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[0:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello, and welcome to the Drama Book Show, where we bring you conversations with writers, artists, and theater professionals whose work shapes the world of live performance. My name is Mark-Eugene Garcia. In this episode, we explore family, politics, and life in the shadow of the Cold War through a darkly comedic play with music. We're joined by Ro Reddick, playwright, songwriter, and educator and author of Cold War Choir Practice, winner of the 2026 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Set in Ronald Reagan's America, the play follows a young girl drawn into intrigue when her estranged uncle, a prominent Black conservative, brings his mysteriously ill wife home for the holidays. The story brings together Reaganomics, espionage, roller disco, cults, and choir practice in a distinctly unconventional theatrical mix.

Reddick is a queer Black playwright, songwriter, and educator who writes off-kilter comedies. Cold War Choir Practice premiered in Club Thumb SummerWorks 25 and was later remounted in 2026, co-produced by Page 73 and MCC. Reddick is also the recipient of the Vineyard Theatre's Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and the John Gassner Award for New American Play, and has an MFA in playwriting from Brown University. Here's Ro Reddick live at the Drama Bookshop. Thank you for coming to be with us tonight. Thank you for writing this wonderful play. I'm so excited to talk about it. So just to start, what inspired you to write this play in the first place?

[1:40] Ro Reddick: It was a mix of things. I was in graduate school, and we were supposed to be writing solo shows, and instead I wrote this.

[1:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, I was about to be like, it's a wonderful play. You did not succeed at the assignment, but it's a wonderful play.

[1:58] Ro Reddick: It was a mix of... Putin had invaded Ukraine this semester, and I was thinking about just my own childhood growing up in the end of the Cold War, and I'd taken this weird class that sort of sat at the intersection of art history and politics, and so all of these things were swimming around in my head, and I was in a very strange choir as a child.

[2:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, I want to hear more about that. So that kind of speaks to my next question, which is, did you always know what part music would play in the storytelling of this play?

[2:36] Ro Reddick: Yeah, absolutely, because I had that memory of being in the choir where we sang very weird songs about the end of the world, and just begging for peace, begging the powers that be to try to achieve.

[2:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Were you similarly told that it was on your shoulders?

[2:52] Ro Reddick: It was certainly suggested or implied that we had a certain power as children that we could leverage through our beautiful voices and our purity, and so we did that. It did not work, I would say. I don't think there was an immediate connection. The clean your plate because there are starving children in Africa. I'd clean my plate and they kept starving. I wish I had come up with that myself, but yeah, that's a lot of responses.

[3:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Absolutely, and so that was just an interesting thing to think about. What does it mean to hold that weight? When do you first begin to learn how to navigate really powerful systems and try to figure out who you are in relation to these systems, and to your government, and to the rest of the world?

[3:36] Ro Reddick: Yeah, so we see a lot of this play through the eyes of the child who's at the center of it. So what did you want that perspective to be for the audience on these grown-ups who are dealing with some very grown-up things, one of whom literally is dealing directly with the Cold War?

[3:58] Ro Reddick: I think I was less thinking about what I wanted the audience to experience and more interested in showing the different ways these characters are navigating power. And one of the ways is how I experienced it as a child. And then I looked at it through the brothers and the grandmother as well, and the aunt, the kooky aunt. But yeah, it was more about how do we figure this out? How are these different characters figuring this out? What is the tension there?

[4:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So your background as a songwriter, just talk to me about what that background is. Is it a background in, because we're going to dive into this, is it a background in like musical theater, or is it a parallel music background to the theater work that is converging here?

[4:46] Ro Reddick: I sang in choirs as a child. And then in college, I got serious about singing because I was encouraged to take voice lessons, and that would open up a lot of work opportunities. I studied acting. I got a BFA in acting. And so I started working on my voice, and then I started auditioning for musicals and doing musicals as an actor. Because if you're an actor and you sing, there you go. That's what you do, yeah. But then it became, oh yeah, I do musicals. But I had also been writing songs. I was in a band and I wrote songs with the band. And so I'd been circling music in different ways for my entire life. And then this gave me an opportunity to go back and tap into my memories of singing in a choir, but also do all the fun things you can do sometimes with musicals that this play flirts with.

