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[0:00] Jeryl Brunner: From Shakespeare to Schwartz, from Fawcett to Alvin Ailey, from Sondheim to Borelis, from McNally to Fay, it happened to the greats, it still happens every day.

[0:10] Jeryl Brunner: When lightning strikes, it's the moment you know. When lightning strikes, where you're meant to go. You can stand and shout, Eureka, do whatever you'd like. You'll never forget the moment when lightning strikes.

[0:25] Jeryl Brunner: This is Jeryl Brunner and you're listening to When Lightning Strikes. Margot Rose is an actor, writer, songwriter, storyteller, and producer whose career has taken her from the original Off-Broadway company of I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road at the Public Theater to television, film, and stage.

[0:55] Jeryl Brunner: You may have seen her in 48 Hrs., 21 Jump Street, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Desperate Housewives, and on and on. Margot wrote and stars in Unconditional, a musical memoir featuring music by Margot and Aaron Benham and is directed by Ann Kenny.

[1:19] Jeryl Brunner: This deeply personal show explores family, love, loss, and what it means to keep going after something unimaginable happens. The show makes its New York debut at La MaMa. Well, welcome.

[1:35] Margot Rose: Thanks for having me, Jeryl. I'm thrilled to be here.

[1:46] Jeryl Brunner: It's such an honor to have you on the show. Let's talk about Unconditional, which you conceived, you wrote, you starred in it. When did you realize that this story was something you had to bring to the world, that it couldn't just be something you lived for?

[2:10] Margot Rose: To be honest, I guess that I can track the real origins of it back to my daughter, Nora, who in the last year or two of her life confronted me several times.

[2:29] Margot Rose: One time she turned around in the middle of some other conversation and said, Marm, you are the most talented of all of us. What the fuck is wrong with you? You could do anything you want.

[2:43] Margot Rose: At the time, I was sort of a combination of hurt and complimented because she felt that, but I also hadn't reached the place that she thought I could with my art and with my talent and with the things I'd done.

[3:07] Margot Rose: Looking back on it while she was still here, I thought, well, you don't understand about trauma and you don't understand about what it takes to raise kids and how you can't.

[3:18] Margot Rose: But she, as kids often are, was actually very right. I had that in my head all the time after she said it. When she had her catastrophic car accident and she was in a coma, I was in a waiting room with friends and the former head of the progressive school the kids had been to.

[3:42] Margot Rose: She knew Nora very well, Sherry. I was saying, I don't want to do anything. I will sit in the closet and wait for my son to call, but I'm booked out. I don't want to do television. I don't do any of that. It's not important. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I can't imagine going on.

[4:04] Margot Rose: Sherry said to me, and I told her what Nora had said about what the fuck is wrong with you, and Sherry said to me, well, that's it. That's it right there. You have to promise her. You have to promise her now, before you have to say goodbye, you have to promise her that you will do what she wanted you to do and that you will do everything you can to be the person and the artist.

[4:31] Margot Rose: Because she was an artist. She was a wonderful artist. She would have changed the world. And I went in and I did. I spoke to her when she was in the coma and I told her, I promise you I will not waste, I won't waste my life.

[4:45] Margot Rose: And it took me years to realize that it wasn't just that, but it was that what was stolen from her, what was taken from her, how dare I, how dare any of us waste something that's taken from wonderful people with huge potentials all the time through terrible, ridiculous things that happen in a minute.

[5:09] Margot Rose: So I promised her I would do that. And then, to be honest, there was a line in my head that came even while I was sitting at her bedside, which is the basis for one of the last songs in the show, which the refrain is, How can I go on without you? How can I go on? And it just came into my head. It's super simple.

[5:34] Margot Rose: And I think it was about two weeks, a week or two, you know, after maybe we did the concert for her that was our ceremony for and we did this concert. And it was, I don't know, a week or two later, I called Ann Kenny, we had been talking about working on something else.

[5:51] Margot Rose: I hadn't spoken to her, but she had heard what had happened. And I called her and I said, Ann, I want to work on something with you as a dramaturg, but it's a different show now. And Ann just said, Yes, I know.

[6:06] Margot Rose: And so I think by the end of January, middle of January, I was already starting to work on it. And it took six years, took six years for surgeries and the pandemic to finish.

[6:22] Margot Rose: But it started. There's your story. Sorry, it's a long one.

