.: Yes. And that’s what changed the piece.
twi-ny: In what way? Was it an open call?
j.o.: Yes, they’re from the audition that I had. I just thought start fresh, look around, see who’s out there. Ashley is my Gyrotonics teacher; she’s so beautiful when she teaches. I just said, Look, I’m thinking about adding in some new dancers. Do you want to come to the studio? And in a two-hour span of time, I made up a whole bunch of material with her; that was a no-brainer. And then I picked the other two from the audition I had.
twi-ny: Ashley just seems like a natural human connector.
j.o.: She danced with Doug Varone and she still dances with Jacqulyn Buglisi, but I had no idea. You don’t know until you get in the studio how someone will be with you. Each of them has their own quality. They’re not carbon copies of each other. They’re unique dancers. And they just went with the material. I had to stop inventing. Even Frank said, Jody, you’ve got too much material. Just stop inventing.
Grace Yi-Li Tong, Paulina Meneses, and Ashley Merker go horizontal mountain climbing in Rube G. — The Consequence of Action (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
twi-ny: You just want to keep watching them do something.
j.o.: Well, yeah. Now I want to do a pinball machine. I think we’ll have to do something as a transition where someone’s trying to get through and they get bounced back. That’s great.
I don’t like to get an idea from seeing someone in someone else’s piece, because they’ll be different. In fact, I did go see Ashley perform with somebody and I just said, She’ll be different with me.
twi-ny: Since the very beginning of your career, you’ve been into immersive, interactive, site-specific pieces, before it was a thing, a genre. What was the impetus?
j.o.: I’m pretty visual. And I like environments. If I look at the music stands in this room, there’s definite space around each one. [Gets up and walks around room] You get an idea from looking at the place that you’re in. [Returns to seat] The immersive stuff that I’ve been doing the last three years is very much like leading the audience on an experience so that they know what this space is, so that they’re going on a journey.
twi-ny: So that’s how you explore the spaces you’re in? Your mind automatically sees that.
j.o.: I applied for an NEA grant and hopefully we’re going to be partnering with Greenwood Cemetery. That would be the next thing. I came up with a title before, and I have the location. It’s going to be called And then, no.
twi-ny: It’s a great place to see a performance.
j.o.: I’m also doing a piece called Walking to Present, which we’re doing in Munich, right on the site of a Trümmerberg, which is a trauma mountain. It’s at Olympiaberg in Olympic Park. What they did after World War II is they made these huge piles of rubble and just covered it with turf. And then they got the great idea to turn it into a park. And when, when the Olympics came in 1972, they made a beautifully scaled park. And that’s where the performance will take place.
So working on all this primed me to get back to Rube G. in a different way, so that it wouldn’t just be on the stage, there wouldn’t be a separation. It’s an experiment to see if I can be immersive inside, if I can make the room come alive as if it were an installation of people.
twi-ny: Right. As a test guest, that’s exactly what I felt.
j.o.: We’re all in this period where we need to lighten up and not be so hard on ourselves. And we’re in this period where a little goodwill, a little lightheartedness is important. There’s all this heavy stuff we have to think about daily. Walking to Present is a little more deep. But I hope I can find after this piece more lightness, even though the subject matter of walking through history and walking over history is heavy. Cemeteries are heavy, but, on the flip side, you can’t experience heaviness unless you have lightness.
twi-ny: You’re Jewish. Does that have anything to do with your choice of doing it in Munich [where eleven Israeli coaches and athletes were killed in a terrorist attack in the Olympic Village in 1972]?