[5:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I think that's the best, because I was going to say it sort of straddles, but it more, I think, yeah, flirts with musical theater. We were talking upstairs and I was like, would you consider this a play with music or a musical if you had to? Which I don't think you have to. I don't think you necessarily have to make a decision.

[5:52] Ro Reddick: I agree. I like not making a decision.

[5:55] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. But yeah, when you are writing the music for, let's call it a play with music, that obviously is very different than, we talked about Ma Rainey's Black Bottom or the Hills of California just came to my head, which had some wonderful musical arrangements of popular songs of that time. But it's very different when you are creating the music and then the music is mimicking the dialogue. So what is that process like and how much are you drawing from musical theater training when you're doing that?

[6:28] Ro Reddick: I feel like the first time I worked on the opening number, it was boring because it was following the rules too closely of what a chorus would do in a musical. And so I was like, okay, this is not right for this play. I want them to be something a little different and a little more unexpected than a typical chorus. So then I had them, I started thinking about them as like an organism rather than a choir in a traditional sense or a chorus in a traditional sense. And I started thinking about them as shapeshifters and just weird little beings that could suddenly become different people in this world, but not neutral. They could follow the rules of a Greek chorus as well.

[7:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I think they're a little different though.

[7:15] Ro Reddick: Yes. Because there's something about them that at certain times is very much not neutral in a way that's like not giving voice to the people.

[7:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I think what's fun is you were like, it's how musical theater is. It's not completely what, it's how a Greek, it's not completely how it works.

[7:32] Ro Reddick: Right, right. It's in an in-between place. It has a hand in multiple different places.

[7:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. I do want to also open this up to all assembled and we'll just have a kind of back and forth. So I wanted to take this time to ask if any of you have any questions about that. It's fine if you don't yet, I have more, but just something to think about as we're going. Oh, I also want to ask, did anyone here get to see the production of Cold War Choir Practice?

[8:01] Ro Reddick: Almost everyone. You and me are the only ones who didn't get to see it. So don't worry, I didn't get to see it either. And have you gotten a chance to read it yet?

[8:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You're in for such a wild ride. We're going to keep going. Okay. And again, if anything that we talk about makes you think of a question or it makes you think of something that you saw or read and you want to know a little bit more, feel free to raise your hand.

[8:20] Ro Reddick: So we've talked a little bit about the stuff that is autobiographical and now we're going to veer away. And I also, I love writing a play where I'm like, this thing happened to me. And what if all of these other things didn't happen to me? I never like to write autobiographical. Usually if you see something, it'll be like this tiny aspect was autobiographical and then I thought the rest of the play is the more interesting thing than my real life. And some really weird shit happens in here. So obviously with the Cold War era comes the intrigue, the spies, the secret society. How did you come up with the idea for this secret society in your story, especially one that advertises with TV infomercials?

[9:02] Ro Reddick: I don't know what initially sparks the interest. I think I was thinking a lot about Clarence Thomas and Jenny Thomas, obviously. And then I found this, I found a video of her at, it was like a conference for people who had survived cults. And she was just asking a really tough question about what do we do now when we were out, but it still feels like we're, she was asking a question, a really intense question about life after. And then I started looking. I don't know if I should have known that Jenny Thomas was in a cult. She was. But this is the first time I'm learning of it.

[9:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. So that's wild. She was in a weird cult. And so this is, this cult. I'm looking for those normal cults. But it was like such an 80s cult because it was like, we're business people and we wear business clothes. Like a free love 70s. No, they were like, we're serious about our businesses. We all run magazines and have shoe stores or whatever their businesses were. And, but they had this, you can find it on YouTube. If you look up LifeSpring, they have this weird video they made that's, yeah, this is great. We're all supporting each other, but they're doing weird stuff. This is not normal.

[10:19] Ro Reddick: Yeah. And so I was like, oh, that's cool. And so I wanted to make my own version of a weird sort of capitalist cult. And I think that really does move into, I don't know if this is the next, but there are themes that clearly come very specifically from the world of the 80s, but also hit very close to home. One of which is minority characters aligning themselves to a party that is actively working against them. So it's, now that you say it, now that you say, oh, Clarence and Ginny Thomas, I'm like, oh, that's so obvious. But can you talk a little bit more about what brought you to write those characters, especially in relationship to our main characters?