[6:27] Jeryl Brunner: The story is needed. I'm just so moved that you're sharing your beautiful story with me and you're bringing it to the world. Because I think as much as it's about pain, I really believe it's also about life. Unconditional is about life and redemption and rebirth.

[6:52] Margot Rose: Exactly. And exactly. And how do we go on? We all face loss. By the time you're 12 years old, you've had some kind of loss. And we face loss all the time, whether it's a relationship loss, whether it's a spouse loss, whether parent loss takes huge, many, many, many forms, obviously.

[7:11] Margot Rose: And everybody says, and they're not wrong. It's the worst thing ever to lose a child. They're not wrong. But it also taught me that all loss is deconstructing. We end up in a pile on the ground, looking for where our limbs go. And how do I paste myself back together?

[7:32] Margot Rose: And I guess what I want to share is it's not easy. We don't get over things in a heartbeat in some things. We never get over in some things. It's not about healing. It's about figuring out how to get up every day and go on and realize that you can't.

[7:48] Margot Rose: This world, this thing, you know, that I wake up to is miraculous. It could be a rotten, shitty day, or it could just be, you know, just filled with magic. And so that's what I don't know why my creaky old senior body is still working. And hers, her beautiful 19-year-old body was taken. I don't know. It makes no sense. But I'm here. I'm here.

[8:13] Margot Rose: And like my role model, Gretchen Krier, who's 91 next month, I'm here to have purpose and try to share what I do, which is this stuff, this performing, this writing, this making stories. It's the thing I do better than other things. So I'm just here to do that.

[8:35] Jeryl Brunner: If somebody were to ask what is Unconditional about, what would you say?

[8:39] Margot Rose: Oh, my goodness. I would say it's the story of a family. It's a story of a family. It's a story of two women who managed to have children against all odds when they're in their 40s.

[8:56] Margot Rose: And it's the story of the miracle and the beauty of despite all the things that are in the way, despite all the difficulty and confusion and upset for the kids and things we wouldn't have chosen, despite all of that, and the fact that we're not together anymore.

[9:17] Margot Rose: Pat and I shared one thing always, and that was that we adored our children more than anything, and we knew how lucky we were. When you don't just pop them out in your 20s, but you have to work like hell, like for almost five years with me giving her shots in the butt to get children.

[9:35] Margot Rose: And what I say in the show is really true. We would just sit and stare at them. We'd just sit and watch them when they were babies, like, look at that, look at that. We went through some of this old footage that I have lots of because I'm the archivist.

[9:49] Margot Rose: And Will was looking with me and laughing, and some of it that I say, oh, isn't that great? And he's like, no, that's just us lying around on the floor as babies. I can still look at it and say, that's fabulous. He's like, well, there's nothing going on, you know, but that's how much.

[10:09] Margot Rose: But it's the story of two people who wanted something so badly, and to have children, which to me is like, there's so many things we can do, and there's things we can do that are like that. But for me, it was the best thing I've ever done in my life. Nothing that I've done as a performer or anything.

[10:32] Margot Rose: It compares to what I feel like my contribution to the universe is, is being able to parent these beautiful children. And even though Nora is physically gone, she impacted so many lives. She was so loved. And now my son who has even said to me, "I'm living my life for two, Marm." And she's on his shoulder. And he's like, creating an epic life. I'm watching him shoot an independent film, his first one, writing and directing, co-producing this whole feature that he raised money for. And it's the somewhat fictionalized story of his twin sister's accident and loss. You know, and how we look for magic to make things work out, and then they don't. Sometimes they don't. And sometimes they do. But he's taken all this stuff from his childhood, which thrills me, you know, he uses this concept of this, my panda bear that my grandmother gave me whose music box broke.

And I used to call him Panda, the magic bear, because every once in a while out of the blue, the music box would start playing. And the kids, I guess, took it with them and loved that. And his film has that in it, in a big way about this magic bear. So I look at that and look what came of this. Yeah. So the show is really as much about doing something you've wanted so much, and then it happens. And it's a miracle. And you love it. And terrible things happen along the way. But wonderful, magical things happen along the way, you know, more than more than half of the story is about what it was like raising these twins, what our family was like, how lovely it was. And I include how shitty it was sometimes.

But and then, you know, I do I tell the story of her accident, I tell the story of her loss. I tell the story of not wanting to go on. And I, but we don't end that way. We end with "take, take me forward, Nora."

