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[0:00] David Meyers: Hi, my name is David Meyers, and this is I Was There, a podcast that explores the creation of Broadway's greatest musicals by talking to the original cast members who brought it to life. Today, we are looking at the 1997 Tony Award winner for Best Musical, TITANIC, which was written by Maury Yeston and Peter Stone. And we are joined by original cast members Michael Cerveris, Victoria Clark, Jennifer Piech Pasbjerg, Martin Moran, and Don Stephenson. Thank you all so much for being here. My first question for all of you is how you first heard about the show and how you became involved with it. And Martin, I know you were part of the pre-Broadway workshop. So I wanted to start with you.

[0:46] Martin Moran: Yes, I was. Victoria, Vicky, and I were doing a production of How to Succeed in Business on Broadway. And around that time, there came notice that they were doing a six-week, like a good old-fashioned six-week workshop of a new Broadway musical based on the sinking of the Titanic, or the sailing of the Titanic. And I was hesitant to even audition or meet because I was doing eight shows a week. But I thought, well, let me give it a go. And I met, I had known Richard Jones. He's an extraordinary director. And my husband Henry Strand had done All's Well That Ends Well in the park, in Shakespeare in the Park, early in the early 90s. And it was an extraordinary production. And I loved Richard very much.

And so I was very nervous to meet him in that way. But I did go in and I did book this six-week workshop, which was at the same time as How to Succeed. I thought I would be exhausted, but I found being in the room with Richard all day one of the most exciting. I'm not just saying this. Everyone looks at Richard as one of a kind, an extraordinary director, I think one of the great directors in the world. And the six-week workshop was completely playful and joyous. And that's where Maury and Peter were there and new songs and new dialogue. And everybody played all different kinds of parts. At one point, we all played the captain. At one point, we switched off parts. And Richard was extremely smart and also bizarrely experimental, I think much to Maury and Peter's consternation at times.

They were like, what in the world is this wacky guy doing? And we had a blast. And Polly Penn, who was also a composer, I remember was in the workshop, she played the captain for several days. So there she was. You know, he had men play women and women play men. And he had us go across the deck as insects and try different dance steps. And we did not do a presentation; we filmed it every day. And they just kept the footage so that we didn't have to do some stressful performance at the end. And it was an extraordinary six weeks. Extremely, I was extremely excited and happy to be a part of it. And I'm going to get back later for some brief questions about the workshop, which sounds fascinating.

Victoria, how did you get involved with Titanic? And I mean, and this question for all of you too, what did you think when you heard a musical about the greatest maritime disaster of the 20th century?

[3:29] Victoria Clark: You know, I love, I just love anything strange, you know. And so I was immediately attracted to it just because the idea of a musical about the Titanic was, but at this, you know, on one side, like completely impossible, and on the other side, very intriguing. And so I thought, okay, this sounds wonderful. And Marty, you know, as you said, we were doing How to Succeed Together. At that time, my son was like a year, a year, maybe a year and a half old. And so there was no way I could have imagined, you know, even auditioning for the workshop, but Marty every night would come to work, just as he says, so exhilarated, and so energized. And I would say, oh, my. And so every night, he had new stories about what was going on.

And so I already was kind of thinking, okay, you know, if this moves forward, I definitely want to try to, you know, get an audition for it. So I went in and met, you know, when it rolled around, I went in and met with Richard. And, you know, there was no singing for me, no acting, I just sat across the table from him. And I don't know, I told him a couple of stories. And that was, I don't ever remember singing for him, although maybe I did. But you know, the Brits are so, they just sit and they talk, you know, and they just want to get to know you as a person. And Richard is so warm, and so funny. You know, it was such a relief, you know, compared to what most auditions are like. So yeah, that's that. So I really heard about it through Marty and Henry. And then Jennifer, how about you?

[5:15] Jennifer Piech Pasbjerg: I, I remember, hold on. Wait, are you crying? Get it all out. Are you crying? No, no, no, no, no, no. I remember going into audition being so nervous, but trying to hold it together. I remember carrying my mandolin because I was coming from another audition where one of those multiple instrument shows and Richard was particularly intrigued with that and made me sing and play it at one point. And I remember, I, they, I remember I had just taken a class with Barry Moss, but it was Barry and Ellen, right? It was those two. And so he brought me in, and that they gave me some of the sides for some of the Kate stuff. And I thought, I totally understand this, and I get this. And I did get offered the workshop, but I couldn't do it because I was on my honeymoon.

And I'm telling you, it was the hardest, hardest decision. But I made the right decision. I stayed with my husband. And then I was just praying that they would see me when it came around again for the audition. And I, I loved the material. I loved the piece. I was hoping for the part, but I hadn't, I didn't, I had nothing on that level on my resume. So I was thrilled to even be seen and be in the room. And I was just so grateful to be a part of the whole thing.

[6:49] David Meyers: And you played Kate McGowan, the big famous song was Ladies Made. Do you remember if you sang that for that initial audition for the workshop? Was it at that point or?