Jody Oberfelder Projects will become a dancing Rube Goldberg machine in world premiere at Gibney (photo courtesy Jody Oberfelder Projects)
j.o.: Definitely. I’m married to a German guy, so I’ve been going to Germany a lot, and I performed there in 1983, a solo concert in a club, three pieces. And this curator saw me and we’ve been in touch all these years. I was doing my piece Life Traveler with the suitcases, where it’s a one-on-one piece. And she got the gist of that and just said, We’d love you to be part of the [2023 Dance München] festival. So I feel really lucky to have that be in such good company. But Rube G. is its own piece. And it’s not an identity piece. It’s just what it is. It’s not a political statement, but it is kind of, because what would be political about it is what happens when people gather together. Either you resist and you’re destructive or you’re constructive.
twi-ny: Do you see Rube G. as a natural progression of your career or more of an outlier?
j.o.: Oh, well, I see this piece as both. It’s a return to the really athletic physical stuff I did for most of the first twenty years. I mean, I was very athletic. I didn’t dance until I was nineteen and I did gymnastics and water ballet. I was a cheerleader. You couldn’t get me to sit in a chair for over forty minutes.
So it’s a continuation of my exploration of physical possibilities. And it’s fed by the idea that the fourth wall has to come down. It’s just not interesting to me to dance on a stage unless it’s something with bells and whistles, visual opera. I heard a piano concert, Yuja Wang, and that was on a stage and I was riveted, I was part of it. There’s a way to put things on a stage and have the audience be part of it. But I like intimacy.
twi-ny: As an audience member at so many of your shows, I can say that’s one of the draws; you’re not going to just be sitting in the audience as an observer. You’re going to be involved. You might be physically touched, but you’ll certainly be emotionally and psychologically touched.
j.o.: Well, with these pieces that only forty people can attend, it’s hard to make a living. I have to do a benefit and hope people will come to that [on March 19]. Apply for grants . . . but I’m not complaining. I don’t stop working. I feel like dancers and artists, we work so hard, and our brilliance is something the world needs. The climate is making the world smaller. We’re all going to be suffering the same things. I hope I’m putting something really great in the world for people to experience.
Hal Linden and Bernie Kopell star in Two Jews, Talking at Theatre at St. Clement’s (photo by Russ Rowland)
TWO JEWS, TALKING
Theatre at St. Clement’s
423 West Forty-Sixth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Friday – Sunday through October 23, $88-$127.50 www.twojewstalking.com
There’s something special happening at the Theater at St. Clement’s right now: Television icons Hal Linden and Bernie Kopell are starring in the two-act comedy Two Jews, Talking. For an hour and a half, the ninety-one-year-old Linden, a Tony and three-time Emmy winner best known for playing the titular New York City police captain in Barney Miller, and the eighty-nine-year-old Kopell, who portrayed the evil KAOS agent Siegfried on Get Smart and charming ship’s doctor Adam Bricker on The Love Boat, argue and complain about life, love, and religion.
In the first act, Kopell is Bud and Linden is Lou — a nod to the classic duo Abbott and Costello — two Jews taking a break as the Israelites are making their way through the desert, having escaped from their Egyptian taskmasters. They discuss the Ten Commandments, the rules of kashrut, and the debauched celebration with the Golden Calf.
“What a night that was,” Lou says. “Our cares, like our robes, thrown to the wind. Then Moses comes down from his mountain and ruins everything.” Bud asks, “What did you expect? He was angry. He turns his back for a minute and all hell breaks loose.” Lou responds, “Four hundred years we were slaves — finally we’re free and we can’t throw a party?”
In the second act, Phil (Kopell) and Marty (Linden) are sitting on a park bench, griping about the state of the world and the pitfalls of aging. “In a million years, you’ll never guess where I was this morning,” Marty says. “Probably not,” Phil answers. “Mount Sinai,” Marty tells him. “The hospital?” Phil asks. “No, the place where Moses handed down the Ten Commandments. Of course the hospital,” Marty says. “You don’t look sick,” Phil adds.
The play was written by seventy-seven-year-old Emmy and Peabody winner Ed. Weinberger, who wrote and cocreated such television classics as Taxi and The Cosby Show, and is directed by Obie winner Dan Wackerman (Ten Chimneys,Morning’s at Seven).
Last week I sat down with Linden and Kopell in one of their dressing rooms at the theater — I had brought rugelach, and Linden immediately partook — and we kibbitzed about the play, Judaism, and their long and distinguished careers in show business, including naming their favorites as well as their not-so-favorites. It all began with me fumbling with my iPhone recorder.
twi-ny: Sorry about this; I’ve only had a phone for about a year.
hal linden: So you never had a phone.