[10:53] Ro Reddick: Yeah. I think there was something interesting about trying to figure out what makes a person go from being a Black nationalist. And Clarence Thomas is just one example. But how do you go from being a Black nationalist to being a very conservative Republican? And what is, to me, that's just another version of someone figuring out their relationship to power. And this person chose to align with these powerful institutions, this powerful administration, and just switch it up for a variety of reasons. I think I don't pretend to know what's going on inside anyone's head, but this was my attempt to puzzle through it.

[11:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I do think that he wrote the intentions very well. I think he is, I'm like, buddy, they're not going to pick you. It's not going to work well for you, but I get it. When he's talking about it, I'm like, oh, I don't like this for you, but I see where you're coming from.

[11:51] Ro Reddick: Yeah. And that's what it was. And the same with Virgie. It's like, if you are a conservative woman and you're frustrated in your career and in your life and trying to move forward and not being able to get past obstacles, you're not going to name those obstacles as systemic oppression. So where are you going to find solutions? And so this character found it in this cult that purports to empower you to succeed in your career in business, because the problem is within you, right?

[12:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So something else that you deal with, and I mentioned to you upstairs as I was writing this question out, I was like, oh, maybe this just never went away. Not a parallel, we're just still doing the thing. I want to see exactly how I wrote it. You look at the division being sown among populations specifically to villainize a population in turmoil. So again, how much of that was directly from the Cold War and how much of that was, like you said, looking at the invasion of Ukraine and maybe some other things that are going on in the world now?

[13:01] Ro Reddick: It was all kind of a soup in my head. I was just thinking about all of these things at once. I don't know if there was any... Yeah, I don't know. Could you say more about what you mean and then maybe I can...

[13:27] Ro Reddick: It's also their fault. I think that you do some really cool things with Meek's pen pal and what her perspective on the Cold War is because of that and also what her father's perspective on communism is because of his social status. I think what I was interested in is like in this particular moment this is after this play happens once Reagan has shifted from war hawk to suddenly okay we have to figure out how to make peace, right? And so what is it? There was like a speech that he gave once where he's like little, what if little Tommy and little Baryshnikov could get together? It was like a weird thing that he said and there was like a lot in this moment where people are like we are the same, can't you see?

We are just like our Russian brothers and sisters. And so I was really actually interested in people for various reasons and different intentions trying to bridge the divide to get what they want, to get what they need, which I feel is slightly different than the way people see division in our current moment. But it was just interesting to me because you also do still have Vergy saying to Meek, "Oh, what are you talking about? That you children and the Soviet children are going to come together? Those are your enemies." Yeah, Vergy is a hawk. Vergy's a little more hawkish. She is not working towards peace. Yeah, I'm not gonna say what I was gonna say. Moving on. She's just also one of the only white characters that you have in there and I think that is also a very telling thing about where her perspective on that issue comes from. I said the thing I was gonna say.

[15:13] Ro Reddick: So Cold War Choir Practice, how did you land on that title? Did you go through other titles? Were there other things? Like when did it crystallize into that? It wasn't titled for a long time. It was untitled Cold War Choir Play and then I went into workshop because I was working on this in grad school and I had all these terrible titles. I thought they were good titles. We worked on them together, but they were not popular and they were like overly long and not right. And then someone said, "I'm glad that you at least like when my working titles don't work. I hate them." And I hate people like, "What's the play called?" I'm like, "I don't want to tell you. I'm not happy with it yet." But yeah, but how did you land on Cold War Choir Practice?

It just worked. So the Cold War, it was Cold War Choir Play for a while and then Julia Jarko, who is the head of the program, was like, "No one's making theater in this play, but they do go to choir practice." So she was the one who said it should just be Cold War Choir Practice. I do love the title. Thank you. I will also say that for a couple of weeks we've had a sign up saying that today we will be having an event for Cold War Choir Practice and people thought that we were actually holding, "Oh, you're doing choir practice on the 30th?" And we're like, "No, I can't sell you the play yet." I wish they'd come to sing. That would be so great.

