Dead Playwrights, Live Audiences: Some Stories Still Need a Room

Welcome to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show. I'm Ted Bonnitt.

And I'm Phil Proctor. And why don't we say I'm Phil Proctor and you're Ted Bonnitt after all these years. I mean, Ted. Phil is like. Rhymes with dreadful.

Yeah.

And Phil. Ted is like filtered, which is what we do here. We filter out all the bad news and just stick with the good news.

Okay, then. Welcome to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show. I'm Phil Proctor.

And I'm Ted Bonnitt.

Good to see you.

Good.

So much better.

Much better.

Today we have a good friend of mine and a cohort who will be talking to us about theater and predominantly about our theater company, the Anteas Company. Ladies and gentlemen, our artistic director, Nikay Ducas.

Oh, I like that pronunciation.

Thank you. I'd break a plate if I could.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

You probably had the easiest commute of any guest ever. Your office is around the corner.

Walking distance.

The Enta's Theater.

First, I have to tell you, it's the Antaeus Theater.

Antaeus comes to us.

I'm glad I got that right.

Well, you know, it's like Fireside Theater. What? Fireside what? You know, why do we do use these names? But the story of Antaeus is based on the Antean.

A Titan. A Greek Titan.

A Greek Titan.

And don't ask me what Titans were.

Oh, they were big,.

Big people. And this one held up the sky with one hand and had one hand on the earth.

The foot. He had a hand on the Earth.

Yeah. Which we thought was a good symbol for what we do.

Rooted in the classics.

Family member of Artemis and Apollo.

See, you know more than I do.

I don't. I'm just saying that. I mean, I'm 0 for 2 here.

I just still don't know. I still don't know what the difference between a God and a Titan is. And that's something I should look up.

I don't think a Titan is a God.

I don't either, but can you tell me what a Titan is?

Form of God.

You're looking at.

That's absolutely.

The Romans had lots of gods.

And the children of Uranus.

I beg your pardon, Gaia.

And ruled the cosmos before the Olympians, led by Cronus and your producer, Donna Walker.

That makes it so much clearer.

But see, now we know.And of course, one of the reasons that we're talking about emphasizing all this gift Greek stuff, besides the fact that you are of Greek ancestry, is because the next play that we're going to be doing is Antigone.

Yes, It's a new adaptation by Kenneth Cavender, who is a Greek scholar and who we've done another play by him when we were in our old space before we moved to this one. And it's a really.

Was that the Oedipus play that I was in? Oh, yeah, that was.

Oh, you were in that? See?

I sure was, yeah.

Well, this one is a lot shorter than the one you did in about an hour and 20 minutes. It moves like a bullet. And it's sort of. He set it.It's very much the play Antigone, but he set it in sort of a post apocalyptic unnamed mid Eastern country. And the set is gonna be absolutely gorgeous.And instead of having, you know, traditionally Greek plays, a group of people who sort of challenge the protagonist. And in this case, he sort of made the chorus to soldiers who start the play.And there's another character who sort of comes in and takes on the voice of the chorus as well. It's a really beautiful adaptation.

Well, you know, the last piece that was mounted at the theater, All My Sons by Henry Miller.

Arthur.

Henry. Arthur. I met Henry Miller, by the way. Tropical cancer. Right.Was of the most beautiful and moving and well presented acting things I've seen from the company.

You are the artistic director of Anteas?

I am the artistic director.

What does the artistic director do for a theater?

What doesn't the artistic director do? The artistic director, in our case, it's slightly different because we're a company, a membership company. So we have about 150 members.Only about 50 of our members are active. Some of us have, you know, gone to New York, retired, whatever.

Died.

Some of us have died.

Not just on stage.

No, no, no, not just on stage.

Just clarifying that we've even had some incidents on stage, but I won't go into that anyway.So I'm responsible to the membership because I choose the plays and what the season's going to be, but I have to choose plays that are good for our company.

Right.

And we're we. So one of the things I do is I choose the plays. I oversee the auditions, I consult on all the productions. I direct one production a year.We have three productions a year. And we also have Classics Fest, which I know we're going to talk about later.So I choose all the plays, I help cast them, and then when they're in technical rehearsals, I come in and advise and an advisor to the director.And I'm in the lobby every performance, greeting Our audience because we're trying to get closer to the Glendale community and our theater community in general. And we also have an academy. We have a long tradition of education.