Stage manager Catrina Honadle, pointing at Kopell: That’s him too.
twi-ny: Never had a phone. I always carried around dimes, then quarters.
hl: They don’t have pay phones anymore.
twi-ny: There are actually a few left.
hl: Back in the day, we had answering services, and you had to constantly stay in touch with them. They would get angry at you if you didn’t keep calling in. “You didn’t call in; you missed your appointment!”
bernie kopell: Harvey Korman, we’d call him up and ask, “Anything for Harvey Korman today?” “No, sorry.”
twi-ny: Another funny man.
hl: Another funny man.
bk: I spoke at his memorial. A lovely human.
hl: Yeah. I think was there.
bk: Mel [Brooks] was there.
hl: I think I was there. I’m trying to remember where it was.
bk: Carol Burnett was there.
twi-ny: Do you remember any of what you said about him?
bk: He was a dear friend. We would play ferocious ping-pong, drink vodka, and listen to Mel Brooks’s 2000 Year Old Man again and again. And it was always funny.
twi-ny: It’s funny that you bring that up, because I see your show as a kind of Waiting for Godot meets The 2000 Year Old Man.
[Kopell and Linden both laugh.]
twi-ny: I mean, you’ve got the set with the tree, the boots, two guys waiting to go to the holy land. And, for the most part, Bernie is the straight man and Hal is the one who’s kvetching.
hl: Kvetching.
bk: Kvetching.
twi-ny: I saw the show on the first Saturday night preview. So it was very early, but I wanted to see it before speaking with you both.
hl: That was a little touch and go, that one.
twi-ny: You know what, I had a blast. It was a lot of fun. Okay, so we’re Hal from the Bronx, Bernie from Brooklyn, Mark from Brooklyn — Flatbush — and we’re three New York Jews sitting, talking in a church.
hl: I always thought that was a wonderful irony. Two Jews talking in a church.
bk: Another irony just before I left California, I played a Catholic priest on Grey’s Anatomy. The check cleared; it was wonderful.
twi-ny: Bernie, like you, my father graduated from Erasmus Hall also. He went to Brooklyn College.
hl: Do you know how far Brooklyn was from where I grew up?
twi-ny: It was like a different country, wasn’t it?
hl: I was a Brooklyn Dodger fan. In the Bronx.
twi-ny: Oh, wow.
hl: Yes. Only because I hated the Yankees ’cause they won all the time and it was, you know, Brooklyn was Dem Bums. I only saw one game in Ebbets Field in my life. Do you know how far it would be to go? I was a musician as a young boy, actually; my whole social life was I would be playing in the band and trying to pick up some beautiful girl, and she was interested, but she lived in Brooklyn. We called it GU —
hl & bk: Geographically undesirable.
hl: I couldn’t go out to Brooklyn; it would take me another two and a half hours to get home.
twi-ny: Today, I have friends who go to the theater, go out all the time. And they’ve never been to Brooklyn, even from Manhattan, which is kind of absurd.
hl: There are five planets here.
twi-ny: My parents, when they were dating, could walk to Ebbets Field. They’d also go to Coney Island.
bk: Nathan’s hot dogs.
twi-ny: My wife and I ate at Nathan’s last week. We go to Coney Island every year.
hl: The one thing I had to give up was hot dogs — hot dogs, sausage.
twi-ny: But rugelach is still on the menu.
hl: Rugelach — I’m gonna have to check to see if I can have another one.
Hal Linden, Max Gail, and Ron Glass get real on Barney Miller
twi-ny: So I want to thank you guys for keeping me personally entertained over the course of the pandemic. I watched every single episode of Barney Miller. I watched a whole bunch of Love Boats. Then, all of a sudden I’m watching B Positive and there’s Bernie. I’m watching Better Things and there’s Bernie. Popping up all over the place.
bk: I keep saying, If you don’t fuck up too badly, they let you continue.
twi-ny: So you’ve been busy with lots and lots of appearances like that.
bk: Yes, I have. I’m very grateful.
twi-ny: And Hal, I also saw you in Off Broadway, the virtual play that you did. Where you come in at the end.
