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Get to Know East Lynne Theater's Watson and Holmes · Jersey Arts Podcast

• 0:03
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: This is Gina Marie Rodriguez and you're listening to the Jersey Arts Podcast.
• 0:07
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
• 0:15
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: That's a quote from Sherlock Holmes, by way of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the Sign of the Four.
• 0:21
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: If you'll forgive me, it feels only right to read Sherlock with an English accent.
• 0:25
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: You know Now, as improbable as it may seem, the truth is the ever-popular Sherlock Holmes died.
• 0:34
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: The main character, he was it.
• 0:37
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: That guy died and then, ten years later, he came back to life.
• 0:42
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Imagine just how frustrated his devoted fans were at the time.
• 0:47
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Well, in honor of this shocking story, East Lynne Theatre in Cape May will be reviving the two stories that tell the tale of Holmes' demise and subsequent revival, written by Mark Lang.
• 0:58
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: This new adaptation of Doyle's The Final Problem and The Adventure of the Empty House the books in which we learn of the aforementioned death and resurrection of a beloved detective will be presented radio-style on East Lynne's stage at the historic Cape May Presbyterian Church.
• 1:14
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Today I spoke with Watson and Holmes themselves, Mark Lang and Joseph Travers.
• 1:19
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Check out our conversation to learn more about the new show, the Death of Sherlock Holmes, Cate May and some fun Sherlock Holmes trivia.
• 1:26
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Well, hello, gentlemen, it is so nice to have you here today.
• 1:32
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Thank you so much for being with me.
• 1:34
  Mark Edward Lang: Thank you for having us.
• 1:35
  Mark Edward Lang: Thank you for your interview.
• 1:37
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Absolutely my pleasure, if you don't mind, just introducing yourselves and your role in this show to our audience.
• 1:43
  Mark Edward Lang: My name is Mark Edward Lang and I have basically put much of this together.
• 1:49
  Mark Edward Lang: I'm the playwright, I did the adaptation, I'm also directing and performing.
• 1:54
  Joseph Travers: And I am Joseph Travers, and I'll be playing the role of Sherlock Holmes.
• 1:58
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Yeah.
• 1:59
  Joseph Travers: Very exciting.
• 2:02
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I don't want to say I'm like a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, because that would be a lie, but I remember reading Sherlock Holmes when I was younger and thinking, oh, this is an author I actually don't hate.
• 2:13
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I should start that by saying I didn't like reading as a kid, so this was a big deal for me to find a book that I actually liked, and if I can recall it was I'm going to butcher the title it was Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Baskerville Hounds.
• 2:30
  Mark Edward Lang: Hound of the Baskervilles.
• 2:31
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Yeah, thank you for correcting me.
• 2:34
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Yeah, that was a good one.
• 2:35
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience, both of you, with Sherlock Holmes.
• 2:41
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: When did you discover him, when did you fall in love with him, become a fan, et cetera, et cetera.
• 2:49
  Mark Edward Lang: Well, it's interesting because, you know, talk about being a teenager.
• 2:53
  Mark Edward Lang: It's.
• 2:53
  Mark Edward Lang: Basically I was given the complete works, which I still have, and it's immense.
• 2:58
  Mark Edward Lang: I mean, because there were you know four novels, 56 stories.
• 3:02
  Mark Edward Lang: I looked at it.
• 3:03
  Mark Edward Lang: There were you know four novels, 56 stories.
• 3:06
  Mark Edward Lang: I looked at it.
• 3:07
  Mark Edward Lang: It's 1100 pages.
• 3:07
  Mark Edward Lang: So for you know, a teenager to kind of go, you know, I don't know if I'm going to make it through all that, but uh, so it's sort of been like a comeback to thing.
• 3:20
  Mark Edward Lang: I mean, I think everybody knows the character and and actually, as of last year, everything is is now public domain.
• 3:23
  Mark Edward Lang: So you're going to see more and more adaptations and changes and different versions of it, though in this case I wanted to be very faithful to the original.