Wonderful, wonderful academy.

Yeah. We're full of scholars and teachers. Many of our actors are teachers.

Yes.

How long has NTS been in existence?

We're just about to celebrate our 35th anniversary.

And your focus as a company are the classics?

Yes. We do classic plays every year. Do one Shakespeare, we do one American classic. That was all my sons.And we do one world classic, which in this case is Antigone.

How is public interest in classics these days?

All my sons was at 97% capacity. So we're.

Congratulations.

Yeah. It's been very gratifying. And I think one of the reasons is because I think we have an extraordinary ensemble of actors.

Absolutely.

We have actors who work regionally all over the country. And we were founded by actors who were doing film and television but were trained in the classics and wanted to keep their chops.

Were you with the comedy from the beginning?

Year two, Year two. They needed ingenues. That's how old I am.

They needed ingenues.

Yeah. They realized they had a bunch of seasoned actors.

My late wife, Melinda Peterson, also joined the company.

She joined the company a little after I did and brought you along just like I brought my husband along.

Leo Marks. Wonderful, talented. We actually began at the Mark Taper Forum.

Right. Gordon Davidson, who was the artistic director at the Mark Tabor Forum, sponsored us. And for a number of years we just.We were sort of a group that just met every Monday night and read plays out loud. And sometimes we'd study a play for a year. And then we started doing these readings and we got very hot.It turned out that people really wanted to come and hear all these amazing actors read plays out loud. And so that became sort of our signature for a while. And then we moved to North Hollywood.We were there for a couple places and we slowly started producing plays. And when we moved to the theater in Glendale, which is a really beautiful 80 seat intimate, it was built for us, wasn't it?

Didn't we?

It was built for us.

Yeah. It's a beautiful space.

Yeah. And we have a black box and we have a beautiful library where we have a partnership with the Glendale Public Library.We have the largest collection of theater literature west of the Mississippi. And you're allowed to browse our books while you're waiting to see the show.And so if you have a Glendale library card, you can borrow books from there.

Oh, that's Wonderful. Great.

Los Angeles as a market for theater seems to be pretty healthy.

I know we have such a reputation and of course, we are an industry town, but the theater industry is quite lively in our city.

Yeah, we've been raving about the productions we've seen recently. Amadeus at the Pasadena Playhouse, beautiful production.

And west side Story, I was talking about at the Nocturne Theater, Kim's Convenience, which has been.

You said you saw Master Harold and the Boys.

Yep.

And then there are all these small theaters, smaller, what we call mid sized theaters like Antaeus, who are more intimate spaces. And there are so many of those.

You weren't artistic director back during the COVID days, but how did you survive that? I mean, it's great to see theater seemingly coming back big time.

It really is.

How do you see it from a business level?

Well, what happened during COVID And again, I was an artistic director then. But they. We were very fortunate. Our supporters were very helpful in keeping us alive. But also we decided to produce radio plays.And there was this brilliant idea by our former executive director, Anna Rosa Halloran, of doing the zip code plays. It's called Various zip Codes in Los Angeles. We had original plays written because at that time we had a playwrights lab.We were also doing new plays in those days, which we don't do anymore. But you can go on our website, nts.org and you can hear these radio plays. And we really expanded our viewership from those plays.There's a play about 91201 in Los Angeles. So I did one. I did one that was about how it was fascinating. You may have heard of this, Bill. The Nazis were actually quite active in Los Angeles.And there was a building where they were gathering and having all kinds of wundhal. There you go.

The one that's in Will Rogers.

Exactly.

The ruins of an enclave. Of course, it was German built, so it'll last like the pyramids. It's all cement and steel.But if you walk about a mile into the canyon behind Will Rogers, you'll come across these ruins.

Really?

You could tell it was German. Just the construction and the quality. And there's a Bunthal.

Is it still there? Because I know Will Rogers. His home burned down, right?