hl: Yes. I shot that on my terrace in California. You never saw anybody else. We had to really do it on the fly because I was the only one who was not sitting in front of a computer. That was my suggestion because I didn’t have a computer that I could get out on the balcony. So I said, Why don’t I just do it handheld and put the camera down on the chair. So it was kind of weird. It was interesting. I never did see the whole thing.
twi-ny: What kept you entertained over the last two plus years?
hl: Sports. I’m still a Dodger fan.
twi-ny: So you stuck with them when they moved.
hl: Yeah. I am a Dodger fan from when Red Barber did games out of town on ticker tape. That’s how long. I remember sitting around; my father had a Stromberg Carlson radio — it was this high, that big — and sitting around listening to the World Series with Mickey Owen’s passed ball. It was 1941, I think. So I’ve been a Dodger fan since I was a little boy listening on my little radio next to my bed.
twi-ny: And now the Dodgers and the Mets are playing this week at Citi Field.
hl: I know. I’m trying to go to the game tomorrow.
bk: I’m dittoing the Dodgers, because my kid [Adam, named after Kopell’s character on The Love Boat], he just turned twenty, is a great Dodger fan, and he’s a charming kid. The publicity people have kind of adopted him. He goes to games for free. We watch the games sometimes at home and he’s cheering for the Dodgers. He has a picture with Sandy Koufax, he has a picture with Tommy Lasorda, these great, great people.
twi-ny: I come from one of the families where, if I wanted to do something on Yom Kippur, my parents said, Sandy Koufax wouldn’t pitch on Yom Kippur, so you can’t do that.
hl: That’s right.
twi-ny: And in my father’s office at home, there was only one thing on the wall, a picture of the ’55 Dodgers. But a few years after the Dodgers left, he came over to the Mets.
hl: I went to the Mets for a few years, but then when I went back to LA, I went back to the Dodgers.
twi-ny: Bernie, have you worked at all over Zoom over these two years or online in any way?
bk: I wouldn’t know if it was Zoom or what.
twi-ny: So you didn’t have to even rehearse on Zoom, like when you were preparing for this show?
hl: We lived in California. So we got together and worked on it.
bk: We rehearsed at his place, sometimes we rehearsed at my place.
twi-ny: Avoid that whole computer thing.
hl: Yes.
bk: Can I just throw this in?
twi-ny: Yes, of course. This is just three Jews, talking.
bk: I’ve worked with Maurice Schwartz, the great Yiddish tragedian. The chairman of the drama department at NYU, professor Randolph Somerville, said, If you get a chance, work with Maurice Schwartz. So I’m in the Navy, and finally I catch up with Maurice Schwartz at the Ivar Theater in California. And James Drury, who is a co-student of mine, we zoom over to the Ivar Theater and say, Let’s bring up Somerville and he’ll cast us. So we brought up Somerville and he cast us. The problem was, he was at the end of his mental power, tragically. He was so mean to the actors and actresses. And there was an actor by the name of Philip Cary Jones, who was a little cockeyed.
So he was supposed to say, [in a Yiddish accent] “As a fleeing Jew, the sun is down, the ship, I suppose, will also go down.” It was called A Lonely Ship. So Schwartz didn’t like his reading, says, “Do it this way: The sun is down, the ship, I suppose, will also go down.” He tried it the same way: “The sun is down, the ship, I suppose, will also go down.” Schwartz said, “Mr. Philip Cary Jones, you may have worked with Katharine Cornell, but I’ll tell you the truth. You’re setting the theater back a thousand years.” Oh, this is how he was, at that time in his life.
twi-ny: Well, you know, Yiddish theater is making a comeback over the last ten years or so. There’s the New Yiddish Rep and the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene.
twi-ny: They do it in Yiddish with Russian and English surtitles.
hl: I’m on the album. They made an album of that [Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish: 2018 Cast Recording], but they added songs cut from the original. Sheldon Harnick did one. I did one [“Get Thee Out,” with Richard Kind, Tam Mutu, Shaina Taub, and Matthew Sklar].