• 3:32
  Mark Edward Lang: I thought let's hear Conan Doyle's words as much as possible and I will kind of massage them as needed and put it into this live radio format and have fun with it, which is really what the actors are doing.
• 3:46
  Mark Edward Lang: And when the actors have fun, the audience has fun, and that's definitely why we're all here.
• 3:52
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I didn't know that he just entered the public domain.
• 3:55
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: That's exciting.
• 3:55
  Joseph Travers: Neither did I actually.
• 3:57
  Joseph Travers: That's great.
• 3:58
  Mark Edward Lang: It's because he wrote over the course of 40 years.
• 4:00
  Mark Edward Lang: It's taken time, but I think just last year.
• 4:03
  Mark Edward Lang: The last of the stories are now open to the public's interpretation, because about two years ago, I've been working with East Lynn Theater for years and Cate May is what we're talking about and they've been doing these Sherlock Holmes radio-style readings for many, many years.
• 4:20
  Mark Edward Lang: And there were times when they would repeat something they had produced before and I said, well, you know, I can take a shot at this.
• 4:27
  Mark Edward Lang: So I got the okay and went to the oeuvre and said, okay, now where do I start?
• 4:33
  Mark Edward Lang: There's 1100 pages here.
• 4:34
  Mark Edward Lang: So basically I thought, well, where's the drama?
• 4:39
  Mark Edward Lang: And there was a point where Conan Doyle was tired of writing it, as successful as it was from the very beginning, both here and in the UK.
• 4:49
  Mark Edward Lang: So I want to kill off this character.
• 4:51
  Mark Edward Lang: He'd been talking about it for a while and eventually said okay, I'm going to kill off this character, I'm going to call this story the final problem and he's going to die, and then I'll be done.
• 5:03
  Mark Edward Lang: And of course, there's more that happened after that and One Piece was not long enough for a full evening.
• 5:11
  Mark Edward Lang: So I said, okay, let's pair it with the Return Of which is the story he wrote years later, the Adventure of the Empty House, where, out of nowhere, Watson is sort of looking into this crime and all of a sudden he shows up out of nowhere but his friend Holmes, who he thought been dead for years.
• 5:27
  Mark Edward Lang: So there's lots of drama in there and actually surprising amount of there.
• 5:31
  Mark Edward Lang: You know he wasn't there for the actual uh encounter with Moriarty but, um, you know he heard firsthand that that they had fallen and uh, so, um, so it was a really good place to start.
• 5:56
  Mark Edward Lang: It takes a while to put something like this together, but, uh, it was definitely worth the effort.
• 6:02
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Before I ask Joseph what your experience with Sherlock Holmes is.
• 6:06
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Mark, how long did this process take you to adapt?
• 6:12
  Mark Edward Lang: I mean I've written a number of plays over the years, kind of on and off, since really high school, college, here and there.
• 6:19
  Mark Edward Lang: But there tends to be kind of a stop start, you know, you stop working on it for a while, then you take some time while you come back to it have another look at it.
• 6:29
  Mark Edward Lang: See, you know how's it kind of finish the first part first, see how that played and how it timed out.
• 6:36
  Mark Edward Lang: So it probably took about a year, you know, maybe a little less, from start to finish, and then when you're in rehearsal then you can make some tweaks.
• 6:46
  Mark Edward Lang: And then in terms of radio, you need to have sound effects and all that needs to be worked into the script as well.
• 6:52
  Mark Edward Lang: So you know there are a lot of layers to it in the process.
• 6:56
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Wow, honestly, a year is less time than I thought you were going to say.
• 7:00
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I think a year is pretty good, well.
• 7:02
  Mark Edward Lang: I wrote a play for my wife and I.
• 7:04
  Mark Edward Lang: You know, I decided I was going to write a play for the two of us, a two-hander, about the famous acting couple Lunt and Fontaine, who people have heard of because there's a Broadway theater named after them.
• 7:13
  Mark Edward Lang: But people don't know almost anything about them because they did all their work on the stage.
• 7:18
  Mark Edward Lang: They had one film in their prime in 1931.