Yeah. These are concrete ruins. So there's still there. I'm sure they're still there.But there were three of these Nazi enclaves in America, two outside of Washington, Bunkers which did prior to World War II. There were two around D.C. and there was one here in LA.They were intended to take over the government, when the Nazis invaded successfully, the U.S. so the location in the Will Rogers area was to take over the Hollywood propaganda machine. Evidently, the two outside of Washington were also busy.Everybody knew where they were, and as soon as we declared war on Germany, they just went over and arrested them. That was the end of it.

They knew where to fight.

The Nazis were here.

So anyway, that was one of the ways we survived Covid.

Wow. Did you do it on Zoom?

It was amazing. They came to my house with a box, and in the box were all the things I needed to set up my own studio in my house.And remotely we recorded these radio plays.We have this amazing guy, Jeff Gardner, who's one of the premier sound designers in la, and he was sort of responsible for making sure all the sound worked. Our director was on a camera talking to her. It was extraordinary.

So after Covid, getting back into the habit of going out again. Not easy, especially because demographically, theatergoers are pretty old, aren't they? Well, or usually well, but.

You're right, but we have been so fortunate. I mean, it's something. I'm really focused on bringing young people in, but for some reason, we have been really lucky in our lobbies.I don't know if you noticed when you were there that night. We have a really healthy demographic of young people, and it's thrilling.

I'm starting to see that now, too. In all the theaters that I'm going to.

I think no matter what they say about AI and no matter what they say about everybody's on their cell phone, all of that is true. I think the younger generation is really hungry for being in a room with other people and having live experience.We got the greatest compliment when we. Our first play of the season was Cymbeline by Shakespeare. Very rarely done Shakespeare. And we do student matinees.We have a deal with the Glendale public.We do two student matinees for each show, where we have high school kids come in and their teacher sent us some of their comments, and a couple of them said, I did not look at my phone once. I was so excited.

How nice.

So I thought, we can't get a better compliment than that.

All this concern about attention spans being broken. You see these micro dramas on TikTok, which is a big business now.

Yep.

Yeah.

But they're saying this is because people can't sit still.

I think they're right.But I think that when you offer things like this, from the little I've read, I think that young people recognize there's something lacking in their Life.I keep hearing about these clubs where these kids say, we're going to have a club, and for an hour we put our phones in a basket and we don't use our telephones. I think they're starting by experientially realizing they're missing something. And I think that's why they want to experience things like that.

You know, one of the things that Adele and I did on our last adventures back east was to see a play on Broadway, Schmigadoon, in its previews, a wonderful, funny musical parody of musical comedies. And the audience was absolutely the most involved and spontaneous audience I've ever felt. And I think that's part of it too.People are reveling the idea, especially in these scary, dark, weird times, that we can all be together. And whenever there was a line that even had any kind of a political implication, oh, great reaction.

I think it reminds us that we need.

That we need to be together.

That's why people keep coming.Because when they get there and they realize how, whether it's comedy or whether it's drama, I need to hear this and I need to be with other people experiencing it. That's. It's addictive, but I think it's medicine for us right now.

Yeah, well, you see it in the late night monologues. The call and response to the audience is, now they're in it.

That's great.

Nothing can beat great theater.

No, it's true.

It really can't.

And it stays with you.

But you would think the classics would be a pretty hard sell.

I just feel like, again, for the same reasons, as far as Shakespeare goes, I feel like people are very intimidated by Shakespeare if they're not die hard Shakespeare fans.

Right.

But I know that our company is a group of actors that makes people feel comfortable with Shakespeare. People come up to me in the lobby all the time and say, I understood this. I had no problem. I enjoyed it so much.

It's important.

How do you do that?

The actors have to know what they're saying. And we really spent a lot of.

Time interpreting the dialogue.

Yeah.A dramaturg, you know, like Dakin Matthews, a master of the classics, will come in and we'll read the play, and he'll explain things we may not understand, which puts us in the reality of what's going on. Also, a lot of the interpretations have been very playful. Cymbeline was set in the west, and I remember. What's the magical play they used the radio.

The Tempest. That was the Tempest? Yeah.

You directed that? Yes. Well, that was, again, a very exciting kind of out of the frame approach to a familiar play.

And yet people said to me that was the. I heard lines I had never heard before.

Exactly.

