(upbeat music) - What's up, family?

We are here in the heart of Times Square on 42nd Street at the New 42 Studios, and it makes a lot of sense for today's guest, legendary playwright, director, actor, producer, George C. Wolfe.

An icon, a legend.

And I cannot wait for this conversation.

Come with me.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - We are here with legendary writer, director, actor on the side.

- Producer.

- Producer.

Extraordinaire.

The icon, George C. Wolfe.

George, I just wanna say thank you so much for being here today.

- Thank you.

- It's really an honor.

For those who may not be as familiar with you as I am, could you share just a little bit about your background and maybe how we got here today?

- How we got here today?

Well, I took a taxi into Midtown New York, in the middle of the summer, (Durell laughing) which is always horrifying.

No, I'm originally from Frankfort, Kentucky.

I went to school.

My first time I came to New York was when I was 13 or 14.

My mother was doing some advanced degree work at NYU, and we were living just right off of Washington Square Park.

And so that was the first time in New York.

And when I came here at that time, I knew, "Okay, this..." I already knew in advance that I was gonna live here, but I knew for sure, and I saw a couple of, about three or four Broadway shows, including "Hello, Dolly!"

A revival of "West Side Story."

And I saw a mobile theater unit production of "Hamlet" that Joe Papp had directed with Cleavon Little.

And just the city itself was thrilling to me.

Then I went to school in California, and I did theater there.

And then at one point, you know, I sort of started venturing into TV a little bit.

This is when I was 22, 23, something like that.

And I went into some meeting, and I made some joke, and the person in the meeting said, "Oh, he's quick, we're gonna have to tie one hand behind his back."

And I left that meeting, and I met with some friends that night, and I said, "I'm moving to New York."

- Wow.

- And as I moved to New York, and I came here, and I was teaching acting at a bunch of different places, some of which are not in existence, but Children's Art Carnival in Harlem, at City College, at this place called the Richard Allen Cultural Center.

And I was running around just trying to survive, and then I just stopped all of that and I went to NYU, got a double MFA in dramatic writing and musical theater.

And then fortunately enough, after a lot of struggle, but, you know, wrote a play called "The Colored Museum," and then that was that.

- Yes!

Okay, well, since you brought up "The Colored Museum," let's talk about that.

First of all, I don't think "The Colored Museum" gets enough credit for just how pivotal of work it really was in theater, and what it added to the canon at the time.

There wasn't a satirical piece about, you know, Black lives and Black culture in that way.

And the way you elevated what we were doing, and like, the human experience through a Black lens was phenomenal.

It was Afro-Surrealism before Afro-Surrealism had a word.

But what were you thinking as like, going through the writing process?

You know, were you thinking you're creating this piece that, you know, is avant-garde in a sense?

- No, no, it was just sort of basic.

I remember at one point I was in the class, I was in a writing class in the dramatic writing program at NYU, and three or four people were writing plays about old Black tap dancers.

And they happened to not be old, Black, or tap dancers.

So I just went: How did they get the competence, arrogance, or cluelessness to feel as though they had the authority to write about this culture, and I'm from this culture, and I don't know what it is because it's ever-changing and it's ever-morphing into something that is incredibly complicated."

So, and also a lot of the work that was currently being done at the time in New York was very, it was, you know, social realism, or it was musicals with brilliant performers, but very frequently void of any of the texture that was reflective of the culture that created the buoyant music.

And so, I just decided I needed to blow up, and I wasn't even thinking about anybody else.

I was just thinking about myself.

I needed to blow up all these constructs so as to give myself permission to write whatever I wanted to write.

'Cause there were all these rules.

I was a writer and director, they said, "No, you can't write and direct, you can choose one."

So I said, "Okay, well, let me focus in on the writing."

And then the, "Oh, and this is this."

And then at one point, I showed an early draft of "The Colored Museum," and one of the first exhibits is Miss Pat, who's flying an airplane to bring slaves to America.

And one person said to me, a producer said to me, "She needs to come back in the end and beg for forgiveness."

All this like dumb crap that would place it in some category or some mode of behavior that would make people feel better about themselves.

And that wasn't its responsibility.

Its responsibility was to enter into the chaos and the madness of what I thought the culture was.

And the final line of the piece is, "My power is in my madness and my colored contradictions."

And so instead of trying to resolve anything, embrace those things that seem to be in opposition, because in the opposition is the power.

So I wrote it, I wrote it just for me.

And interestingly enough, there was a piece that I had written, and when I was at my journey in the musical theater program, that it opened up seven months earlier, that it got brutally trashed.

And I wrote that piece, you know, with a lot of hard work, but in some respects going, "Oh, this is going to be successful."