twi-ny: Well, you know, you need to see it because in Yiddish, “If I Were a Rich Man,” do you know what it translates as?
hl: “If I Were a Rothschild.”
twi-ny: And there’s the Tony that you won, for The Rothschilds.
bk: I saw the film recently and I thought it was brilliant.
twi-ny: And there’s a new documentary about Norman Jewison and the making of the movie [Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen]. He tells the story where he admits to the studio, You know, you’re hiring a goy.
bk: They assumed that Jewison is Jewish.
hl: I was not a fan of Topol.
twi-ny: As an actor or as a person?
hl: No, I didn’t like his interpretation after I saw Zero do it.
twi-ny: My parents saw Herschel Bernardi.
hl: I saw Herschel Bernardi.
bk: Norman Jewison directed the first film I ever did, which Carl Reiner wrote, The Thrill of It All.
twi-ny: Well, this is a good time to turn our attention back to Two Jews, Talking. When you guys began working together, did you automatically know who was gonna play which role or did you work that out over time?
hl: It was interesting. I was on it before Bernie and there was a question because it was originally written with Ed Asner in mind.
twi-ny: And Jamie Farr.
hl: That was the original. And when I read it for the first time, it was with Jamie; Ed had died. Ed had been immobile, so he played the two parts where you don’t move. So Ed played Bernie’s part in the second act but my part in the first act. But once I read it, I said, If we’re gonna make a play out of it, you gotta have some continuity, some relationship so that we can enunciate the themes, that I’m the one who’s cynical and skeptical. And the other part is the believer. That was right off the bat. I switched to that part, but then again, I became semi-immobile [laughs] because I just had a hip operation.
bk: Let me throw this in about Ed Asner. One of the sweetest human beings. I guested one time on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He comes over and says, “Bern, come with me.” He leads me into the prop room and he says, “Whenever you get hungry, we got nuts here, we got cookies. You’ll have a little bite.” I said, “That is so sweet.” But that’s how he was.
twi-ny: He was a mensch.
bk: A mensch.
hl: A mensch, I agree. Yeah. Ed was a poker player. We had a regular poker game.
twi-ny: Can I ask who else was at the game?
bk: Jason Alexander . . . It was a showbiz game, which was about 30% poker and about 70% bullshit. It was just wonderful. Unfortunately, I don’t know if it’s ever gonna be again.
twi-ny: Did you have a usual, big winner?
hl: No, there’s no big winners; you bet for a dollar or two, you couldn’t be a big winner, you couldn’t be a big loser.
bk: I don’t play cards. My father convinced me that as a Jew, I’m the only Jew who can’t count.
twi-ny: Bernie, when I saw the show on that first Saturday night, you said a word that immediately made my heart soar. And then when I read the new script, it’s out.
bk: What did I say?
twi-ny: You said the word “chaos.” It was in the original script, and I remember you saying it.
bk: It reminded me of my organization [KAOS, in Get Smart].
Bernie Kopell starred as devious KAOS agent Siegfried in Get Smart
twi-ny: Right. But I’d never heard you say it without Siegfried’s accent before.
hl: I didn’t even notice it was in or out.
bk: “Without structure there would be anarchy and chaos.”
twi-ny: That’s the line! My heart actually did a flip.
hl: [laughs]
twi-ny: As Hal noted before, Bernie, your characters are the ones that are more faithful — you have faith in Moses, you have faith in God — but Hal, your characters are —
hl: Skeptical. I won’t say cynical. I’ll say skeptical.
twi-ny: Do your personal relationships with Judaism relate at all to your characters’ relationships?
bk: Okay. I have to be truthful here. My father was very rough. He didn’t know that I had dyslexia. So in synagogue, I wasn’t keeping up fast enough in the cheder. He dug his nails into my forearm, just like that motherfucking Danny Kaye did. Danny Kaye was awful. I made a horrible mistake on The Danny Kaye Show: I got a laugh. He was way too rough. And he ended badly. There was some possibility that he might have done his Italian Giovanni character on Love Boat. So all the Love Boat people are at the Beverly Wilshire. And I see Danny there. And by this time he had done [the 1970 Broadway musical] Two by Two, which did not go well.
hl: No, it did not go well.
bk: And he’s having a big argument with our producer. So I go across the room to see my pal Pat Harrington, and as I’m coming back, Kaye is out of control, screaming at our producer, “You’re full of shit!” Not too great.
hl: In answer to your question, I’m a secular Jew. I do not attend synagogue. I am a tribal Jew. I’m the celebrity spokesman for the Jewish National Fund. I’ve been there for twenty-some-odd years, doing appearances for them and things like that. But that’s on the tribal level.
