Latest / The BSB Podcast / Exclusive Interview: Lindel Salow and Jay Kaplan of The Ringwald's 'Silver Foxes'

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Exclusive Interview: Lindel Salow and Jay Kaplan of The Ringwald's 'Silver Foxes' · The BSB Podcast

• 0:00
  Thank you so much Lindel and Jay for joining me today.
• 0:02
  How are you two doing?
• 0:04
  Doing good, thank you.
• 0:05
  It's Friday.
• 0:06
  yeah.
• 0:06
  Yeah, it's good.
• 0:08
  It's a Friday.
• 0:09
  I'm not at work.
• 0:10
  It's even better.
• 0:12
  That's always the best kind of way to start your weekend,
• 0:17
  So we're so excited to be chatting about the Ringwald's production of Silver Foxes.
• 0:21
  Jay, how has the rehearsal process been so far?
• 0:23
  Oh, it's been a lot of fun.
• 0:24
  We're having a good time.
• 0:25
  It's very funny, sweet play, and it's a great group of people to work with.
• 0:33
  Lindel how's your experience been?
• 0:34
  Yeah.
• 0:35
  So far, it's been a lot of fun.
• 0:37
  Jay's a lot of fun to work with.
• 0:39
  We have a good group or a good cast of people and can't wait for everyone to see it.
• 0:45
  Yeah, we're ready for like a reaction from the audience.
• 0:48
  We think some these lines are funny and we think that people are going to laugh, but the proof will be when the audience is actually there.
• 0:56
  That's always kind of like the last piece, you right?
• 0:59
  Yes, absolutely.
• 1:00
  So we're waiting.
• 1:02
  We need an audience at this point so we can figure out where the laughs are, where everything comes in.
• 1:08
  So Lindel what's kind of the story of Silver Foxes?
• 1:11
  It is a story of separation, love, redemption, family, chosen family.
• 1:19
  So it is something that is heartwarming, familiar, and different.
• 1:27
  Yeah.
• 1:29
  Yeah, well, what's also different, you don't see that many plays that feature older gay characters, men of a seasoned age and about their lives.
• 1:41
  And it's kind of nice to be able to tell that story.
• 1:46
  because it's kind of very much in the vein of like a Golden Girls, correct?
• 1:50
  Yes, very much so.
• 1:51
  yeah.
• 1:52
  And I believe both the authors of the play, James Berg and Stan Zimmerman, were writers on the Golden Girls show one time.
• 2:00
  Yes.
• 2:00
  So Jay, who are you playing in the show and then what's kind of their narrative arc?
• 2:05
  Well, I play Benny and I am Lindel's characters, Chuck's uh former boyfriend, but we still live together even after we've broken up.
• 2:15
  And I'm kind of this excitable Jewish liberal.
• 2:19
  All my friends say, God, that's typecasting.
• 2:24
  He's from New York and um he's also survivor of HIV throughout the decades.
• 2:32
  And um he's still trying to figure out
• 2:35
  He didn't expect to live to this age that he's at.
• 2:38
  He's still trying to figure out what he wants to do uh with the rest of his life.
• 2:43
  He doesn't necessarily have a career per se, but he's always played a caretaker role uh for Chuck and for his friends.
• 2:54
  Seems like that's a little bit of a heavy roll.
• 2:57
  Actually, he has some serious things he talks about, but he's kind of silly.
• 3:04
  And there's a little tension between Chuck and Benny because they were partners.
• 3:09
  They were lovers at one time.
• 3:11
  And I think there still is that love and certainly that caring about one another.
• 3:20
  So I'm uh a disgraced Lieutenant Colonel from the United States Army, who's changed my lifestyle completely, moved out to Palm Springs and bought this house
• 3:34
  And uh as Jay said, we are former partners and we've stepped aside and still live together.
• 3:44
  So trying to navigate all of the challenges that older age brings.
• 3:50
  And it sounds like the two of you are gonna have some great scenes because there's a lot of maybe tension in chemistry between ex-partners.
• 3:58
  Oh, absolutely.
• 4:00
  Yeah, Just from my own personal experience, I have stayed friends with anybody I've been involved with in a relationship, some of my closest friends, but it takes a transition
• 4:10
  period to get there.
• 4:12
  But, you know, there are many kinds of love and you kind of cross that bridge into this, you know, this second.
• 4:19
  There's still some sparks there though between these two characters.
• 4:22
  I mean, that's like sparks that are also like, you know, a fire.