[16:40] Ro Reddick: In the development of the play, were there any scenes that turned out looking a lot different than maybe you originally envisioned or even than early drafts? I think the adult skate night started as stage directions and then we did a stage reading and Smooch had to say, read the stage directions and I was like, "Oh Smooch, this has to be it. It has to switch to his perspective just for this one moment." And he takes us into his world and this space where he really is not king but the mayor of the roller rink and walks us through what is so beautiful about this community that he's built, how it's the only moment in the play where you see that sort of tension between the sort of individual and the sort of group realized in a way that feels harmonious and a good thing rather than a fraught thing.

[17:50] Ro Reddick: Yeah, so how do you like to use a workshop process to figure out the freaking play? Like how much do you like to come, especially, and obviously there are so many different steps, yeah, multiple different workshops, but like how hands-on, how laissez-faire do you like to be? How do you like to bring in new pages during workshops? Do you like to see what works and take inspiration for rewrites from that? It really depends. For this one, I think the very first stage reading we did, I had half of the play, so we just had that half and had to figure out, okay, well, Virgie was underdeveloped and was figuring out how to get her together and just figuring out the basic stuff. And then the next time I did it, there's actually Eileen Wynn-Migrati is in the audience and we did this together and so that was like figuring the rest out. So it really is, I think there's a lot of rewriting and reworking and I really do take that time to figure out what happens.

[18:48] Ro Reddick: Is there any, because I know that we have most of you here who have saw the production, is there anyone else here who was there during workshop stages of this? All right, does any, I want to toss it back to y'all if anybody has any questions about the writing process, about the characters? Yeah, I'm actually a playwright myself. Yes, curious because I saw your production and I absolutely adored it. Oh, thank you. Wondering how you balance the drama of this play, especially considering its themes in the world.

[19:31] Ro Reddick: So the question is from a playwright in our audience asking how, especially with subject material that is so serious that you need to get into those very serious aspects, how you balance the drama with the comedic, especially the darkly sardonic humor that you use and how you find that balance. I don't try to balance it and that's what's so great about the sort of workshop period. But I just write it and I match my relationship to dark things is through comedy, so that's, I just find my way. And I think the darker aspects take more time to develop for me, but that's just my stuff that I need to work through.

[20:21] Ro Reddick: I think you've got a question. I found the first third or so just wildly funny. Whether I was at the information desk here or over there, I was like laughing out loud and I had coworkers like looking at me and then some who had seen it, they were like, "Oh, which part?" I was like, "This just happened." Okay, and then I start feeling really nervous, right? Yeah, anybody else have any questions? All right, again, just keep thinking about it. So we talked about the relation of the story and music. Were there any songs that wound up getting cut and are there any that you kind of miss and feel a little bit sad about that they're not there anymore? I feel sad that there's half of a song that is not there that I wrote and I really like.

There's like a, so when you hear it twice, but the first time when Mika's in choir practice and she writes that her letter and then it cuts back to the choir and someone steps out and has a solo and Grace McLean did that solo so wonderfully. Goddess, yes, goddess. But there's like a verse that goes to that song that there's just like no reason to hear that much of the song and then I was like, "Oh, we're gonna do a reprise, maybe I'll put it there." And there's still no reason to hear that verse, so you just get underscore and let, so for the album, just saying maybe the world wants an album, but maybe that's me. Maybe it would only make sense to people who had seen this show. You hear those songs and you're like, "What is this? Just a second song?" Yeah, and it would just be a choir, right? Yeah, still just saying.

[22:00] Ro Reddick: I want to talk about the characters of the choir, yeah, because they, like you said, they're shapeshifters and they, you know what? I again, I'm like, "Oh, musical theater, this, oh, Greek choir." You know what? It's like the school of fish in Finding Nemo that can turn. That's the other thing that I think that I see them as and that they can, as a unit, become the actual choir or they can become carolers on TV or they can just be the group in the wellspring. That's where I feel like it gets very musical theater and you're like those characters aren't so, like the choir, the characters are singing carolers on TV, the choir is singing, but when they're the group that is just the group's thoughts expressed through song, which is very musical.