I understood the play in a deeper way. That's the goal, always. Yeah, that's true. I never want to rewrite a play. I want to do Shakespeare's play. I don't want it to be Nicky Dukas Tempest.I want it to be Shakespeare's Tempest.But I feel like the way you do that is by studying the play really, really deeply and understanding at every level what it's about and getting actors, and some of it's just training and experience who understand how to make the words come to life.

You're not changing the words.

Never.

Just in the way in which you deliver them.

Occasionally, if there's a word. First of all, some of the plays are very long. Cymbeline. I cut quite a bit. I'll cut any joke that's not funny.And I believe that Shakespeare wanted me to do that. Because if there was ever a showman on earth, that was William Shakespeare. And I don't think he won any jokes that weren't funny anymore.But if there's a word that's critical to the plot and it now doesn't mean what it means, I will find a word of the same syllable length and substitute it if it doesn't sound odd. But other than that, that's fair.

Yeah, yeah. But as I was saying at lunch, we saw Eddie Izzard's Hamlet and he changed a few things for clarity. And I found it jarring.Now, the way that you're talking about it is it's melded into the rhythms of the play so it would just embellish it. But he had a couple of times where he changed a very famous word. For instance, in the to be or not to be monologue.Instead of calling it a bare bodkin, end your life with a bare bodkin. He called it something like a sharp.

A Sharpie?

Yeah, a Sharpie. We'll just write that part out. And it was jarring. It was like, wait, no, no, that's a bare bodkin, for Christ's sake.And he did the thing of, you know, stabbing himself. So you knew what it was.

I think there are some words that are archaic, but they're so sort of like the King James Bible. Not that I know anything about the Bible, but that it doesn't matter if you can't understand it. If the actor plays it with intention.You get the idea. And the Language is so beautiful, you don't care. But if it's gonna obscure the meaning, that's when I change.If I feel like we're leading the audience down, they're gonna misunderstand what we're trying to do here.

It's intentional on the actor's part in terms of how they're delivering it.

That makes the difference, the way you say something to someone. I mean, you can watch a foreign movie and follow a lot of what's going on just by intention.

Intention, that's right.

But these plays are in English. And when you know how to do it, you can understand most of it.

That's right. And the actor really. The rehearsal period is a time where we find that proper way to express something that we know is gonna.The other actor will understand it, and therefore the audience will understand it.

Yeah. And then there's the physical, too. I mean, you paint a picture.

That's right.

You create an environment, all that. Yeah.

A person goes to see a film or goes to see a play. What are the advantages of the play?

The advantages is that the actor is right in the room with you. And in our case, they're about 2ft away from you, which is pretty thrilling. The other thing is, theater is literature and film is pictures.If you're looking to see a story told by the visuals, then you should go to a movie. If you're looking to see a story told through language, if you're somebody that language really speaks to, you want to go to see a play.And I mean, I think both art forms are beautiful. I don't.

Well, you know, the kind of physical design that we've been doing at Antius recently, I think adds immeasurably to the experience.Because you do kind of, when you walk into that little space in that beautiful theater, as an audience I'm speaking now, you are immediately in the play. You know, there's a wonderful. The intimacy really does allow you to feel a part of.

I agree with that, Phil. In fact, all my son set people kept saying to me, the grass came right under my feet.

Yeah, yeah. And all my sons.

Right. Yeah. I'm thinking of some theatrical experiences. When I was in Amsterdam, I didn't know what I was buying. I just bought a ticket. I was, I love you.

You're my ideal theater goer.

And I heard about. And I was like, I really didn't understand. I can't read Dutch, you know. So I bought a ticket to see this show.I get on a boat and go across the river to a shipyard. And we go into a shipyard and there's a dry dock.

Oh, my God.

And it's a giant dry dock. And inside the dry dock is the set. It was in a post apocalyptic show about people who were ruled by overlords.And they had a huge, like, sort of world Nazi World War II tower with spotlights and the whole thing.

Okay, so movies can't do that.

No, no. And I'll tell you what else they can't do is that as the show goes on, I know the river is about 40ft above us. That was kind of interesting.I was about the first or second row. And the climax of the play was an apocalypse. And they started to open up the gates.

Oh, my gosh.

And water started coming in.

Ooh, big leaves.

And everybody's like, whoa, this is cool. And it's coming up and it's coming up and it's coming up. And of course, they had it all timed.

Yeah.