[6:59] Jennifer Piech Pasbjerg: No, no, no, it was they, they, they wanted something legit to show a lot of range, because it's a big ensemble show. And then they wanted something earthy and country-y. And so I had a song like that, that was very country-y, earthy, and then a very legit soprano-y thing because everything was in the key of H, it was high, that whole score. Yeah, so. And then Don Stevenson, who played Charles Clark and also has gone on to direct quite a few productions of Titanic, show that changed your life, obviously. How did you first come to become involved?

[7:40] Don Stevenson: Well, I couldn't get an audition. I hadn't done very much in New York. I'd done a couple things, something at City Opera, and I couldn't get an audition. And they were seeing everybody and I couldn't get in. They wouldn't see me for anything. And I, I love Titanic, you know, the story. I'm one of those people, I'm a real history buff. So I was fascinated, you know, by the actual sinking and all of those things. And I'd watched documentaries. And so I wanted to be in it because I liked the history and I thought it was cool, you know. So I couldn't, I couldn't get an audition. And I was away doing some little mini tour of some George Gershwin review when I was in Boston. And it was Julie Hughes and Barry Moss had cast that little tour that I was in.

And I wrote Julie Hughes a letter and I said, would you please, please, please let me audition for Titanic. And so she must have gotten it. This is back when you could actually send a letter, you know, with a stamp, and someone would open it and read it. And I sent it, I sent it in the mail. And you know, a few weeks went by, I didn't think that they would. And then they called me. And of course, where was I out of town in Boston for the audition as it always is. And can't get there because you have a show that night, right? So I'm like, oh, no, what am I? So it was one of those deals where I got up at, you know, six in the morning and took the shuttle from Boston and flew back to make it in time for the show that night in Boston, which is what you do.

Those never go well, usually, when you go to those sort of extremes, and you pay the money, and you go in there and you take like a car service, you know, from the airport, and you go straight to the audition. And you're so exhausted. And you know, and you know, you're worried you're not going to make it back for the show that night. So I did that. And I went in. And I remember reading. And I remember that Peter Stone started laughing. As I was reading, I was and I remember Marty, I read with Marty, Marty was a reader, and some girl and I can't remember, I think she was in the workshop, and she was a beauty. And she read the part of Caroline. And we started doing the scene. And Peter started to laugh, I could hear him laughing.

And I thought, I hope that that's good. Because it is Titanic. And then Richard started stepping, I finished, and he started stepping over the backs of the seats of the theater, not going to the aisle, but sort of like a duck stepping over to the next seat over the back of the next seat over the back of the next seat over the back of the next seat, and came all the way down. And he said, you know, do you play an instrument? And I said, No, I don't play anything. No. And he goes, All right. And I don't remember what I sang. And then I left. And I, you know, ran back, you know, to the car and back to the airport and flew back to Boston, I made the show fine. And then they called me and said that they wanted me to do it.

And I can remember my agent called and said, They want you for Titanic. And I said, What part? And they said, For Charles Clark. And you know, like, you know, in Rocky, when the guy asked Rocky if he'd like to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world, I really felt like that, you know, I felt like this fantastic thing had happened to me, you know, that, I mean, I had done a few things, but I was relatively new, you know, and, and it was like, the sun came out on a cloudy day, you know, I mean, I felt like I was picked from obscurity to get to do it. And, you know, it was, it was the thrill of a lifetime for me, I really felt like I still do when I think back on and I still feel that, that feeling, you know, we've all felt that where you go, I got it, you know, that, that, that, that important one to get, you know, so, yeah, it was a thrill for me. And, and then when I think back on it, I still is, you know.

[12:00] Michael Cerveris: Well, I guess I, I had come back, I did Tommy in New York, and then had, because I am the worst judge of how to, to have a career in the world. I left as soon as I made my Broadway debut, and didn't just leave New York, I left the country to go work in Germany for what ended up being a year and a half doing Tommy abroad, and, and loved doing that. But I had never really intended to be a musical theatre performer, and assumed that if I was going to be lucky enough to have any kind of career in the theatre, it was going to be as a straight dramatic actor. And that was sort of what I focused on. I love going to see musicals. But I just didn't expect that I would be in them very often. And Tommy was this kind of rare convergence of my rock and roll side and, and my theatrical side, and that, you know, that sort of made sense that that's the kind of musical I would be in.

But after having done it for like four years by the end of that, and finishing up in Germany, and coming back to the United States, I was determined to now do the, you know, Shakespeare and Shaw and Chekhov and all the things that I thought my Yale education had prepared me well for. And so I told my agents, like, I really don't want to audition for musicals, I really want to, you know, try to get a play. And so I did try for a while and nothing seemed to be happening. And, and then the audition for Titanic came along. And they said, they're, you know, these guys are doing this musical about the Titanic. And, and it's Maury Yeston and Peter Stone, who have this incredible track record and, and Richard Jones, who is an English opera director and has never directed a Broadway show of any sort, let alone a musical like this.