• 7:21
  Mark Edward Lang: And so that project took seven years of on and off before we finally finished it, got it produced and so on.
• 7:30
  Mark Edward Lang: So you know, these things can take a much longer time.
• 7:34
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Absolutely Wow, seven years.
• 7:35
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And I mean not that I want to pivot, I just remember hearing that Hamilton had taken Lin-Manuel nine years, or something like that.
• 7:44
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: So those were the numbers I was thinking.
• 7:46
  Mark Edward Lang: Oh, yeah, yeah, and ideally it's something that you workshop and in our case we need to get a good director on board to have another eye on it, another ear on it.
• 7:55
  Mark Edward Lang: And the timing was good because our friend had been teaching and had some time to work on our project, so we had to jump on it and, um, uh, yeah, it's.
• 8:06
  Mark Edward Lang: Uh, it's funny because I started my theater in high school in New York, at Hunter High, which is where Lin-Manuel also went to school and taught there.
• 8:14
  Mark Edward Lang: No, he's just a little younger than me, but, um, I can, I can brag on him, even though we've never met.
• 8:22
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: It counts, yes you can, though we'd never met, it counts.
• 8:29
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Yes, you can Well, joseph.
• 8:30
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: How about you?
• 8:30
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: What is your Holmes experience like before this show?
• 8:33
  Joseph Travers: Well, you know, Doyle's been one of those writers that I've revisited periodically.
• 8:37
  Joseph Travers: I also read how to the Baskervilles, probably around the same time as you like late elementary school, early high school, somewhere around there.
• 8:45
  Joseph Travers: There was a film I think a TV film that had been of the same story, which I was really fascinated by.
• 8:50
  Joseph Travers: And then I read a few more of the stories after that and got into it for a while, read them all, and then as a young actor I got cast in a stage production of Hound of the Baskervilles as Holmes, and so went back through the whole process again of reading all of Holmes and fell in love with the Jeremy Brett BBC version of Holmes, watched all of them and then during the lockdown I went through Holmes again because I thought, oh, this would be great.
• 9:20
  Joseph Travers: I'll read all of Holmes again and I read some of the apocryphal stuff that they're not sure whether Doyle wrote or they think maybe his son.
• 9:24
  Joseph Travers: Holmes again, and I read some of the apocryphal stuff that they're not sure whether Doyle wrote or they think maybe his son wrote it, and then some newer authors addressing the same characters.
• 9:30
  Joseph Travers: So I kind of got into it all again.
• 9:32
  Joseph Travers: So it was quite a wonderful coincidence that after all of that Mark reached out and asked me to play this part, because it's certainly been a part that has fascinated me for a really long time.
• 9:42
  Joseph Travers: So hopefully I'm somewhat prepared.
• 9:45
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I love that backstory so much.
• 9:47
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: You're returning to your roots.
• 9:49
  Mark Edward Lang: I should be asking you questions.
• 9:51
  Joseph Travers: That's what it feels like.
• 9:52
  Joseph Travers: Yeah.
• 9:52
  Mark Edward Lang: You read the 1,100 pages, man, twice Over time.
• 9:56
  Mark Edward Lang: I'm very impressed.
• 9:57
  Joseph Travers: Not in a weekend.
• 10:00
  Mark Edward Lang: Well, joe and I have known each other for many years and so when this came up, I thought Well, joe and I have known each other for many years and so when this came up, I thought who do I know, who I've worked with, who can handle this role?
• 10:09
  Mark Edward Lang: And, as it turns out, joe has worked with us at East Lynne Theater a couple of times as a fight director.
• 10:15
  Mark Edward Lang: He's a very you know, speaking of multi hyphenates, which we all, many of us in the theater, are multihyphenates.
• 10:21
  Mark Edward Lang: Joe is a very talented fight director and teacher, runs his own theater company in New York.
• 10:26
  Mark Edward Lang: So I said he can handle this.
• 10:32
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: So I reached out and I was very pleased to hear that he was available.
• 10:35
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I'm glad that you get to work together now.