So it stopped as it lapped this far from the tip of the toe. End of show.

That was. That's truly immersive.

That was really immersive. And then Blue Man Group, we went to see them when they were in previews.

In Vegas?

No, New York at the pap. Whatever the theater was back in. We had covered it for our NPR show. So we were all invited to go see a preview of it.And no one knew who they were or what they were doing.And there were these coils you'd use for like a dryer exhaust, plastic pipe hanging down over like 20 or 30 of them kind of hanging over the audience. And we just grabbed one and said, yeah, I'd like to have pepperoni pizza, please. Ten minutes later, they came in with a pepperoni pizza.Who ordered the pepperoni pizza?

Oh, that's again, that's theater.

Right.

These are great examples. Theater's happening in real time and mistakes get made. And the actors are responding to the audience.Whether the audience is aware of it or not, the actors are playing to that audience who's there on that day. And every performance is slightly different. It's just like it's a pleasure to read a play. It's a pleasure to read a play by Shakespeare.It's a pleasure to read a play by Arthur Mither. But it is not the same thing to see that play, to experience that play.

However, you were saying earlier that we have also become very adept at presenting readings of works.

Yes, that's a beautiful segue to something that's coming up very soon.We got sort of famous for our readings and A reading for people who haven't seen it in is simply actors standing in front, behind music stands, without any costumes, without any props, and just reading you the play over and over. People come up to me in the lobby who say to me, I could see the set.Or they tell me they remember a set from a reading they saw a few years ago today. And I think to myself, there was no set. You were just watching actors read a script.When you have really good actors reading you a play out loud, performing a play, they're not reading it, they're experiencing a play. It's a really magical experience because your imagination is so engaged and you start imagining what the house looks like.You start imagining what the costumes look like.

That's right.

And you're helping to write the play.

That's kind of like the interactive nature of radio. In order to comprehend it, you have to stimulate your visual cortex. For example, I look just like Robert Redford and Phil.You Charlton Heston, I'd say, well, thank you.

I was on television during the Easter holidays, by the way, I saw you there.

Yeah, nice.

I'm wearing the same makeup I was wearing in Ben Hur right now.

From what I'm seeing firsthand in theaters, there's more excitement and audience going to theater than they are to the movie theaters at this point.

Yeah. I guess the movies are struggling a little bit because people can do it at home. You can't do theater at home.

That's right. That's right. And, you know, movie theaters now are a very kind of empty experience, which I always loved.

I always went to Netties on purpose.

I do, too. But I think most people like to go screening.

No. Even despite the AMC's attempts to put in Barco Loungers.

Right.

I mean, it's.

I feel bad about that, though, because seeing a movie in a movie theater is a very different experience than watching it.

Totally.

Yeah. I really try to make myself go because it's so easy to stay home and watch a movie.Just like when you go see a classic movie from the 40s and you see it on screen for the first time and you realize what you've been missing watching it on television growing up.

It's interesting to think about consuming drama in all these different ways.

There's so many ways to experience it. So these readings are music stands on an empty space, lights up, the actors read the play, lights down. And we. We started doing this.Well, we've done it. Like I said, we've done it from the beginning. And then when we were in North Hollywood.We did this thing called Classics Fest where for a week or two we would have a series of plays that we'd read out loud. And we Covid was one of the things that knocked that off of our ability to do.And thanks in part to Phil and to Adele and to the memory of Melinda Peterson, who was a huge classics fan supporter, we have been able and also many of our company members really stepped up in support of this because it's so important to them and other friends. We're going to have our back to our Classics Fest this year. We're going to read three plays. So each play gets read twice.We're doing Candida by George Bernard Shaw, A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene o' Neill and a new adaptation by Richard Eyre, fairly new, it's a few years old.Of Ghosts by Henry Gibson and all really good plays that are a way for us to explore the play and just a way to share more material with our audience.

We also, when we were doing Classics Fest, we would gauge the excitement of the audience in terms of some of the plays we were reading in and it could become a main stage production.

Do you have like a pre show lecture to explain this?

You know, we do a lot of that. We have for every play that we produce, we have classes that go with them. You can come for the weekend and study play.You can do it on a single night. And we all have, we always have talkbacks. We have all kinds of educational opportunities For Classics Fest, it's more of a whirlwind experience.You can come on a Saturday, see two plays.Well, last year, and I'm hoping we were doing this again, we had a buffet lunch that you could have between the shows so you can spend the whole day immersing yourself.