And that sounded potentially disastrous enough to me that I thought, well, I absolutely want to audition for this. And so I came in and, and also I think the thing that really appealed to me, I had, in college, I had

[15:02] Martin Moran: Working with Richard, who is a very non-traditional musical theater director, I had no expectation or hope that I would actually get hired. I thought this was an interesting thing to at least go into audition for. I don't remember a lot about my audition. I'm sure I had to do a legit piece and something slightly lighter, although Andrews was a pretty seriously legit kind of role. I think the emphasis was on that. The other thing I remembered was just how fascinating and odd and unlike anybody else I'd auditioned for, Richard was. I thought, this is one of those things where not a lot of people are going to be the right fit for this kind of piece and this kind of director, but the people who are are going to be really well suited for it.

I think that was reflected in every single person involved in it. A lot of that had to do with Richard's particular way of viewing people and viewing characters. The other fascinating thing, when I did actually get the part and was being given some details about it, they said, "Oh, and Richard would really like you to keep your head shaved." I said, "Well, but Thomas Andrews had like a big full head of hair." He said, "Yeah, but he likes this image of this sort of visionary architect with no hair. There's something kind of oddly contemporary about it, even in the midst of all this other stuff." I thought, "Well, that's good since I can't grow Thomas Andrews type hair." I don't know if it was a complete coincidence that Richard, of course, had a beautiful shaved head as well.

[18:23] Don Stephenson: So Martin, as our only veteran of the workshop, I had a few questions for you. We'll talk about in a second. Titanic was notorious for having a lot of new added cut material during rehearsals and previews. Did that also happen in the workshop? Was the show that came out of the workshop the show that started rehearsals when you began the Broadway production? Or did they do even more work in between?

[18:48] Martin Moran: They absolutely did more work in between. Richard was so deeply involved in the creation and the sort of dramaturgical. He would meet with Peter and Maury every night and all the time. But absolutely, the material changed. It was really, really exciting. Actually, music would come in. And by the way, the accompanist for the workshop was Janine Tutori. And Matt, oh, his name is going to be horrible. Matty Sklar was there playing. So there was Janine playing. And I do remember, I'm just going to say, I do remember the day that the scene came in for the radio run, which was a song that came in rather early in the workshop. And I remember learning it and thinking, "Oh, my God. I want to play this.

I want to do this part of the radio operator, Harold Bride." But things changed enormously. There were big, big, big, big numbers. And I think there were 10 of us or something like that. And we were already calculating we're all going to be sharing a point. We got checks for a couple of years. It's an old-fashioned Broadway workshop where it was long enough. To answer your question, a lot of work was done between the workshop and the beginning because in the beginning of rehearsals for the Broadway show. Now, remember, this was a musical about the singing of the Titanic with no out-of-town tryout. The stakes could not have been higher. Richard was calling the shots because he's an enormously renowned and booked director for years out.

And he wasn't going to go try it out of town. I think that was part of it. And it was so huge. And the Dodgers, who were the producers, Michael David and all those guys, Ed Strong, it was so audacious what they were doing. But to answer your question, things changed a lot. And in fact, they continue to change, as you know, drastically through previews. And that was true of the workshop as well, to the point where somebody had t-shirts made, remember? And it said, "This is a change." Because Richard kept saying, remember meeting in the lobby and he'd go, "Now everyone just take a deep breath. This is a change. Things are changing." And he had this really adorable, he still does, South London dialect, which I adopted for Herald Bride.

I use Richard's dialect for Herald Bride. But I can't do it right now. I'm having an accent emergency. I'm all over Britain. But it was a hodgepodge and a hotpot of absolute creativity. And Richard really drove that. And I think Peter had great renown for him. I'll say I think he, you know, more he didn't. This is gonna be, but you know, Richard was audacious and challenging and usually right. And he was right anyway. And so I think he really pushed those guys. And to their credit and to the producers credit, they held the space up into the 11th hour of basically almost the final preview, when suddenly we knew we had a show when the ending was when Michael didn't come out in the orange jumpsuit with the hairdryer.

Michael, you can tell that story. I believe it was blue. Anyway, I hope that answers your question. But it an incredibly, you know, it was wild. I mean, Don went through heartbreaking cuts and changes and Vicky's part changed enormously.

[22:37] Jennifer Piech Pasbjerg: And just staying on the workshop for one more second, you said everyone played all these different parts. Were you cast as Herald Bride? Or were you just cast as one of 10? And then I also know Brian Darcy James was also in the workshop. And you know, in the duet, right, the proposal in the night was alive is still one of the most iconic memories from that show. Did you guys work on that together in the workshop? And then that carried over into Broadway?

[23:03] Martin Moran: Yes, we did. But none of that was set. And none of us knew what parts, you know, there were no parts. It was just playtime with Richard, essentially. But there was a point at which we kind of were landing where I thought, well, maybe I'll be Herald Bride if we do. And Brian, I've, you know, of course, I'd already worked with Brian and Floyd, Adam Gettles, Floyd Collins, and other projects. And so that was a great love duet. And we did hope that that would happen, that we would go on to do it in Broadway. But nothing was set. Nothing. The contract was just come play with Richard Jones.