Phil (Bernie Kopell) and Marty (Hal Linden) discuss life and death in Two Jews, Talking (photo by Russ Rowland)
twi-ny: So Bernie, you and your characters are not the same.
bk: No. Vastly different.
hl: I have a lot of skepticism.
twi-ny: It’s hard not to these days, right?
hl: Yeah.
twi-ny: When you deliver certain jokes in the play, can you tell if it’s a more Jewish audience?
hl: We did this as a reading in North Carolina. In Mark Meadows’s district. I mean, western North Carolina.
twi-ny: That’s gotta be a tough audience.
hl: There wasn’t a Jew in miles, and they got a lot of the jokes. A few of the jokes they didn’t understand.
bk: I think part of it was they’re happy to see us, who’d been on television.
hl: But there was way more response than I expected.
bk: Me too.
twi-ny: Well, I know Bill Maher, who was raised Roman Catholic but whose mother was Jewish, talks about taking his political comedy nationwide, and he goes to red states and they laugh sometimes harder than the blue states.
bk: Bill Maher is a genius in my humble opinion. He’s brilliant.
twi-ny: So Hal, you said that you came into the project first. Have you been friends a long time?
hl: We were not that close. We’ve appeared in celebrity events together and things like that. We never worked together.
twi-ny: The only time I could find you guys on a stage at the same time was a 1980 ABC promo where you both danced in white tuxedos, with other stars from the upcoming season.
hl: I don’t remember doing that.
bk: I don’t either. But then again, at our age, what do we remember?
hl: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen things, particularly now with YouTube.
twi-ny: Well, that’s where you’ll find this, on YouTube.
twi-ny: Another interesting thing that I discovered was that Hal was on the first Love Boat pilot episode, which Bernie was not in. Dick Van Patten played the ship’s doctor.
bk: Dick was under contract to ABC. So when Eight Is Enough came about, they pulled him out, opening it up for other people. So I tested with a number of other guys.
twi-ny: You know who else was on that pilot episode?
hl: Harvey Korman.
twi-ny: Yes! And Don Adams.
hl: I only interacted with Karen Valentine. Maybe a couple of the regulars, I don’t recall.
bk: Well, let me throw this in. In the first pilot, the captain was an amazingly handsome Australian [Ted Hamilton]. He was gorgeous. But ABC said, No, he’s gorgeous, but he doesn’t have the authority. He doesn’t have the humor. He doesn’t have the kindness. So now we go to the second guy, the second guy worked on soaps. He wrote soaps. He acted in soaps. Quinn Redeker, I think his name was. And they said no. So now ABC is really getting pissed off because it’s so much money they’re putting into it and it’s not happening. So Gavin MacLeod had just come off of McHale’s Navy. And I had met him on McHale’s Navy. He was depressed because he’d done Operation Petticoat with Cary Grant, and he’d done The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
twi-ny: He was in the fabulous Kelly’s Heroes.
bk: Yes. So it opened it up for Gavin, and they were very happy. He had all the qualities they wanted and he became a great friend. A great friend. This was Gavin: There was some kind of a fakakta tradition in film and television that the director will perceive who is the weakest one in the cast.
hl: That’s the story of every play.
bk: And pick on them so that they can assert their authority.
hl: Jerry Robbins was notorious. He would always pick on the weakest link and destroy him.
bk: So Gavin says, Bern, let’s have a little chat with [director] Jack Arnold. Jack, come on over here. And we say in harmony, Jack, you may not behave that way on our set. Is that clear? Okay. Hey. All right. Fine. No problem. So he was a pussycat the rest of the way.