Plus all the books.

Plus all those books. You can do a little research on your own.

That's right.

That's right.

That's wonderful.

Yeah. But you know, you've given me an idea. I mean, because maybe there'll be something we'll be able to do in advance of it that just a little.

Yeah, it might create a little excitement.

Well, especially for people who are coming to Shakespeare for the first time.

Oh, for Shakespeare, we definitely do that. We have a class called Getting to know whatever the play is Cymbeline and. And Dakin taught that class for a weekend. Two four hour classes.You read through the play, you talk about it, you talk about the challenges for actors, you talk about different productions. We're doing it for Antigone right now.We Have a weekend class, and I think it's a Wednesday or Thursday night class that you can take, and that's on our show.

So it's sort of a Shakespeare for Beginners.

Well, you know, we actually get a lot of knowledgeable people. It's a really nice mix because. And so there's always a lot of lively discussions, and it's really more. Less of a class and just more.

Of an exploration and a website.

I should say that we spell our name A as in Apple, N as in Nicky, T, A, e, u, s. Auntias.org antias.org yes. But you can always call us if it's too complicated to remember how to spell our name.

Now, you are an actual by trade as well.

I am. I started as an actor. In fact, one of the first television shows I ever did was with Phil. You may not remember that.

Yes.

Oh, yes.

A Diary of a Terrorist.

Yes. And then they changed it to Terrorist on Trial. This was in the days of tv.

Sam Waterston was the lead.

Yes. And you were so kind. Because I had such a thing for Sam Waterston because I had seen him in Much Ado, and you introduced me to him.

Oh, yeah. Okay.

I mean, as an actor, I just thought he was so.

And you came out Originally?

I grew up in Massachusetts, but I went to graduate school at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. And then I came down to la. And so I was a classically trained actor in la. And then for many years, I did a lot of television.And then I went back to my true love, which was theater. And I was a big regional theater actor for a long while. And then.And then about 15 years ago, I was teaching, and I've taught acting for a long time as well. And I started directing. I just. I had always wanted to. And I sort of fell into it. And so for the last 15 years or so, I've also been a director.

Wonderful progression.

I feel so lucky because I just feel like everything I do, I love. So that's a good thing.

That's.

Boy, that's so important, isn't it? I mean, you get to a point in your life where you just. If you're gonna do something, you better enjoy it.

You're so grateful. And when you're young, you just. It takes so much work and you just wonder if anyone's ever gonna see you.And finally you get to a place where people do.

The one great thing about acting to me, though, is that you're in a family. When you're in a play, you're in A family. And you're all working together to create something that's greater than your own little part in it.And it's a sustainable, wonderful way to live. And when you're not doing it, you're learning your lines.

Yeah, that's right.

So that it's a very immersive thing.

I think that's why people respond to our actors in our company, too, because so many of us have been in this company for so long. I mean, obviously we also have to bring in the young actors, and we have wonderful new young actors. But when you come see our shows, you get this.You get a real sense of a shared vocabulary.

You really do.

A deep bench and deep experience of people who really work well together.

Yeah.

And no, AI can't get away with the AI. Not yet, at least.

There will be AI in the future.

NT's Holographic Productions presents Poisoner, hopefully won't.

Be around for that.

That's another reason why theater will become more relevant rather than less relevant. Right.

I think.

And hope organic.

That's right. And you know what I mean. I think this is what we were getting at earlier.I think why people are keeping interested in classical plays is because I think you go back because, you know they're going to. They're always teaching you something. These plays work. We know these plays work.I mean, if you're a theater person, you know, play's going to work, see it. But. Which is not to say anything against new plays, because that's really important and exciting, too. But.But I do think there's something so thrilling about seeing a play written by an ancient Greek or written by William Shakespeare or by Arthur Miller and feel like nothing has changed in terms of the human condition.

Yes.

There's a human condition that we all share and that we can be comforted by that. We can be challenged by that. We can be inspired by that. We can be warned by that.And there's something really deep and profound about seeing these plays over and over again.