[12:50] Jeryl Brunner: So beautiful. And I think about how you're not only the writer and creator, you're also performing the story. So when story has changed, how has inhabiting your own story on stage changed your relationship to some of these memories to some of these experiences?

[13:11] Margot Rose: Yeah, you know, because we're all unreliable narrators, aren't we? It's funny, because I think I feel like I created maybe two scenes that were conglomerate things that weren't exactly the way they happened. But so much of it is like, almost embarrassingly straight out of my journals. It's Will's friends that were also Nora's friends have come to see it when it was in LA. And they're like, "Oh, I forgot that happened." So I feel like that I'm narrating a home movie. And although I'm sure I got some things wrong, it seems to resonate with my son, with one of my, the one child that's present in the world right now. And it seems to resonate with him. And I think that overall, it's a different viewpoint.

His film includes some of their turmoil in a different way. I include it, I talk about it, and then I put it away because it's not the most important part. The most important part is driving to the park with Nora, is walking on New Year's Eve with Will. It's the most important part is all the magic that we found is going to Hawaii with them and watching him when they're three years old in the water. So I think I get those most important parts. And I'm sure I have a shiny take on it. I'm sure that's true. But I also think there's a core of truth in reporting. Yeah.

[14:57] Jeryl Brunner: And there's a lot of joy.

[14:59] Margot Rose: Oh, God. Oh, God.

[15:01] Jeryl Brunner: A lot of joy and laughter. And how did you decide what could become a song? What does allow you to express about these experiences that spoken words alone couldn't?

[15:18] Margot Rose: All right, to be, I mean, I can't answer these questions without being as honest and vulnerable. So that's just the way it is. Because I'm already doing this show that's like completely, you know, no epidermis. So much of it, Gerald, I wrote, I wrote and rewrote and rewrote the script, the text, kind of separate of a lot of the songs over this period of years, because I would write something and then, and then in six months, I would look at it. And I would think, "Oh, don't feel so sorry for yourself, Margo." And then I would work on show, show, show, show, don't tell all the time I would, you know, look at it a month or two or four later, depending on what surgery I was having, or whatever.

And it would change, because my perspective got better, or better, worse, whatever, my perspective gotten to focus a little bit more. I was in shock for the first year, I was in turmoil for a long time, I'm, I'll be sad for all my life. But I'm, I feel more on target and more purposeful and clearer than I ever have felt. And I wish it was any other story. I wish it was any other story. And that's not easy. I found Aaron Benham, total, I believe, I believe there are mistakes in the world. Because I used to say there are no mistakes in the world. And there are, because my daughter's accident was a terrible mistake in the world, something broke on the axis of the earth or something. But so I think there are mistakes.

But I also think there is synchronicity. And I think we, especially when we're kind of on the right path, you know, and when we're really being true to what our purpose is and ourselves, that we seem to find the people or they find us that we are meant to find. That's a little woo, but it's, I was given three references by a friend of mine, who couldn't, I wanted someone I knew I needed someone to help me write the score when I realized it was not just a couple of songs along the way. It wasn't just stories and songs. It was a musical. And I needed somebody to help me write it. I had a couple of recommendations. One was a woman in New York, she couldn't do it. There were two guys on my list, I happened to call Aaron first.

And he had just moved to LA from Chicago, and he had the time and he was the perfect guy. And we had coffee. And I thought this guy is wacky. I don't know about this. And then we just started working together. And we have this wonderful synchronicity. I would run and you know, I was to be, I was like 2020, 2021. I was still mad as a hatter. You know, I was still, it makes you, me at least, it made, you know, I was crazy for a long time, you know, just like boom, I would run into his place, you know, he lived in Burbank, I was in China, I would rush over there and I would run and I'd go, "Okay, here's the lyric. And this is the melody." And I'd say I was there. And that's, that's, that's, okay, take that.

But he would take it. And he would take my words. And he would take these little chunks of melody. And he'd go and find this thing that was beautiful. And we just constructed the music that way. The way I knew a song was supposed to be a song. It was even more woo woo, Gerald, I didn't sleep much that first year. And really things at three in the morning would drop on me. And when I realized that there was a song that wasn't really just a song, but it was a duet, because I really thought of it as a one-woman show. And I realized something was a duet at really truly three in the morning when I felt like Nora banged me on the head and said, "No, this is supposed to be two people singing. This is supposed to be me and you singing."