• 4:27
  could be, it could be passionate or it can burn everything down.
• 4:30
  Right.
• 4:32
  We argue a lot.
• 4:33
  Ha
• 4:36
  What is that like for the two of you to kind of feed off of each other?
• 4:38
  know, Jay, I'll start with you.
• 4:39
  What is that like?
• 4:40
  What is that energy like?
• 4:42
  Oh, it's fun.
• 4:43
  I Lindel has great energy.
• 4:44
  He's great to feed off of.
• 4:46
  It's just, it's interesting.
• 4:48
  I mean, they both have distinctive personalities.
• 4:51
  Certainly Lindel's Chuck is a lot more calmer than Benny is.
• 4:56
  And, um...
• 4:57
  But, you know, Benny's also seeing Chuck is experiencing some of the problems related to his age and really comes to recognize ah that this, you know, this could be a serious
• 5:09
  thing and is very sympathetic towards that.
• 5:14
  Yep.
• 5:15
  Lindel, how do you feed off that energy?
• 5:18
  Look, Benny is high-strung and active and I'm constantly having to rein him in.
• 5:27
  But he's a good guy.
• 5:31
  unfortunately, Chuck doesn't seem to be able to always relax.
• 5:35
  And Benny keeps trying to get him to just accept who he is and understand who he is and know that he's taken care of and loved.
• 5:44
  fantastic.
• 5:46
  how do you, Lindel, how do you develop your character?
• 5:50
  So obviously you have the script, you're reading the script, but how do you kind of bring Chuck, your Chuck, you know, your version of Chuck to the stage?
• 5:58
  Well, it's a matter of trying to decipher the script and understand what's going on between the characters and then working with it.
• 6:07
  Certainly there's a Golden Girls feel to all of this.
• 6:11
  So uh my character, if somebody were to look at Golden Girls, would certainly be very similar to the character uh Dorothy that Bea Arthur portrayed.
• 6:21
  And there's some of that within the script.
• 6:25
  And you can see that in the writing itself.
• 6:28
  So it's a matter of trying to build that but not copy that and make it our own.
• 6:33
  And Jay is that a similar experience for you too to develop your character?
• 6:36
  Yeah, I mean, like I can relate a lot to this character.
• 6:42
  I mean, he's so passionate about the issues.
• 6:46
  I mean, he's bad at folding clothes and housekeeping.
• 6:50
  That's me too.
• 6:51
  I'm not quite as the rabble rouser.
• 6:54
  oh
• 6:54
  or causing a lot of public scenes that maybe Benny would do, but I can relate to that.
• 6:59
  And there are some lines that sometimes I thought, that sounds like a Sophia line.
• 7:03
  ah The character's from New York, and so I'm attempting a New York accent.
• 7:09
  That's the difference there.
• 7:13
  And he's Jewish, and he uses a number of Yiddish phrases uh and expressions throughout the play, too.
• 7:21
  m
• 7:23
  It sounds like there's such a passion for this project from both of you, which is just exciting because like you said, you don't always see a lot of shows that comprise of this
• 7:32
  story.
• 7:34
  No, you certainly don't.
• 7:37
  We had a read through what Jay about uh a year, year and a half ago on this and we were asked then if we'd be interested in doing it.
• 7:46
  And certainly it seems like a lot of fun.
• 7:49
  So why not?
• 7:51
  Yeah, and you know, one thing that we haven't mentioned yet is there's also a younger character, a young gay man that we refer to as the Twink, ah but it's kind of nice.
• 8:03
  there's kind of this intergenerational relationship where we're trying to teach him a little bit about gay history, because I do believe a lot of young younger people in the
• 8:13
  LGBTQ community don't know about things.
• 8:15
  And I don't say it's a fault of their own.
• 8:18
  It's just it doesn't get talked about enough.
• 8:21
  And a lot of that older generation, some some of them are gone as a result of the AIDS crisis.
• 8:26
  But it's so important to to know that history and to know that experience.
• 8:30
  And it's it's kind of nice towards the end of the play.
• 8:33
  the sharing between the young person and the older people.
• 8:37
  mean, that's a really cool way to spread a message.
• 8:40
  You're right that we don't share enough.
• 8:41
  We don't talk about enough because of, for whatever reason, it's just not passed down in the way that it should be.
• 8:48
  No.
• 8:49
  Yeah.
• 8:50
  And some of those people who might have been the ones to pass it down are no longer with us, unfortunately.