And it wasn't.

And the piece that I wrote for myself that was just me telling stories the way I wanted to tell stories, that was the one that took off.

So I'm eternally grateful that it happened in that order, because it made a lot of things very, very clear about what kind of artist I needed to be, what the landscape was about.

Am I doing stuff to get a bunch of critics to pat me on the head and say "Good boy," or am I just telling stories that I feel need to be told?

And so all of that got solved really quickly.

So I was really grateful that it all unfolded the way it unfolded.

- It was definitely a statement piece.

It was very clear that George C. Wolfe was here and was here to stay.

And- - Well, we don't know about all that, (Durell laughing) but there were people there at the time, there were another people who were part of the Black theater community who tried to lead boycotts, who, I mean, so went through all this sort of stuff, but the thing that was also really fascinating is audiences, regular people, and I'm talking Black and white audiences, started organizing groups, and were coming back with 20 and 30 people.

So in addition to it being this little critical darling thing, it was claimed and owned by a lot of different kinds of people.

So I'm very proud of that as well.

- Let's go "Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk."

You talk about a commercial success.

A lot of people didn't know that a Black show could be that successful on that level, on a national scale.

I mean, the show toured.

- [George] Yeah.

- And had a incredibly successful tour run afterwards.

What was that like going through that process of "Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk?"

Did you always see like, the success, or how successful the show could be?

- But then, you know, I don't think you...

I think if you think about something being successful, generally, it isn't.

And I think you just have to do what you do.

And I met Savion when he was very, very young 'cause he was in my first Broadway show, "Jelly's Last Jam."

And when I became the producer of the Public Theater, I said, "I want you to come down there and do something."

And it started from that.

And it was like this really interesting factory because, you know, there were people working on the music, Ann Duquesnay, and Zane Mark, and Daryl Waters, and then there were people who I was sending up to the Schomburg to do research, and it was... Everybody was just working really hard, and Reg E. Gaines, and all this.

And we would just... And it was, we started a workshop one summer, and after about six or seven weeks, we end up with two thirds of the show.

And it was just sort of this incredibly... Because Savion and I had worked together, so we had a vocabulary.

Daryl Waters, who was one of the people working on the music, he had played auditions for "Colored Museum" when it started out at Crossroads, so I'd known him for a long time.

And Ann, I had worked with on "Spunk."

So it was all these people who sort of knew how to talk to each other.

So we... And also my mother was very ill at the time.

And anytime something happens to your parents, it creates this incredible degree of uncertainty.

So the one place that felt safe was making "Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk."

So all of my, you know, fear and terror, and at the potential loss of my mother dying, I was able to set that aside, and bring it into that rehearsal room.

So I think that was one of the weirdly contributing factors.

And interestingly enough, there was a board member, George Hayward, of the Public Theater, and he took me to a Knicks game.

And I was sitting there at the Knicks game, and I realized that the entire event was nothing but rhythm.

And people would run, make a basket, people would cheer, and then they would do this music ♪ Doo doo doo doo doo And the crowd would go, "Yeah!"

♪ Doo doo doo (Durell laughing) And I said, "This piece, an audience is being controlled by rhythm."

From the time you sat down until you've left.

And so I said, "I want to create a piece of theater where the rhythm defines an audience behavior."

And so was also one of the impetuses for working on "Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk."

And then one of the first things that I did when I became the producer of the Public Theater, I hired Donna Walker-Kuhne.

- Yes!

(laughing) - And created a community affairs department.

You know, and I said, "I want this, the lobby of this building to feel like, you know, the Times Square subway at rush hour."

And I wanted to have that kind of energy.

And so started cultivating relationships with assorted groups, and communities, and audiences.

And so that same phenomenon happened with "Noise Funk," so that when we took it on tour, you know, the community affairs department would go out two, three months in advance so that by the time it arrived in those cities, that community felt a sense of ownership.

So it wasn't an alien particle coming into their town, playing at theaters where who knows when the last time they had a culturally-complicated show in its midst.

So I think just, there was just this agenda of mine to feel like, to create as much ownership as one possibly could through the work that you were doing and the audiences who were coming to see it.

- I really hope that producers listening to that really heard the strategy behind that, especially getting in deep with the community, and even having a, you know, this intentional plan to go in two and three months ahead of time to really cultivate an intentional relationship.

Like, it has to be intentional and authentic, which it was.

- If you walk past a restaurant, and the aroma coming out of it is something that you recognize, you go inside.

So it's just creating this incredible sense of familiarity.

So that there... And once again, I would go, the sense of ownership, that the sense of ownership, that cultural...

The audiences or people just in general should feel like it's theirs.

They own it.