[23:44] Don Stephenson: And then moving on to Broadway rehearsals, I would just love to hear from each of you what your experience was like, overall, obviously, during the process, but especially on the first day, it was a big company, you know, over 40 people hearing the score for the first time. And then I also had a question because Michael Riedel just came out with a book and he writes about Titanic that there was apparently a co-producer named Michael Brown, who said he raised money and didn't raise money. And according to Michael Riedel, he died on the first day of rehearsal.

[24:13] Martin Moran: He did. Oh, that's true.

[24:16] Don Stephenson: That is true. He died on the first day of rehearsal. I think we were aware, but they tried to keep things sort of under wraps because there were problems money-wise. I mean, not that we were aware. I mean, maybe some of you guys were aware, but eventually it was known that the entire time we were rehearsing, they were scrambling to get, you know, to shore up the funding. I think early on in that first week of those first weeks, Maury went down to Washington, D.C. to the Kennedy Center and got some extra money from the people at the Kennedy Center or somebody at the Kennedy Center to shore it up. After that, Michael Brown had died. That's what they told me after the fact. He made a special trip when we were in rehearsals down to D.C. to secure it himself personally.

[25:04] Martin Moran: Yeah, it was fraught, definitely. And then I'll be quiet, but do you remember one of the first things on the first big day was that Maury, and it was absolutely astonishing, insisted on sitting at the piano and singing the entire score because he said, "There's something you're going to get from the spirit of the composer from hearing me do it." And it was wildly passionate and insane and wonderful, I thought, that he's such a passionate guy and he wanted us to catch his fire. And I think, Michael, before you said this had all the ingredients of a potential disaster, or it could have gone well and became the hit, and it's one of my favorite musicals, the hit it became, sitting around and listening to that on the first day, what did you guys think, knowing that you'd be rehearsing this massive technical show with no set, that I guess you didn't really know all the changes were happening. But on that first day, did you feel like, well, this could be a hit, or this could be the flop of the season, which a lot of people were expecting it to be?

[26:14] Michael Cerveris: I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever heard. I thought it was magnificent. And I remember him clearly banging both hands on the keyboard and singing all of the parts. And I thought the piano was going to collapse, and he would sing, "third class, class," and then he would be on to the third class coming on, and then he would do the second class coming in. It was amazing. I think Judy has a recording of it that she's kept all of these years, or a partial recording of it. That's probably something everybody would like to hear. I thought it was terrific. He was great, and I thought the music was stunning. Look, those first 20 minutes, that opening number, when you start with one guy on stage, and then you end with the Titanic launches from the dock, and everybody's on board. Now, that's quite a trick. It's astonishing. It's the greatest opening number in any musical ever, in my opinion.

[27:11] Don Stephenson: I actually had a question about that, and Michael, you were about to speak, and this question is for you. I thought I read that "In Every Age" was something that came in during rehearsals. Do you remember that? And then, if that's true, how did the show just start? With Brian, and then you, Martin, singing, how did they build Titanic? What was the original opening before that song came in? And then, Michael, it's a fantastic song. What was your reaction when they handed this to you, or Morrie played it for you?

[27:42] Michael Cerveris: Is that right, Martin? I remember it being there from the beginning.

[27:49] Martin Moran: It came late in the game. I think it came late in the game, maybe even not in the workshop, but on the tail, because I can remember Richard saying to Morrie and Peter, "There needs to be a number that gives a contextual sense of a man's achievement, like the creation of something, a wonder of the world." But I think it may have been written by the time rehearsals began.

[28:20] Michael Cerveris: I think so, because I don't remember there being a time when it didn't begin with that. So, I think it may have happened in the workshops previous to when I became involved in the Broadway company. I remember hearing that and being thrilled but terrified, the idea of having to step out on stage by yourself and start this massive undertaking off and not send it in the first number into the drink. I remember Morrie's performance of the...

[29:06] Victoria Clark: And I felt by the end of that, I don't know if this is going to be a huge hit or a complete disaster, but I absolutely have to be here to find out what it is. And whatever it is, it's going to be worth everything that we put into it. And that turned out to be absolutely true. It was the most extraordinary group of people.

[29:32] Michael Cerveris: Yes.

[29:32] Victoria Clark: I mean, that's what I felt the first day, just walking in. First of all, everyone is completely hilarious. And like a little miniature theater piece in and of themselves. So, you know, what Don and Marty were saying about like, and Michael too, about how specifically it was cast, it's like, every person was a puzzle. And every person was, it seemed like the parts were written for them. And hilarious group of people. But what I remember about rehearsals is just people having to slam things on the production table to get us to shut up because we were having such a good time. It was such a room of joy and playfulness. And honestly, I expected a phone call every night from the stage manager telling us not to come the next day.