• 8:56
  But we do have a rich history.
• 8:59
  certainly, Lindel, even on your own, how often are you explaining to Justin, well, this was a movie star.
• 9:05
  This movie came out in the.
• 9:08
  we were just talking about this here at the house, about how we have a younger cast member who is unaware of some of the things that we as older men have experienced and trying to
• 9:19
  pass that along to him.
• 9:20
  It's provided a lot of laughs behind the scenes and hopefully helps build the characters with the scenes.
• 9:30
  Now that sounds like there's a really big camaraderie and there's only four of you in the show, correct?
• 9:36
  There's the four main of you, I should say.
• 9:39
  there's five.
• 9:39
  oh I was only assuming from the pictures that they released, because it seems like there was the four of the main ones.
• 9:49
  Well, you didn't get to see any pictures of Melissa.
• 9:51
  Melissa plays, I don't know, I can't tell how many characters does she play.
• 9:54
  She plays male.
• 9:56
  Yeah, so she plays male and female characters and she's constantly, you know, changing looks.
• 10:03
  so she's a big part of the show as well.
• 10:08
  so when you did the table read, um, what really Jay out to you about like the story of it?
• 10:15
  Well, obviously it was funny.
• 10:17
  There's a lot of funny humor.
• 10:18
  There's a lot of inside jokes.
• 10:21
  It's a little raunchy too, but I felt there was a great humanity with these characters.
• 10:27
  And it was very touching in many ways too.
• 10:31
  Yep, yep.
• 10:33
  It just seemed like a lot of fun to do and something that while it has a message, it's not a heavy message, uh but still causes people to think while making them laugh.
• 10:43
  And sometimes laughter really is a better communicator than things that are extremely serious or difficult for audiences to understand.
• 10:54
  I just did an interview with somebody else about a comedy and we were talking about that, like truly like Mary Poppins says, a spoonful of sugar does help that medicine go down
• 11:02
  because it helps you to process those messages a little bit easier and it gets you thinking a little bit more.
• 11:08
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:09
  And as our directors said, this is not Shakespeare, but it's also not just total fluff.
• 11:15
  These people have real issues that older gay men face and younger gay men too, just in terms of navigating relationships and all about people wanting to have a sense of
• 11:29
  belonging.
• 11:30
  Mm-hmm.
• 11:31
  You're right.
• 11:32
  Lindel, what really challenged you about this, like this show or this role when you took it on?
• 11:37
  Like as you're kind of rehearsing, has there been any challenges to it?
• 11:41
  Yeah, 700 lines.
• 11:44
  So what did you call him, Lindel
• 11:46
  Well, I have a fairly good feel because I work with an app while I'm memorizing the lines and it's called Line Learner, which a number of actors use.
• 11:57
  And that way I can run lines no matter where I am because I have them on my phone, I have them in the car, I have them at home.
• 12:06
  So wherever I am, I can work on lines for the show.
• 12:10
  And this is a fairly line heavy show, although I will say.
• 12:14
  with this show.
• 12:15
  It has been far easier to memorize.
• 12:18
  That was real challenge.
• 12:23
  comedy can be a bit of a challenge as well, because you're also trying to work with timings and things like that, so that laugh lines get the appropriate response when you
• 12:32
  say them.
• 12:33
  And those probably take time to find as you're kind of working off of each other.
• 12:37
  they do because you're working to see where the laugh is going to come, how it's going to be, whether it's going to be a big laugh, small laugh, whether it encompasses another
• 12:45
  actor or just what you say.
• 12:48
  It becomes really important and I certainly don't want the people working around me to lose anything.
• 12:53
  And so you have to build relationships in order to make the laughs happen.
• 12:58
  Jay, how about for you.
• 12:59
  How has this show challenged you as an actor?
• 13:02
  Well, I'm not as technically proficient as Lindel is, so I learn my lines the old-fashioned way.
• 13:08
  But the problem is, I have to remember the cues that other people's, and not cut them off.
• 13:14
  And that's been a challenge sometimes for me.
• 13:17
  And my character, because he gets so excitable, sometimes I find myself talking so fast, I can't even get all those words out.
• 13:25
  So I have to remember to slow down a little bit, but not go too slow, because this is a very fast-paced show.
• 13:31
  It's just a line after line after line it sounds like.
• 13:33
  Oh, absolutely.
• 13:35
  The show runs really very quickly and we're not trying to make it run quickly.