And people respond differently when they feel like they own something, and then when you say, "Hi.

Oh, we're doing this August Wilson play, and we're coming to your church on a Sunday, come see us."

That is not an invitation.

That's like where were you last Sunday, and the Sunday before last?

So once again, familiarity and ownership I think are very crucial.

And there are times when I've done shows on Broadway where that sense of ownership took place, and there are times where I've done it where it didn't happen.

And so it's those variables that are very important.

- You mentioned something earlier in your work with Savion Glover.

You talked about your vocabulary, having a shared vocabulary with the artist.

Another artist that you had a shared vocabulary with who's quite different in many ways, is Elaine Stritch.

Could you talk to us a little bit about "Elaine Stritch at Liberty," and what that process was like directing?

Many would say you are the only person who could have directed that show.

- No, I don't know about that, but I don't know, John Lahr, who ended up working on the book for that show, there was some panel conversation, I think it was part of some festival at "The New Yorker."

And I was on the panel, and Elaine was on the panel, and somebody else was, I don't remember who it was.

And, afterwards, she said to me, "People tell me I should work with you."

(Durell laughing) That literally- - [Durell] "People tell me."

- "People tell me I should work with you."

And she is a, was, is, I get very confused when people are no longer alive, a brilliant storyteller, and brilliant, brilliant, brilliant storyteller.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Elaine Stritch are like two of my...

They just, when they tell stories, they remember the tiniest, most insignificant details that help to illuminate the story.

And so every day just, and she was staying at Sag Harbor, and I was directing "Topdog/Underdog" at the exact same time.

So I would take a car out on the weekends and see the work that they had done, and then give them notes, and make suggestions, and, you know, and discuss the work from that perspective.

And then we started just playing around in the space.

And the thing that was really fascinating about working with her was she had this really brutal rigor in terms of herself that she would go through the script and she would go, "And then I went down.

Did I say 'When?'

Do I say 'Go?'

What's the line?

What's the line?

What's the line?"

And she would just drill herself while she was putting it together.

And the rigor that she invested in the storytelling, she wanted to get it so effortless so that you would not notice the energy that she was putting behind the story that she was telling.

It was the same thing that was interesting working with Gregory Hines on "Jelly's Last Jam" of taking the effort out of the performance, so as to invite the audience inside.

And, you know, and Elaine was very complicated.

She wasn't free.

And interesting, I mean, and I remember this when we moved from the Newman to the Neil Simon Theater, and she was pacing back and forth.

It was the first time we'd been on the stage at the Neil Simon, and she was pacing back and forth, and pacing back and forth, and I was, we were all just moving into the theater, and she yelled out, "George!"

And I went, "Yeah."

She said, "Is this bigger than the Newman?"

And I went, "Yeah."

And she just paced.

It was like an animal pacing.

And then she went, "I like it!"

(Durell laughing) Just so...

So, but the ferocity, the ferocity, and the rigor, and the specificity of her work was just perpetually inspiring, was perpetually inspiring.

And it was, I wouldn't say it was fun, but it was always...

There was always an equation of it that was exhilarating.

- So we've talked a lot about your directing for the stage, but you also direct for film as well, you know, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom."

Is your approach to directing different when you do it for film versus when you do it for the stage?

- I don't...

I mean, there are various technical things that are very, very different.

But in many respects, your, you know, I think my job as a director is to work with people, and I don't care if it's an actor, or a designer, or whatever, it's to empower them to make their work even better.

And so that's what I do.

And also on film I always have at least a two-week rehearsal period, you know, before anything is shot.

And every day before we film anything, I clear the entire set of everybody, and it's just me and the actors playing around in the space because, you know, it's imbuing them with the confidence, and imbuing them with the structure of what's going to happen so that when they go back to their trailers and doing hair and makeup, they have some sense of it so that when they come back, they come back with a sense of ownership of the space, and some beginning of an understanding of a knowledge of what they're doing based on not only what we just did this morning, but also what the rehearsal process has been in general prior to us starting filming.

- We've talked about you as a director, you as a writer, you as a producer, but I personally also really love George as the actor as well, as some maybe remember your role in like, "Garden State."

What is it like when you're on the other side of the camera?

- I hate it, and it's horrifying.

(Durell laughing) (laughing) I hate it, and it's horrifying.

At one point, somebody asked me...

It was a big film, and I was like going, I was an actor in college, but I got too many control issues to ever... You know, if I had to go into a room and audition on a regular basis, I'd turn into an insane person, you know?

I'd show up with weaponry, and attack.

I just, I'm in awe of actors and their ability to perpetually make themselves vulnerable to material while a bunch of annoying people sit behind a table and judge them.

I'm incapable of doing that on a regular basis.