I swear to you, it just went boom. And I said, "Oh, I see. How can I go on my arm, you can." And I would go into Aaron and there were a few times with one song perfect, which is kind of my angry song that I was like, "Let's figure this, I don't know how this, you know," and then we would get to it. And that one time with that song, I remember on the floor, when we found the lines and the way they went, just like sobbing. And he just put up with me. And it became this lovely score. I mean, he's a wonderful musician. And he helped me build this thing that's really flows throughout the whole show. But it was director too. Yeah, yeah. And then before that for the first year, Aaron and I were working almost every day, and doing readings that really didn't have the score yet, because I hadn't found Aaron.

But they were just, they were stories. They were shopping lists. This is what they were things that were representative of this family. And it just evolved. And I love the full circle list. You mentioned Gretchen Cryer. Can you talk about that? Because you have a beautiful history with Gretchen.

[20:33] Margot Rose: I was in New York, I actually went through this with Will, we walked around past the public theater. And we were doing some like promos like then. And now we he's such a good producer. We walked past the public theater, which is some blocks away from La MaMa. And we walked to my to the village. I lived on Sullivan Street for a while and a fourth floor walk up. And so and we.

[21:05] Margot Rose: Before I did Getting My Act Together, through a friend and through doing companies out of town, I got into Godspell and I was doing Godspell for a couple of years, which was a trip because all these young crew of kids, they were over there doing Grease and they were over there, you know, filling in for Hair and they were here doing Godspell and we all knew each other. It was wonderful. It was a great time. And then Craig Zayden, I think, who was a friend of my friend Tom's, got me this audition for this new musical. And I went in and it was Gretchen. And I think it was just Gretchen was there with Word Baker, who was the director. And I was just this, you know, what was I? I was 26 or 27. And I sang one of the songs that I had written, which is like crazy.

I was working on an adaptation of the Narnian Chronicles of the first book. And yes, it was this song that I wrote that was in that. I don't know where I got the ovums to go in there and do a song of my own. Foolishness, like naivete. But it went well. And then we started talking. We found out we were both from Indiana. And she remembers this now because I said it and it was either me or her. One of us like laughed at something and snorted and the other one was like, I love it that you snort your story. And we just got it was like, we got along famously. They liked my audition and I got cast along with Betty Abberlin. And there we were at the Public Theater, which when Joe Papp was still there. We opened in 77, 78, 77, 78, I think. It was crazy. And we got very mixed reviews.

[22:48] Jeryl Brunner: It was a groundbreaking show, right?

[22:51] Margot Rose: About a woman?

[22:52] Jeryl Brunner: Yes.

[22:52] Margot Rose: Yeah. A woman like leaving the soap opera world and going out on her own at 40 and having this, this show that was honest and vulnerable. And her manager saying, Oh, you can't do that. Right. And it was it was fabulous. But we we wouldn't have stayed open if it wasn't for Joe Papp. Because we got kind of reviews. We stayed open because Joe said, No, I want to hold on to this. And what happened was that it was word of mouth. And all these women would come back after the show and want to talk to Gretchen. And they would say, Oh, I just went through a divorce. Oh, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm on my, you know, it was just this groundswell of people identifying and understand feeling like their story was being told. These women.

[23:40] Jeryl Brunner: It's so incredible. And cut two years later, Gretchen Cryer is still very much a part of your life.

[23:46] Margot Rose: She's so much we've

[23:49] Jeryl Brunner: Yes, exactly.

[23:52] Margot Rose: That's great. Oh, I'm gonna tell her. I always I always I always get I always get her because I say, because somebody said she was iconic. And I always say Gretchen, you're iconic. And she's like, Oh, but I like doula. That's good. I'll tell her. Yes, I'm very fortunate. We had stayed in touch and touch. And then when we lost Nora, we were in, you know, more touch. And then, and then I when I, we and and I were doing little readings in 2019, when it wasn't really a show yet, I did the first one at Gretchen Cryers, you know, for so long, I did her her place with just like, five people with my friend Kathleen and Tommy, and just a few people that came. And, and she, she was the first place that I did it, you know, and then it became what it became after another five, six years.

[24:41] Jeryl Brunner: Incredible, the full circle list of it. I know, I know, you said you're from Indiana, when you knew when you had to be an artist, when this was your path, or you knew that, you know, it had to be a piece of your life.