Yeah, and often it's Virgie's like because she wasn't, she doesn't have anyone to really confide in and there's, she spends most of the play half incapacitated and half in this weird space. And so there was, I needed a way to get into her head and so having the choir sort of voice either the group or literally what is running through her head was really useful and helped open that world up and make that world feel full because you don't really have full access to that. But then the other shapeshifter thing that you do is that individuals can step out and I want to read off the character names because I love them so much. Their character names are Familiar Face, Speak and Spell, and Very Good Friend.

So how were you like navigating like when you needed a character who wasn't one of your main cast and how you utilized your choir members, give them their own personas? They're like archetypes that can step out.

[24:01] Ro Reddick: That took time to figure out who could be what. It took time for them to emerge as clear tracks and to figure out what those tracks should feel like. And there, I think there are other ways to do it and have done it in different ways, but I think Familiar Face was first because I knew someone from the, and you never hear her called that, but it's just something that if you're reading the play, you see that. And I wanted her to just, she's the kind of person who appears and you're like, "Have I seen this person?" Because Clay has an experience of her and she, in earlier drafts of the play, she popped up in different ways and you're like, "Is that the?" And then the Speak and Spell naturally short because they have that special relationship with Meek and Very Good Friend is very clear because she has to go and speak to this Russian person who's in the woods. So it's, and yeah, they just kind of naturally grew.

[25:01] Ro Reddick: And something I think that I really like that you did here because you're speaking to the fact that we never hear them given those, like even the Speak and Spell, we never hear the character referred to, but that's just what it is. What it is an object, but you do a lot of things in your format. You do a lot of things that the audience doesn't get to see but really informs the production. I loved the way that you used indentation and overlap. I loved the way that you used text size. So I think having the characters be named that way and they can be an archetype, but you're also just, you're just giving production information because that could have been like, I don't know, Abigail who works at the thing and that could have been her name for all anyone cared, but you gave us a little bit extra because we never have to hear the character's name.

So can you speak to, and I think this also goes not just to this play necessarily, what formatting means to you as a writer and what kind of clues you like to give actors and directors when you're writing? I feel like the formatting for me is part of the world building. I just want the sort of text on the page to reflect whatever it is I'm trying to do in the world. And I think as playwrights, our first audience is the other writers that we're sharing it with, right? And so it's like painting this as clearly as possible if that's the goal, with legibility as the goal so that someone who's sitting around the table with you can understand what you're trying to do and give you feedback that pushes it forward.

And then the next audience member is probably some lit manager, right? Some doesn't, isn't talking to you and it's just reading it and I've got to paint this world as clearly as possible. And then it's, I try not to give too many, maybe directors and actors would disagree, but I try not to give them too many notes. It's more about just this is the world.

[26:54] Ro Reddick: Yeah. I will say that it never feels like notes. Reading it, I take off my playwright hat, put my director hat on. It always feels like I understand the intention. I can hear it. The first one that I noticed, and I don't know if this is really the first time that you did it, is when Smooch is doing his little pitch to the choir, and he's trying to get them to come to the roller rink, and he accidentally lets a multiletter four-letter word fly. And then he says it again, but I'm sorry I'm interrupting myself. I just want to check Mark. It looks like there might be someone at the door, and I don't know if they're here for us or if they're just kind of hanging out. And then we'll edit this, and it'll sound great.

He doesn't fully censor himself. He says it again, but the second time that he says it in that paragraph, you have it in slightly smaller font. And that's one of the moments that I cackled out loud, because I just understood what you meant, and I understood the character motivation to... I don't have another word, so I'm just going to use the same one, but I'm going to say it a little bit. So yeah, I felt like that was gifting us, the reader or the production, a lot.

[28:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Right on. Thanks. Anybody else? Also, hi, welcome. We're kind of just doing a back and forth with Q&A and interview stuff. So anybody else who has... And if you have any questions, and I know that you're just joining us, so you're like, I don't know what you talked about yet. But if at any point you have a question, feel free. Does anybody else have any questions or observations from the play or the process?

[28:39] Audience Member: Yeah. How did you land on using the speak and spell toy as the mechanism for the communication?