But I remember auditioning for some movie, and somebody said, "Well, how did that feel?"

I said, "It felt like somebody was taking metal spikes and driving them into my eyeballs."

It was just...

It's horrifying to me.

And then at the one point, I was in "The Devil Wears Prada," and I had like, you know, I had two scenes, and we were filming it, and then at one point, they filmed it, you know, they filmed my shot over, it was over at Meryl Streep, and then they filmed it behind me looking at her.

I went, "I have a bald spot.

Why are you filming my bald spot?"

- (laughing) "Why are you back there?"

- "Why are you back there?

Get away.

I've already done it once.

Let me go home."

So it's I don't have...

I love working with actors, and I admire them, but I really don't have that astonishing degree of...

I have it short-term, the grace that an actor has to have in order to put themselves into that position and do that kind of work.

I'm in awe of that.

I truly am in awe.

And I like to create a situation where hopefully I can make them feel as comfortable as they possibly can, but I'm not interested in being in that position in any way, shape, or form.

I've done it a couple of times, that's fine.

No.

No, no, no.

- So first, I want to just say congratulations on the Lifetime Achievement award at the Tony's, a huge honor, but I also wanna say that it's very clear you are far from done.

You know, looking forward, we have "Gypsy" coming up.

Talk to us a little bit about your approach to that process and what audiences can look forward to.

- I have no idea.

I mean, I, you know, (Durell laughing) I don't really...

I mean, my favorite time on any project is the period where you don't know.

And because I think it's if you know too soon, chances are it's something stale, or chances are it's something you've already done, or chances are... And so that period of uncertainty is one of my favorite times on any project I'm doing because there's a searching that's going on that is both conscious and unconscious.

And I love making, you know, it's the thing which I just said about actors in the process.

That's my version of an actor process.

It's making myself available to the material.

And if I come upon something that doesn't make sense to me, you know, generally it's requiring that I go on a journey and figure it out.

If I know what it is, then, if I know what it is already, and that's also how I sort of choose what projects I'm going to work on, is like, if I know what it is, why do it?

You know?

And so 'cause I like not knowing, I remember when I did "Angels in America," it was like, "How do I do a seven-hour play?"

And I was like, "Oh my God, I'm overwhelmed.

How am I gonna do it?

How am I going to do it?"

And then the voice said, "Just like anything else, one scene at a time."

And there are muscles that you discover about yourself if you don't know.

And I'm not saying I'm walking around like going, "Oh, I'm so confused."

No.

The not knowing is the first step of a journey of discovery.

It's the first step.

If you know it, then what do you discover?

So what is this?

How am I working on it?

How do I figure it out?

What's interesting about it?

And, and it's, you know, and it's very interesting.

And, you know, and there's... One of the things that's fascinating to me about "Gypsy" is in "Rose's Turn," which is this huge, you know, aria that that many wonderful people have done, you know, Audra and I were working the other day, and I just heard this list.

I heard this, one of the lyrics that she says sings, "Well somebody tell me when is it my turn."

"Someone tell me when is it my turn."

And what's fascinating is people frequently have called the character a monster, and there are aspects of she's not exactly gonna win Mother of the Year, but I'm wondering if she has that title, this show was first done in 1959, because it actually was a woman who was saying "That structure of being wife, of staying at home, I'm not doing that.

I'm going out to claim something."

And I'm wondering how much of that title of monster comes from a character who is saying, "When is it my turn?"

And that's really fascinating to me.

And how that applies to her as a woman, how that applies to her as a Black person, how that applies to her.

And all the characters, I think are all looking for how do they get a piece of the thing that's gonna make them feel safe, and confident, and empowered.

So that's some of the discovery process.

You know, it still is what it is, and it still has this stunning score, and it's smart, and it's funny.

Interesting, when I was in the musical theater program, Arthur Lawrence was a teacher of mine.

So I feel, and he was very nice and very generous to me at the be very beginning of my career, so I feel like I'm doing the work, I'm doing it in addition to all the other collaborators that made this piece, which is a very, very smart musical.

I'm also doing, I think, in some respects, to honor him and his generosity toward me.

- George, you know, they often say, you know, if you meet your heroes, you'll sometimes be disappointed.

I just wanna say, you surpassed every expectation that I had.

You are- - Well, let me do something to dispel that.

(Durell laughing) Well, thank you, that's very generous of you.

- You are incredible.

You're the gift that keeps giving.

So I just wanna say thank you for doing the work, for continue doing the work, and for making a way for people like me then, you know, to be able to come up, and make it just a little bit easier.

So just thank you for everything.

- No, thank you, thank you.

That's very nice, very generous of you.

Thank you so much.

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