• 13:40
  It's just the way it's paced and you fall into that pacing as you begin because you start to feel the natural rhythm of the show, where the laughs are gonna fall and how they're
• 13:52
  going to be.
• 13:53
  And this is why we keep saying, now we need like a test audience to come in so that we can kind of feel where the laughs are going to come.
• 14:02
  It's really been wonderful working with Jay and working with Justin, working with Melissa, working with Joe, trying to build this and put this together.
• 14:12
  I think it's going to be a wonderful run.
• 14:14
  Same here, don't feel the same way.
• 14:17
  And you know, when I was first reading the script trying to memorize the line, it seemed like this play was longer than long days journey into me.
• 14:24
  But when we do it, it's like, my god, this went so fast.
• 14:26
  Act once, like 40 minutes?
• 14:29
  It goes quick.
• 14:31
  You know, when you look at one of the writers, I've spoken with Stan and we're going to be talking with him in an interview a little bit later, but some of the shows that he's
• 14:39
  written for, they're all like fast dialogue, fast pace.
• 14:42
  you're just, it's almost impossible to keep up with it, but like in a good way of just like, feels natural, it flows, but it does.
• 14:50
  It just, it takes off like a bullet train.
• 14:54
  And his experience with television, yeah.
• 14:58
  But you know what?
• 14:59
  When I look through the script, it is written like a television show.
• 15:03
  So you start building really fast.
• 15:06
  You start looking for the laughs really quickly.
• 15:08
  And then the story completely unfolds very fast.
• 15:15
  And then it's resolved.
• 15:17
  Unfortunately, life is not always like that, but it works for this.
• 15:22
  So Jay, what themes from this show really resonate the most with you?
• 15:26
  I think about having a...
• 15:29
  chosen family that sometimes, know, particularly in the LGBT community and sometimes with the older generation, they might not have got, because they couldn't get married, they
• 15:41
  might not have children to take care of them.
• 15:43
  They might not have had relatives who were supportive of them.
• 15:47
  And so they had to look to find their own family.
• 15:50
  And Cecil, the character that's played by Joe, he says it's very touching.
• 15:55
  He does a toast to this is my family.
• 15:57
  This is my chosen family.
• 15:59
  wouldn't have had it any other way.
• 16:01
  And uh you know, sense of belonging.
• 16:04
  And I think even when, you know, when you're older, you still don't lose that desire to have intimacy with other people, whether it's romantic intimacy or it's just having loving
• 16:18
  close relationships with other people.
• 16:22
  I think that is so important because you're right, know, as a gay man as well in my 30s, as you get older, it's almost harder to continue to find that community if you don't
• 16:30
  already have it in place, you know, and so to have a show that kind of portrays that in a very healthy way, that's, mean, there's a beauty to that.
• 16:37
  Yeah, yeah.
• 16:40
  There are, you know, I know of different LGBT older individuals who've decided, okay, we're gonna all live together as we get older.
• 16:47
  I have a friend, she and a group of her female friends, they all moved to these tiny houses in South Carolina and started their, you know, they live next door to each other,
• 16:57
  which is really, really cool because they recognize the fact that this is our family and we're gonna look out for each other.
• 17:05
  Community is so important, especially right now, you know?
• 17:08
  Well, absolutely, especially because we're trying to burn everything down and tear it all apart right now.
• 17:13
  community is important.
• 17:15
  Lindel, how about for you, what themes really stood out to you from the show?
• 17:19
  Love, friendship, family, of course, because even in my life, you build the family with the people that you want to be part of the family.
• 17:30
  It's not always the family that you are assigned to as it were.
• 17:36
  So you try and find the people that you want to have around you, the people that will support you, understand you, that you can support and love as well.
• 17:45
  Yeah, yeah.
• 17:46
  And then, you've shared with me how you have your group of friends, and you and your husband, you go on trips together.
• 17:53
  Yeah, and that is so special.
• 17:55
  Well, thank you so much for your time for both of you.
• 17:58
  It was such a pleasure.
• 18:00
  And we are so excited to see, no worries, but we are so excited for Silver Foxes to arrive at the Ringwald.
• 18:07
  So thank you for talking with us.
• 18:08
  I appreciate it.
• 18:09
  you so much.
• 18:10
  We appreciate the opportunity.
• 18:13
  So Silver Foxes arrives at the Ringwald Theatre October 3rd runs through the 27th so get your tickets now and we'll see you at the show.
• 18:19
  yeah, we'll see you there.
• 18:20
  Please come on by, we'll make you laugh.