I really did think it was kind of like a big charade in a way. Because as much fun as we were having, would this actually become a viable piece of theater? Big question in my mind. Was this actually going to have a preview period? You never did see the ship. That was the most brilliant concept of the whole show. You never saw the ship. You only saw people on it and looking out at it, but you never saw it. Right?

[30:45] Don Stephenson: For a while, you saw that little boat on the wall.

[30:49] Martin Moran: Oh, stick on a ship. And the stick on a ship. Like the corny dog on the corny dog.

[30:53] Don Stephenson: Yeah.

[30:54] Martin Moran: And at the end of the act one.

[30:56] Don Stephenson: And then one day we came into—

[30:57] Martin Moran: Going across, yeah.

[30:58] Don Stephenson: One day we came into rehearsal and it was in the dumpster.

[31:01] Victoria Clark: But right, guys?

[31:01] Don Stephenson: It was in the dumpster next to the theater.

[31:04] Martin Moran: But right, don't you remember? We were just laughing so much.

[31:09] Victoria Clark: It's the greatest group of actors that I've ever seen put together for a Broadway show. And I know all of us have done shows that we've loved and the shows have had success. But I'm telling you, that's the greatest group that's ever been assembled that I can see. Hands down to a man and to a woman. When you would look around, everyone was bringing it.

[31:33] Don Stephenson: There were lots of difficult things that we were asked to do. I mean, staging the opening number, I remember, took over a week, maybe close to two weeks, because Richard did it very, very slowly and he would piece it together. And I remember walking past him one time and he had these arrows. I caught a glimpse of his script and there were these arrows, these hooked arrows all over the pages. And what it was, was the movement that he wanted all of us to do. And you know, when it starts with the one guy and then it ends up everybody swirling around and then going up the gangplank and all of the different classes coming in and Alice Bean swooping around and the kids swooping around. In Richard's script were the swoops and the arrows in different colors.

And that's what he did. And I remember standing there and standing there and standing there once I was on and then I would go to my spot and wait for the next group to come out. It took a really long time for him to craft it and to build it. And then he would go back and then go a little further and go a little further and go a little further until suddenly we're all 40 out there and then everybody would go up the gangplank and then that would have a swoop. The going up the gangplank was not a straight shot up the swoop. So he was almost like a painter with a brush stroke, you know, of the stage using all of us.

[33:01] Martin Moran: The other thing I remember is, you know, when we had the original lifeboat scene was very, very difficult. The way that it was written, it was basically a book scene with no music and the stage was split into supposed to be each side of the ship loading the lifeboats. And John Cunningham as the captain had a megaphone was sort of in this porthole in the middle. And Richard's idea was so brilliant that he sort of wanted to do it like time-lapse photography, like we were all in a position and then the scene would explode and we would move and then we would freeze and the flare would go off. And when the flare exploded, we were supposed to be in a different position, like time had gone by. And it was impossible to do it. Don't you guys remember? We did it and we did it and we did it. Didn't we also have to shift, like who is in the porthole? Like every time there was a flash of light, we had to like move three feet to a different porthole or something.

[33:52] Victoria Clark: You were supposed to be in a different place, like time had gone by and it was incorrect. We were shoulder to shoulder. I remember coming home after eight hour days and we were literally all packed together, shoulder to shoulder all day long.

[34:05] Don Stephenson: That was pre-COVID.

[34:06] Martin Moran: Yeah, pre-COVID when you could do that. And it was amazing. And I remember Matt Bennett saying out loud one point, this can't work. And Richard said, yes, it can. And ultimately it didn't. That scene didn't work and we couldn't do his idea, which you could do in a movie, but you can't really do on stage of like having everybody in that position and then it snaps and then everybody's in a different position because the audience could see us move. And so that didn't work. And then they rewrote the whole thing. They dumped the whole thing and it became a musical scene sung all the way through. But we worked on it and there were such wonderful ideas from Richard, so out of the box, creative ideas. And he had these 40 people who could do it and would kill themselves to do what he wanted. I think each one of us would have done anything. If he said, lie down on the floor and bark like a dog, there's not one of us who wouldn't have done it. And we all did.

[35:16] Victoria Clark: This gives me a chance to tell my favorite story and probably the most enduring thing that I took away from the whole beautiful experience of the show, which is that in the process of that song and that scene going away and other things that happened to accommodate that, Don and Judy's parts, which had been substantially larger initially, began to be whittled away and become still very significant and important, but just not occupying as much space as they had initially. And I think Vicki and Bill's parts kind of grew through the process, too, if I remember right. But I remember a day when Richard sort of brought us all in and said, I've taken this as far as I know how to, and at this point, I need to turn it over to Maury and Peter, who know better how to serve the needs of Broadway and musicals and to make something that can continue and have a life and be produced and tour and do other things.

And said, I believe in my vision and I believe that I could realize that, but that's not what my job is here. And so, there are going to be these big changes and they're going to affect people deeply. And Don, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that you and Judy were given the opportunity, given that your roles were sort of substantially different than what you had signed on for, to say, this isn't the job I signed up for. Somebody else can do it instead and it wouldn't be held against you in any way. This isn't what you offered in the first place. And to Don and Judy's credit eternally, they both said, no, we are here to serve this piece and we are here to do whatever is asked of us.