[24:59] Margot Rose: I had no doubt from such a young age, we moved to Indiana. I'm the youngest of three kids, my family tree is loaded with mental illness and alcoholism. And we moved to Indiana when I was nine. And from where?

[25:17] Jeryl Brunner: Oh, from Delaware.

[25:17] Margot Rose: Okay, I was born in Pennsylvania. But I lived in my little tiny baby years were in Delaware, Dover, Delaware with the Maypole and the history and all that. And then we moved to Indiana. And, and my mother, she was pretty smart about that. She wanted us to be a part of and get involved right away. So she enrolled all three of us, including my brother, in children's theater. Because there was one, it was, there's not many that were like this way back then, it was the Dune Summer Theater, and they had a children's theater in the winter, and this old gorgeous theater in the summer in Michiana, where they did plays and musicals all summer. So they enrolled us, my first play I ever did was Heidi, when I was 11, I think.

And I had a perm. And I had to do my first scene in a slip. And my brother was grandpa. That's one of the last things he ever did. And I was Heidi, it wasn't my brother's jam. But I was Heidi, but I was so nervous before I went on the first time, children's theater, that I just I was like, No, no, no. And I, I don't, I don't know why I remember his name, but I do John van der Plouw. John van der Plouw pushed me on stage. And I kind of feel like from then on, it just clicked. And I thank my mom because she put me in the place. And I just stayed in children's theater. My sister did for a while too. And we started doing things in the summertime. And I worked backstage. And I worked the follow spot.

And my best friends and I cleaned the bathrooms and cleaned the theater. And we were just there. We're little theater rats all summer, learning about it. And the last thing I'll tell you about that is that when I was 14, maybe 15, we did Miracle Worker at the Dune Summer Theater. My mother was Kate, my father was Captain Keller, couldn't learn his lines, they had to put them in on furniture, furniture all over the stage. My sister was Annie and I was Helen. And it's like, I'm surprised we didn't all go into therapy after that. But but it was it was it was great. And then two years later, I got to do Annie at Interlochen Arts Academy, with my best friend playing Helen. And that at the little Grunow Theater at Interlochen, with a way downstage for the last scene, Walter Helen, it has a name, W-A-T-E-R, we were way downstage.

And I am one of the best moment I'd had in my life so far, because we were way down there. And we finished, I felt, I felt the audience rise, to give us a standing ovation. I felt it, do you know what I mean? It vibrated in me. And I thought, Oh, my God. And it wasn't just ego, it was like, this is how I reach people. Do you know? This is how we connect. And it's never been anything but that for me.

[28:35] Jeryl Brunner: What do you hope people take away from Unconditional after seeing La MaMa?

[28:44] Margot Rose: I am hoping that this alchemy that I have learned about storytelling that if I tell my real detailed story, my story, my personal little story, that when you just share that story with all the richness of it, that it somehow translates for people in the audience, and it sparks them to think about their story. It sparks you thinking about I, you know, I can't tell you the times, the different ways that people have connected. And that's, I just wanted to connect with people. I want to continue to keep Nora's memory alive. And just as importantly, I want our story about how we go on to mean something, and to give something to take away. That's all. That's all. Yeah, that's all I want. I just want it to resonate, you know, and to have some gift to people.

[29:39] Jeryl Brunner: What do you think she would say?

[29:49] Margot Rose: Oh, I think I, Melina, wonderful Melina, who plays the girl who plays Nora, we don't really name her that. We both feel Nora there, when I do it. I feel her every time I do it. My favorite place to be is telling that story on stage, because I feel closest to her then. And I think Will thinks, I think she's loving it. I think she sometimes she'll roll her eyes. And she was a hard ass. She was demanding in her honesty. But I think she'd be happy. I think she'd be happy, because I've tried to be as true. And this is the best thing I've the best work I've done. I'm sure she knows that. And again, I would that it was any other story. But I guess it's Will says it's your destiny to tell this story and tell it the best you can.

[30:52] Jeryl Brunner: I can't wait to see it. I can't wait. I can't wait.

[31:01] Margot Rose: Well, it's such a gift to talk to you to be continued.

[31:07] Jeryl Brunner: To be continued. Thank you, Gerald, so much.

[31:13] Margot Rose: Thank you. Such a joy. Such a joy. See me. Take care. Ditto joy. Thank you. Take care. Bye.

[31:13] Jeryl Brunner: Bye.