[28:55] Ro Reddick: I think I was reading a lot about early computers, and because it's the 80s, that's like a fun computer. And so it just naturally came up. There was a few toys that I was looking at, but there was like a Simon Says, but that was too limiting. But the speak and spell was like, oh, this can really kind of take on a life of its own in a way that I think works with what the play is doing. So yeah. It was another, that's just like really fun when she gets this toy that just starts giving her the longest reaction. That's another, that I was like, okay, does she speak Russian? Like, are you fluent in Russian?

[29:37] Audience Member: No.

[29:37] Ro Reddick: Okay. Sorry, you gave me that I would have trusted, I would have believed. So that's another thing. Like, what was your process when you're playing with another language, integrating the two in there?

[29:50] Ro Reddick: I did some Google Translate.

[29:53] Audience Member: Yep, we love.

[29:55] Ro Reddick: Yes. And then there was a PhD student at Brown in Slavic Studies, who came on as a consultant, basically, to not only help the actors do the accents that they need to do and learn how to pronounce everything, but also to help me say the things I'm trying to say. Not just what Google Translate says, like if you put these words in order.

[30:16] Audience Member: Exactly.

[30:17] Ro Reddick: Yeah. So that was like a nice little collaboration.

[30:21] Audience Member: Yeah. In your research, which it seems like you did a fair amount, this is the only non-Shakespeare play I think I've ever read that has footnotes. Which isn't, if you want to use this song, you have to reach out to the songs company and give them permission. Like the fact that, even like on the first one, this is the address to the nation about Christmas and the situation in Poland, December 23rd, 1981. Like that kind of stuff. What did your research tell you about what was going on in Russia, as well as what was going on here?

[30:59] Ro Reddick: I feel like because the play is not super interested in what is actually happening in Russia, it's interested in what the leaders of our country were presenting about Russia and what kind of relationship they wanted. And then also what this choir's agenda is. I was more interested in, I actually went back to the choir that I was in, I Googled the choir, and then I found some videos on YouTube. And there was one, they had made like a, I don't know if it was part of a documentary or what, but they had all this footage from when they had actually sent young American, like a troop of American children over to Moscow to do the first concert, right? Which is like what inspired the choir leaders monologue.

And there was a video of this American child and this, you know, Soviet child who spoke no English at all. And two of them are just like on camera and the American who's interviewing them is like, tell me about your friendship. And the American child was doing all the talking. She's like, oh my God, we love each other. And there's other little girls just smiling, so confused. And I was just like, what? What is this? So that is what I was interested.

[32:13] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That was actually your choir.

[32:14] Ro Reddick: That's the same choir I was in, but that was at the national level. It was in the LOK chapter.

[32:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Can you tell us what the name of that is?

[32:20] Ro Reddick: Peace Child.

[32:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Peace Child. Okay, because I know what I'm doing on YouTube when I get on there.

[32:27] Ro Reddick: Peace Child, Life Spring?

[32:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Life Spring is the real beard 80s cult. Yeah. So if you go on YouTube and you look up Life Spring, you probably will find that video that I was like, what?

[32:38] Ro Reddick: Yeah. Yeah, I want to. I really, really want to see what these things are. Cool.

[32:46] Audience Member: My question is, is the pen pal mechanism, like, was that also a real thing? Or is that like a tool for the show?

[32:52] Ro Reddick: The question is, was the pen pal mechanism with Meek talking to a Russian child? Was that something in, you're saying it was like it was in reality? Did that really happen? Or was that a construct for the play?

[33:07] Ro Reddick: I never had a Soviet pen pal. There were American children who had Soviet pen pals. I had a Canadian pen pal named Denise. Like pen pals were like the thing. 80s, you had a pen pal.

[33:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. Did you have a pen pal?

[33:24] Ro Reddick: I feel maybe like probably around the same age. I feel like the like, our like school tried to get you to.

[33:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That's why I got my pen pal through school.

[33:33] Ro Reddick: You were given and like, you just had to write a note, but I don't remember keeping up with anything.

[33:40] Ro Reddick: I love writing to my pen pal. But I wrote, I remember the first letter I wrote to Denise, because she had sent me a letter. I think she sent me the first letter and asked me like, what is New York like? And I'm from upstate New York. Syracuse was nothing like New York. But like, I wrote, I wrote this letter back that was like describing like the New York city that is in an 80s movie, like so tough living in a city where a nun might rob you. Like it was just like completely made up. And I read it to my mom and my aunt.