And it's not about our own personal satisfaction. I'm sure there were difficult times that we never saw when you went home and thought about what you thought it was going to be and what it was. And I don't mean to in any way diminish what you did do because it was extraordinary and memorable, just like everything else. It just was not what it was initially. And I thought that was one of the most noble and brave and the real essence of what it is to be an ensemble actor and a company member and a colleague. They said, no, we're here to do this job. And like Don was just saying, if you tell me to lay down and get trampled, then that's what I'll do for you because that's what I'm here to do. And it's just, that has never left me as long as many things that I've done and many people that I've met, that was one of the most noble things that I ever encountered.

[39:02] David Meyers: And that's actually a perfect transition because Titanic is notorious for its preview period, where so much changed. As you mentioned, I read something where Richard Jones was not even speaking. It might just be a rumor, but obviously, differences between the two. And then I have a question for you. Obviously, we'll hopefully have enough time to talk about some of the changes, but what was it like to be up there on stage during that process? I read an interview that Brian Darcy James gave after the show opened that he said at least he was up there knowing that the show wasn't ready. The first preview was four hours. The ship didn't sink. And just hear about your experiences. And also, were you worried? And did you get the sense that Maury and Peter and Richard knew that the show was in trouble or needed changes? Or were you surprised by the level of changes that came in during previews?

[40:06] Martin Moran: Actually, my stuff didn't really change all that much, almost to a line, little tweaks here and there, and maybe where they were placed. But I feel like I was one of the characters that had a very clear little thread throughout. I popped in and I popped out. And it didn't change all that much. But one of my... I remember that night that... Because we all were backstage at the end watching poor Michael Cerveris walk out. We're all like... And then we were looking out to see what the audience was thinking. And then that night that the closing number went in and the dead joined the living, how we were all like this. And you looked into the wings and the crew was crying. Everybody finally thought, we have it. We have the show. We have the ending. We know we're going to be okay. But it took... I feel like that was right up against the last possible second we could have made that change. I think it was the night or two before the critics came. It was at the 11th hour.

[41:05] Don Stephenson: The 11th hour. The last second. Yeah. And I think because they were trying to work in all of Richard's things. He wanted to give it a chance to work. Those beautiful moments, some of which just couldn't be realized. And everybody... There were so many people, that tendency to be against something, to be so critical. And there was a lot of poisoned pencils and pens and gossip going on. And it was painful at times. I can remember a couple of nights where we just screeched to a halt. And then Michael Mulhern, of all people. Do you remember that? Stepped out on stage and kind of did... He would go out and tell jokes and tell the audience.

[41:46] Victoria Clark: Yeah. He'd kind of do stand up and do jokes and try to keep people engaged or something. It was bizarre. While they were trying to... It was the hydraulics was the big key, right? The hydraulics were not... The tilting of the ship. And it was painful. And they didn't bring the house lights up all the way. They brought them up to kind of like a twilight level. And so we sent Michael, we pushed him out to keep the audience from leaving. And he did it. Remember that? And he was like, what am I supposed to say? And I think we were like, just tell them we'll be back. And he did.

[42:19] Don Stephenson: Well, the hydraulics got stuck and they couldn't lower it. And we were still up there and we couldn't get down. And so I remember they brought the curtain up and at one of the previews, we bowed, those of us that were up there on the high tilt, bowed from up there because we couldn't get down. There was no ladder. And Richard Hess, one of the stage managers was up there with us and he couldn't get out of the way. We took a hat off and put it on him and he bowed with the cast because he was completely visible. And so he had to bow with us, but he was all in the blacks. And so we put the hat on and somebody took their hat off and he bowed as if he was in the cast. We couldn't get down. It was extreme.

[43:01] Martin Moran: It was extreme.

[43:08] Don Stephenson: The headlines wrote themselves, the Titanic doesn't sink was tailor-made.

[43:12] Martin Moran: I ran into an actor on the street. I don't know if any of you guys, Marty, you're alluding to this, but there were some people who could get the feeling they didn't want it to go well. You could get that feeling. I remember I saw somebody and he says, so Don, what are you up to? And I said, I'm in Titanic. And he went, oh, what are you guys going to do?

[43:28] Victoria Clark: Mm-hmm.

[43:34] Don Stephenson: Oh, it was, it was, which made it all delicious. It's been said that we, that when we knew the night it worked and then we had our champions like Rosie O'Donnell.

[43:38] Victoria Clark: And then we won the Frickin' Tony Award for Best Musical, and it was such a triumph. My husband was across the street company managing Steel Pier, which had like all the makings of being the smash hit of, and for whatever reason, you know, ours kept getting better and better and better. Actually, Denford, this is a question I had for you. This was your big Broadway debut. We've talked about this before. Did you think this was normal, the amount of changes and turmoil? I was so grateful to be in that room. Like Don was saying, it was the most magnificent group of singing actors. I felt so privileged and lucky and kind of nervous I was going to be fired every day to be in that room that I didn't know what was normal.

