238 - A Chorus Line (feat. Heath Saunders)

I realize it might be a bit too much for the Patreon comments, but I'd really appreciate it Brian would expound upon his feelings about children not doing theater. I'm currently struggling with my own feelings about it as my child has started to express an interest in performing. I'm torn, because I know how much it meant to me growing up, how some of my very best memories were forged on and around stages, TV shoots, and film sets, but I also know how my time as a performer ended, how it's taken 27 years and counting to figure out who I am without it. I guess the process of writing this comment has really answered some of the question for me, but I'd still appreciate Brian's perspective.

I have seen a stage production of A Chorus Line in Manchester, UK, and, besides the fact that it is breathtaking, the weirdest thing was reading reviews saying that tits and ass does not resonate today because we do not have anymore that kind of obsessions about physique...

Niche interest fact but A Chorus Line is also an important point in the history of lighting as the first Broadway show to use a computerised lighting desk with a system built on a PDP-8 named “Sam” (far from the first in the world though)

thank god we finally got the ON Broadway balaga...

Dr. Samuel Bultch, D.D.S. *IS* Dr. Samuel Bultch, D.D.S. *IN* "Dr. Samuel Bultch, D.D.S."

Y'all are papp happy

Wildest reveal ever

Just learned about dude and you have got to cover this holy shit

Okay, I really appreciate the commentary re: theatre versus performance art. Chewing on this and how CL sits on that spectrum 👏🏻👏🏻

I really enjoyed Heath Saunders on this episode! You should have them on again sometime.

this is the BEST episode art 😂

what Heath and AJ were talking about in regard to the method & youth theater really spoke to me. I was deeply involved in theater from the ages of 8-16 roughly, and especially when I got to middle school there was such an emphasis on *feeling* in order to act. I also found the song "Nothing" around this time and felt seen lol. The reason I started doing theater when I was a youngun was I was deeply imaginative and creative and, at the time, theater really gave me an outlet and allowed me to basically play with other similarly-minded kids. When I started doing theater in middle & high school, there was *such* an emphasis on doing in *right* and doing it *good*. Looking back, it was probably a funding issue. If a public school's theater department isn't yielding perfect results, its probably gonna get axed (and maybe would get axed anyway lol). But it really killed my love of performing, this emphasis on *being* and *embodying* was frustrating because that was never useful to me, and instead did all the exercises to pretend it was useful to keep pleasing my directors. It really stoked my anxiety, and I felt like a fraud compared to everyone else who seemed totally into it. I ended up quitting, among other reasons, because I just couldn't take it anymore.

I’ve never been more gutted to be living in the Midwest and not have transportation to NY (besides the insane legislation).

I just now realized that the Method is a fundamentally elitist acting ideology. By demanding your actors to mine their own experiences to perform an emotional facsimile of those experiences it induces the casting of those actors to be from a class of people who had the leisure to experience a lot of things. A person can't methodize riding down a sled unless they come from a background of someone who grew up in snowy climes or vacationed to those same climes. Meanwhile in a more Theater of the Oppressed context, sledding for fun wouldn't even be brought up.

I think Josh's point about how Theater as Labor is a skeleton key to unlocking A Chorus Line. Theater about theater like Schmigadoon or Something Rotten reek of being from the perspective of a theater producer who as a Money Guy will see the job of play acting in front of an audience as inherently childish, instead of knowing in their bones just how much back breaking work goes into the dance and singing that you see on Stage. I think that's why A Chorus Line opens with workers being commanded to do a complicated, difficult series of tasks. They are up front in the play Skilled Workers. That's also why it's called A Chorus Line is not The Chorus Line. Each of these workers could have been replaced with an equally interesting subject to write a song about, they just were the lucky ones to be cast.

You say that Joe Papp fought Robert Moses AND WON, and you have immediately made him my hero.

Will the live show be recorded for Patreon members? I would have gone, but I'm a small bean and didn't feel comfortable driving all the way to NYC.