twi-ny: Getting back to Barney Miller, one of the things I noticed was how many of the regular cast members and guest stars I’ve seen recently onstage — Barbara Barrie, Linda Lavin, Kenneth Tigar, James Cromwell, Bob Dishy, Christopher Lloyd, David Paymer.
hl: The thing about Barney Miller, if you watched every episode, I’m sure you noticed this: Danny didn’t give a shit about repeaters.
twi-ny: What struck me is all these repeat actors, it gave it a theatrical feel, and it felt like the way the episodes were shot was very theatrical.
hl:Barney started out like a traditional sitcom. Three days of rehearsal, one day of blocking. And you do two shows on Friday night. Danny Arnold was a perfectionist. He was the head producer, the creator. The scripts were coming out later and later and later and later.
twi-ny: Five minutes before showtime, here you go, new pages.
hl: Yeah. Finally at about, I don’t know, I think it was about the fifth week or so, he didn’t have the last scene and we had to cancel the audience because we didn’t have a full script to do. What are you gonna do? He was still working on it. That’s a sin. People would come from all over the world to see the show — give them an ending. So the question was, Are you gonna have an audience next week? You gotta tell us now. And he wasn’t sure, so we never had an audience again.
twi-ny: Did you miss not having an audience?
hl: Believe it or not, when I was offered Barney Miller, I was offered three pilots. There were two hour shows and Barney Miller, which was a sitcom. I thought since I had spent so much time on Broadway, working to an audience would be easier for me. So that’s why I chose Barney out of the three — good choice, because the other two died. Anyway, the point is I quickly learned that the audiences are really a distraction, that you must close them off and work to the camera. If I’m talking to you, the camera’s over there; onstage, I would talk to you like this because the audience is out here. You know what I mean? The cameraman finally said to me, Hey, over here, because I kept crossing the line, working to the audience. So I quickly was dissuaded from that.
My point is that from then on, it was done actually like a movie. We’d start in the beginning, stage the first scene, work on it, shoot it; we’d only have two days of rehearsal, because that’s all the script we had. And on the third day we’d start shooting the show scene by scene, and because it was an independent production, we’d just do it until we figured it was right. The only people on the set were from the network to make sure we didn’t say anything wrong.
twi-ny: I also noticed how many of the episodes dealt with important issues. I hadn’t remembered it being so political.
hl: I was not a part of the writing of it, but a lot of it, the writers all came in and read the morning newspaper and found things. The atomic bomb, marital rape, racism, police violence. Danny Arnold was the genius behind it. Let me tell you a story. One of the episodes, do you remember the episode where Wojo falls for a hooker? [“Wojo’s Girl”] He keeps arresting everybody in the house to stop her from plying her trade. He finally goes and asks her for a date and she says, Sure, like everybody else, fifty bucks. At the end of the show, we have this kind of father-son-related talk as we’re about to go home. And just as he goes out the door, he turns back to me and says, Uh, Barney, can you lend me fifty bucks to payday?
The network says, You can’t say that. Danny says, Why not? They say, That means he’s going with the girl. Danny says, Very astute, you figured that out. So we’re shooting the show on the soundstage. He’s up in the office arguing with standards and practices. It’s the last line of the show, basically. We shot everything up to there. This was only about the third year; we weren’t a hit. We were still on the borderline. Eventually the director [Noam Pitlick] calls up and says, Okay, we’re about to shoot the last scene. What do we do? And Danny says, Shoot it the way it’s written, and hangs up. He says to the network, I’m shooting the show the way it’s written. If you don’t put it on the air, I’m not gonna make anymore. The network put it on the air: X-rated. Did you ever hear of an X-rated sitcom? It made the show. The ratings went way up and from there on in, they didn’t even come to the set.
bk: Can I do a Danny mishegas?
twi-ny: Absolutely.
bk: Before Barney, he worked with us on The Marlo Thomas Show. And he got very frustrated with lunch. For one hour, everybody zoomed out and they went to some restaurant and it was a big waste of time. He says, No, we’re not gonna do that anymore. So one day he ordered sandwiches and coffee and tea for everybody. But everybody zoomed out because he didn’t tell anybody that he had done this. So all this food is sitting here and Danny ate about half of it himself.