But I do remember David Garrison, after, you know, we figured things out and we started having previews and opening with the show that was the show, I remember him saying, now look, kid, this is not normal. This is normally shows open and shows closed. This is something, take this in, kid. This is very special what's happening here. So I was just everything about it, you know, so thrilled to be there.

[44:57] Victoria Clark: And then Michael, one question I had for you, we talked about earlier, there was a version of the ending where you came out as Robert Ballard. And when I read about that, I said, if I ever get the chance to talk to Michael Cerveris, I would like to hear the story of what did you do? And what was it? I mean, I remember seeing the original Broadway production. I just listened to the cast recording last night. I just, it boggles my mind to think of the show ending with Robert, and we just followed all these people. And now Robert Ballard comes on stage. So I'd love to hear what that was.

[45:35] Michael Cerveris: Well, that, that was pretty much the reaction of everybody in the audience as well. Like, what is Robert Ballard? Who is Robert Ballard? And what is he doing in the middle of this story? You know, they had kind of stuck with us up to that point, through some, you know, bumpy patches and ups and downs. And suddenly we asked them to jump to the present day, or, you know, recent past when Robert Ballard, who led the expedition that discovered the wreckage, came on. And the idea was to bookend the piece with another example of human ingenuity and technology sort of doing more than was ever thought possible and sort of performing miracles. And so I came out in a blue jumpsuit, looking like, like Robert Ballard himself, and, you know, tennis shoes and a ball cap, and sang a reprise of the In Every Age.

And, and in the back, on the entire set was cleared away. And there was just the wreckage, if you understood that that's what it was, of the Titanic lying on the ocean floor, a small, you know, I don't know, maybe eight or 10 foot model, and a little tiny submarine would sort of descend slowly from the flies. And, and the you'd see the light kind of scanning for looking for the wreckage. And the audience, you know, they had stuck with us through this whole thing. And then they were suddenly like, nice. Sorry, I'm out. I just you've asked one too many suspensions of my disbelief now. And it was the most, it was, I loved it, because I love, you know, really bold, courageous attempts to do things, whether they work out right or not.

And, and it was really exciting to be a part of something that was attempting to do something so outrageous and strange. And I was relieved, ultimately, I mean, I was a little disappointed because, you know, I liked my little blue jumpsuit. But, but I was really relieved when we got to the ending that made such emotional sense and such, you know, sort of brought the whole thing home in a really profound way. And relieved not to have to walk out to what I knew was going to be just absolute befuddlement, if not outright hostility from the audience at the end of the show every night. And that's what happened. I mean, I loved it, too. But it was completely unsatisfying and frustrating, I think, for the audience, because it ended with nobody on stage and just the light finding the wreck.

And then we blacked out. And that was it. It went at the end, and the light went out on the on the on the wreck. And that was it. And so they just, they sat there, as we all know, just like, didn't know what to do. No, that can't be the end. You know, and a smattering of applause, truly.

[48:06] Michael Cerveris: And so then when we when we had the day, where we put in the the other ending, you know, I mean, I really always felt like Richard didn't really want to do it. He liked the other. He didn't. He said, he said it was corny cornrows. I remember. One of the guys on the crew said, here's what you do. I remember we would talk to him. He'd say on the fly rail. He'd say, here's what you do. Sing the opening number again. The curtain flies up, all the living people, the dead people are there. And then all the living people, you just turn around and you stand where you stood in the opening number done. And I was like, somebody needs to tell Richard that let's just try it. Let's try it. And that's what we did.

And we all know the four of us know when he was up in the top balcony, and he said, if you're dead and wearing a big hat, go to stage left. And if you're alive, go to stage right. And he started hacking away at it. And that's how he did it. And that's, I remember, correct me if I'm wrong, you guys. I thought it was a two show day. When we did it, he staged it and it was 10 o'clock in the morning. And they called us and paid all of us overtime because they wanted to put it in right away. That's what I remember. It was 10 o'clock in the morning. And I was, I remember standing there exhausted because we'd done the last night show. They had and they had to pay us overtime because then that was a two show day.

And we were there at 10 in the morning standing there and he staged it. Yeah, we met in the lobby. Yeah, big lobby in order because they have great memories. And the crew is right. The crew started to weep. We did it. It was extraordinary. Yeah. And the audience, David, they exploded. They exploded once they had that cathartic thing of the people on meeting each other. And it echoed the opening number with like, one person in the couple was no longer was dead and the other was alive. And they could still see them, but the dead people couldn't see the living people. And it just, it let it go. The feeling that had been pent up that they wanted to feel it, let them have it.