From the 60s on, things got very experimental, very liberal, anything goes. Maybe there's a cyclical nature of, okay, been there, done that. This idea of a traditional play, a classic.

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah.

I think everything is cyclical in the arts.

Right.

Are there any playwrights now that we don't know about or that you know about?

I mean, we have so many great playwrights. Lynn Nottage, I think, is one of the great American playwrights. She's written many beautiful plays. She wrote a play called Intimate Apparel.That, to me, is a perfect play. A Perfect play there.There's just a lot of great playwrights are also writing for television, which I feel a little sad about because it's taking them away from the stage and because there aren't a lot of plays being produced in New York right now. Most new plays are being developed in the regional theaters, which is great expenses, primarily. Well, people haven't had a habit of coming to.They want to see musicals when they go to New York.

That's right.

I'm hoping that's starting to change now, but I think we have many amazing writers writing right now. Beth Woll is a great playwright. There's so many. And I'm gonna be bad about remembering names.

Are there companies here in town that are usually pushing in that direction that are known to do new plays?

Yeah, Rogue Machine, the Fountain does a lot of new plays. They sort of do a mixture, but I think they mostly do new plays. The Road does a lot of new plays.And, you know, PRT in Venice, they do sort of a combination. They do classics like they're where you're gonna. You've. You were going to go see the Price there.They also have company members who write and develop new plays. So, yeah, there's plenty of stuff.

Now, mentioning all these theaters, is there some kind of an alliance of artistic directors where you can talk about what works and what doesn't work?

There's an alliance that's just for theaters. There's nothing specifically for directors. But I'm actually thinking about starting one.

Ah.

Ah.

Okay.

I'll let you know.

You heard it here.

What would you say the difference between, say, New York and Los Angeles in terms of the theater scene? It seems like LA is really strong, the amount of people going out to see them.

There's far more people going to see theater in New York because they have a certain number of houses of that size. We have a lot of small houses, but we have the Geffen, we have the Album, we have the Taper, the Pasadena Playhouse.

The other thing I'm noticing in theater more is the sound design. It seems to be getting more sophisticated.

Yeah, I think everything is. I mean, hopefully everybody gets better as we go on. But yeah, we have this.Like I said, our sort of company member, he started as an actor is Jeff Gardner, and he's able to do things in our theater. He really is where the seats vibrate, you know, when exciting things happen, and is extraordinary. And I think you're right.It's probably to do with technology that we're just able to do more than one.

Well, now, we can direct sound.

That's right. It can come. If you have a sound of a doorbell, it can come from where the door is.

And you can do that on a more intimate level with the same kind of wonderful effect.

You gotta compete with home entertainment. It's like bringing back smell o vision.

Yeah, I. I do think that's. I do think that's where some of the impetus comes from. How do we get them out here and do something you can't do at home?

People are inundated and suffering subscription fatigue, and they're raising prices all the time. Even going to a movie is a financial commitment. A play is even a bigger financial commitment.

It is. It is what I would say is what people pay to go to see the Dodgers play. I would say you can have just as good a time.I mean, I love the Dodgers, but you can have just as good a time coming to see us. And if you come during preview week, which is the week before we open, we have six performances.I believe the tickets are $35, which is very, I think, reasonable. And we have student rates, and we have group rates, so we're always trying to.And next season, we're going to offer a pay what you will night so that if you can only afford to pay $10, you can pay $10.

Good for you.

Because I think. I think it's really important that everybody who wants to see a play can.

See a play and to build the subscription base.

Yeah.

Oh, gosh, I enjoy that so much. I want to come back.

But, you know, it's amazing what we will pay for what we will pay for a drink. And then if you think about. So would you pay $40 to see a play when you're paying $7.99 to have a drink? You know, $7.99.

That's a pretty good deal.

That's a really good deal.

I wasn't even thinking of a mixed drink. I was thinking of a coffee.

Well, we are out of time.

Are we?

Yeah. Can you believe it?

That was so quick, you guys. I know. Thank you.

Our good friend and artistic director of the Anteas Theatre Company. And I'm so happy that theater is doing so well in Los Angeles.

Thank you.

Especially post Covid. It's wonderful to see.

I think people want to come out and experience life again.

Yeah.

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely. Nike Duokas is. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

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