The crew of The Love Boat eavesdrop on the latest superstar guest
twi-ny: So Hal is working with a lot of theater actors while on The Love Boat, Bernie is working with —
bk: Academy Award winners.
twi-ny: Superstars from around the world.
bk: Some were lovely. One in particular was a gigantic pain in the ass.
twi-ny: And you’re gonna tell us.
bk: Yes. No, not mentioning any names. Shelley Winters.
hl: Oh, well, Shelley was a pain in the ass everywhere.
bk: But Ernie Borgnine, he worked with her on The Poseidon Adventure. So he knew her mishegas very intimately. So she’s on the show, and you know, it was so difficult to be on the ship — you gotta get on a little boat, bring all the equipment and all the people to Capri, for example, and then get on a truck. Everybody goes to location. Well, she didn’t like her hair, and she says, These lines are terrible. They don’t really suit me. She was just awful. Awful. Ernie Borgnine ripped into her with every Italian curse. And I think she was looking forward to that. She finally behaved.
twi-ny: New superstars every week.
bk: Eva Marie Saint, this is her personality. Shelley Winters, dreadful human being, couldn’t help it. So I’m outside in the parking lot. Eva Marie Saint comes by. Bernie, what are you doing? Oh, I’m studying. Would you like me to cue you? I said, I couldn’t possibly, you know, you being who you are. She said, I do it for all my friends. She said, Please, I’d love to do it. And she did it. What a mensch.
twi-ny: So there are some sweethearts in the business.
hl: We have two old actors who have worked with —
bk: Everybody.
hl: Everybody. I could tell you, some were magnificent. Judy Holliday was the most generous actress to work with. And some were . . . Ethel Merman. Ugh.
bk: I still have an earache from working with Ethel Merman.
Bernie Kopell and Hal Linden have been in show business a combined 127 years (photo by Russ Rowland)
twi-ny: And now, for the first time, you’re working with each other. What’s that been like?
hl: I put up with it.
bk: [laughs]
twi-ny: You sound like an old married couple.
bk: I’m so great.
hl: Yeah. You should be great.
bk: I am.
twi-ny: It does look like you’re having fun doing it.
bk: It’s fun.
hl: You know, this is not Arthur Miller. This is just two Jews talking and the more laughs, the better. And that’s the way we approached it.
bk: We haven’t said one word yet about our director.
twi-ny: I am a fan of Dan Wackerman’s. I like his shows a lot.
hl: You know, as I said, we did the show only once in North Carolina, that was a reading. And there was only Ed. Weinberger; there’s no staging. So it was hardly directed. We were kind of on our own . . .
bk: Sitting in chairs.
hl: And Dan took it and tried to break it down and put it back together, you know, with some sense of where we’re going. He really turned it from just a conversation into a sketch. Let’s put it that way.
bk: Our director just keeps at us until we continue to improve, to get it right.
hl: It’s been two old guys who get to try again —
twi-ny: And succeed. Standing ovations, right? Selling out?
hl: Ovations aside, our critics are ourselves. “We did it.” “We didn’t do it.” “We gotta work on this.” And the more you do that, the longer you hang around.
twi-ny: Well, thank you for hanging around with me here. I hope the show runs as long as you want it to.
hl: It’s a limited run. He’s already got the next gig.
bk: And so do you.
hl: And I got the next gig.
twi-ny: Can you talk about it yet?
hl: In Kansas City, I’m going to do Come Blow Your Horn, the Lou Jacobi part [Mr. Baker].
bk: We have a cruise honoring Gavin MacLeod, who passed away a few months ago, on the Princess ship, going down to Mexico. That’s where we started: Mexico, Mexico, Mexico. Somebody whispered in Aaron Spelling’s ear, Schmuck, we’re a hit, we can go other places. So we went to the Caribbean, we went to the Mediterranean, we went everywhere in the world.
hl: And I got stuck on one set.
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[For a behind-the-scenes look at the interview, go here.]