[50:46] Martin Moran: Sorry. I even feel like, and tell me if this is wrong, that we rehearsed it in the morning before the matinee, but didn't have time to tech it. So we still did the, we did the old ending at the matinee, knowing that this was going to be the last time we would do it. And tonight we do a new one. I think that's right. And then we teched it in between and then did it that night. But we did that for the lifeboat scene too. Like we couldn't finish it. We would rehearse in the lobby up by the popcorn machine because we never could rehearse on stage because they were always trying to fix something and make it all work. And so, but we couldn't finish. We do the old version that night after rehearsing the new version and complete that day, we would run out of time and we couldn't put it in.

That happened with lifeboats I know, and the ending, I think both of those, we would run out of time and we have to go do the old one. And I remember rehearsing in the women's bathroom. Remember that? Ripping the pages out of the script. Cut from measure 82 and cut 17 pages and go to measure 138. That's the cut.

[51:48] Victoria Clark: So last two questions. The first one is actually what we're talking about. What was it like when the big lifeboat dialogue scene was cut and this new number came in? Did you guys feel like that would be a turning point of the show? And were you expecting that? Was it a shock to have this whole sequence you had worked on, even talked about in rehearsals, all these things? What was the reaction with that?

[52:16] Don Stephenson: I think Don is right. When we heard the audience, we were like, oh, because we were so in it. I mean, I'll speak for myself. I couldn't really tell anymore. I'd lost all sense of objectivity. I was just getting on the conveyor belt and just doing my best to stay focused and tell the story. But I think when we heard their reaction, yeah, that's when I felt that we had something that would probably do well. I don't know if I knew that it was going to be a commercial success, but I certainly felt like we had found the show finally by that point. And it was really fascinating because with Tommy, the script we read on the first day of rehearsal was almost absolutely identical to what we opened with on Broadway.

And it had been really fleshed out and it was all about filling in what the framework clearly was. And that had to do with it having existed in other incarnations before and Pete and Des kind of really crafting a really tight structure. This to me was so fascinating because I got to see firsthand the experience I'd always heard about sending the clowns, came in in the afternoon in previews and all of these stories, most of which happened out of town for reasons that were all really clear to all of us. But it was amazing to watch the creators and the writers and director really mold all of this and throw huge chunks of things out. And that included set pieces and all kinds of other stuff, all in the service of refining the piece and sculpting the piece and carving away everything that wasn't the story. And that was as thrilling to me as having it from day one could ever have been and maybe even more so.

[54:25] Michael Cerveris: And then the final question I had is in total fate or kismet, in December 1997, Outcomes Titanic, one of the biggest musical, one of the biggest movies of all time. One, did you know that this movie was in the pipeline when you were working on the show? And then was there a big cast trip to go see the movie? What was your reaction when it came out? And do you feel like it helped? I mean, the show had a healthy run, but not a huge run. Did you expect the movie to have a bigger impact on the run and life of at least the Broadway production of the show?

[55:08] Martin Moran: You know, I just have to say I feel clueless about all of that. The movie was an entirely different breed of art and energy. I mean, it was, the cast had no, there was no sense of us going to see it together or paying much attention to it, frankly, from my point of view. It was a, you know, it was a very different spirited work. So I just, I don't know, I think we were aware there was a film being made. And maybe that was part of the Dodgers hurry. Yeah, I don't know if you guys remember that. You know, you don't just get this into a musical form before there's a film. But I don't know if the film affected our business in one way or another. There was such, I mean, it's such an entirely singular experience to go to a musical of this rendering of this story.

And so to say, and I do the only, and I'm gonna be quiet, because I know we're gonna, is that I do once again, just want to undermine that one of the most extraordinary things about this entire experience was the sense that we had someone at the helm, intellectually and spiritually in Richard Jones, who, and these great writers, who held a space that was extraordinary, and who brought together the most extraordinary group of souls to embody this story. And that, you know, that just is a singular thing that has happened in my life. And I know that's part, I'm repeating some of what you guys have said. But you know, from the first day of rehearsal, Richard is just a deeply inspiring artist to be near, to be around, and as are all of you.

[56:47] Victoria Clark: Well, and I think that all of us, I mean, I don't want to speak for everybody, but I think we do have a closeness, all of us who were there. You know, if we don't see each other for a while, when we do, it's as if no time has gone by. And, you know, you hear people say, we went to war together, and we did all these things together. It was a bonding experience, I think, for all of us. And I know that I think of all of them so fondly. And that shared experience, it's like a secret that we all have, you know. And when I see them, we only need look at each other, and no time has gone by. I still feel close to all of them. Whether we're the best of friends or not, I feel like we're all sort of bonded in a way, you know, that can't be undone.

[57:32] David Meyers: Well, I really loved being here. I loved hearing these memories, and I hope everyone who listens to it will as well. So thank you so much to Martin Moran, Jennifer Piech Pasbjerg, Victoria Clark, Don Stephenson, and Michael Cerveris for joining us for our little reunion of Titanic.

[57:49] Martin Moran: Thank you, David.

[57:51] Michael Cerveris: Thanks, Dave.

[57:52] Victoria Clark: Great to see you guys. God bless. Love you.

[57:56] Don Stephenson: Thanks, guys.