[34:11] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then the sewers open up and these giant turtles come out.

[34:17] Ro Reddick: But I like read the letter to my mom and my aunt was like, that is not Syracuse. So I had to rewrite the letter. But like that idea that like, you don't know what the hell is going on the other side is really interesting.

[34:33] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I mean, like the other way that could have gone is for you to be like, New York is like this, we have cows. And for this Canadian kid to be like, boy, there's cows all over New York City.

[34:45] Ro Reddick: So this sort of goes back to like the stuff that you give that's just for production. Now that it is printed, published in book form. Is there a stage direction or moment that is really for the reader or for the producer, the actor, the director that the audience watching a play would never catch, but it's there for us?

[35:11] Ro Reddick: There is, it depends on what you do at the moment. But there's right before the children arrive, the choir arrives for their day at the roller rink. There's a little paragraph, little stage direction that's just describing and it's a weird little thing that almost feels like a poem. That's just describing these children in a very interesting way that depending on who is directing it, you may or may not know that something weird was in that script right before that moment starts. Especially because like, obviously, as written, you have no actual children in the play. So representation, the ensemble you have. And again, like my director brain is on, I'm like, oh, what you could do with sound effects and lights on an otherwise empty stage that we believe there's a lot of people there, but there's not. So yeah, like that's a fun little thing.

[36:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Anybody else have any questions?

[36:05] Audience Member: Yeah.

[36:06] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Now that it's out in the world in a book form, I'm curious about like, in your wildest dreams, like who gets their hands on this? Like who decides? Who is like, what is this? Who do you want to like, find this and shop some things?

[36:28] Ro Reddick: So the question that you practically stole from my last question is now that it's out and available in book form, licensable, who do you hope finds this? And what do you hope they do with it? Or just what, who is this for now? Who do you hope finds this and decides that your weird matches their weird?

[36:52] Ro Reddick: I hope a young playwright or a person who has never written a play before. Because I want more weird plays in the world. And so I want someone to say, oh yeah, let me write some weird shit too.

[37:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: My follow up to that, going off of you have some of these stage directions that really inform the world of the play, not necessarily what the director must do in a given moment. And then you've worked with directors to get something on stage. And now it's out there for other directors to interpret. What do you hope the future of the play is? And what potential do you see for future productions? And maybe podcast listeners who are looking for their weird play to put on next season or something?

[37:44] Ro Reddick: I think I'm excited for, I think a smaller theater with a taste for new plays might do a really exciting production of it because I think not having a lot of money to make things literal is great, especially for this play. And scrappy, smaller theaters who are like, let's do some shit and realize that they can put the play on without a lot, that excites me. So much in this is in what you don't hear about, or what you don't see, or what you think might be happening on the other side of that door.

[38:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Absolutely. Does anybody else have any questions? Or comments or observations or anything?

[38:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And you'll get a little time with the playwright as well. I think at this point, I can say thank you so much for putting this play out into the world.

[38:39] Ro Reddick: Thank you.

[38:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I can't wait to see, because I think that this really opens up for, you could have two productions running concurrently in two different cities that will be completely different from each other. And I personally want to see all of them. So thank you for giving us this play and thank you for being here tonight.

[38:55] Ro Reddick: Thank you.

[38:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we are back.

[38:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Drama Book Show. Coming up next, we'll talk with Nicole Brewer, theater director, educator, and originator of the internationally recognized anti-racist theater, or ART, model, about her book, The Anti-Racist Theater and Reimagining How Artists Collaborate. Brewer's book combines memoir, self-exploration, and practical tools to examine power, privilege, accountability, and care in theatrical spaces. Rooted in transformative justice, she offers a framework for disrupting harmful practices and building healthier, more humane, and more liberatory creative environments. Joining the conversation is moderator Anne James, an intimacy and sensitivity specialist and the first black intimacy coordinator on Broadway.

Together, they explore what it means to build greater awareness, responsibility, and care into the creative process. So remember to follow us on Instagram at Drama Book Show Podcast. Follow us on Eventbrite at Drama Book Shop. And remember, all the books we talk about can be found here at the bookshop, and so can we. And we will see you at the bookshop.