• 10:36
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I think that's really exciting.
• 10:37
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Can I ask what led this to becoming a radio play as opposed to a full-staged production?
• 10:46
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Sure?
• 10:47
  Mark Edward Lang: Well, the backstory is actually a Cate May thing.
• 10:49
  Mark Edward Lang: So East Lynne Theater.
• 10:52
  Mark Edward Lang: Actually, my wife and I met at East Lynne Theater in 2001.
• 10:57
  Mark Edward Lang: So, even though I'm a New Yorker, I'm an honorary South Jerseyan as well, because she's a Jersey girl and her parents are there and we love coming back and forth as long as the drive is, as long as the drive is Um.
• 11:13
  Mark Edward Lang: So you know, you may know that you know, Cape May is full of beautiful Victorian era houses from the 1880s to the 1910s and uh, so the, the branding that the town, actually the whole town, the city, was landmarked in 1976, which, to my knowledge, no one had ever done before, because they didn't want the developers to tear down these beautiful old houses, and they were.
• 11:33
  Mark Edward Lang: They were starting to, and so a friend of ours at the theater, Bruce Minnix, was the was the mayor at the time and he basically said we're going to landmark the entire city and that's what they did.
• 11:44
  Mark Edward Lang: So since then they've been using that, since it is supposedly America's oldest seaside resort.
• 11:50
  Mark Edward Lang: For those of you who have not been um, it was a Victorian Cape May, so some genius in town had said well, let's do a Sherlock Holmes weekend.
• 12:00
  Mark Edward Lang: And that was a MAC, uh, which is a nonprofit in Cape May, and then the theater company basically said well, if they're doing a Sherlock Holmes weekend, then we should take advantage of that as well.
• 12:12
  Mark Edward Lang: And uh, so for over 20 years, uh, you know, this is actually a, you know part of a long line of uh, of uh, radio style productions that East Lynne has put together and um, so I'm kind of sort of the latest in the chain, uh, as far as doing this adaptation and thinking ahead to some new material for next year.
• 12:35
  Mark Edward Lang: But there's a simplicity of it as well.
• 12:38
  Mark Edward Lang: I mean, one of the challenges for any theater company is what's your budget?
• 12:43
  Mark Edward Lang: How much time do you have?
• 12:44
  Mark Edward Lang: How much money do you have?
• 12:45
  Mark Edward Lang: How much housing do you have if you're bringing actors in from out of town?
• 12:49
  Mark Edward Lang: So there's a practical side to it.
• 12:53
  Mark Edward Lang: But the other side of it is that it's just so much fun and that one can close their eyes and sort of get pulled into it.
• 13:00
  Mark Edward Lang: What is radio theater?
• 13:02
  Mark Edward Lang: It's like podcasts, it's like, you know, it's storytelling.
• 13:06
  Mark Edward Lang: So there's something very primal about it and in our case we bring it back to the period because there was a Sherlock Holmes radio show that broadcast out of New York for close to 20 years and so we're bringing everybody back to 1938.
• 13:22
  Mark Edward Lang: So there's period music leading in their period, commercials, that that add a little bit of fun to it.
• 13:28
  Mark Edward Lang: So you get a little bit of everything in addition to the sound effects and the drama you know.
• 13:35
  Mark Edward Lang: So we're very much looking forward to it.
• 13:41
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Wow, everything you just said sounds amazing and, as someone who has not yet had the pleasure of visiting Cape May, I feel like I learned quite a bit there.
• 13:48
  Mark Edward Lang: Oh, you have to.
• 13:49
  Mark Edward Lang: You have to.
• 13:50
  Mark Edward Lang: Anybody in the area has to go, whether you're in the.
• 13:53
  Mark Edward Lang: Philly area, or it's in Jersey or New York City.
• 13:56
  Mark Edward Lang: There's no place quite like it.
• 13:59
  Mark Edward Lang: You've got the ocean right there and just walk down the side streets and you're just taken back 100 years.
• 14:05
  Mark Edward Lang: It's extraordinary.
• 14:08
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Well, maybe your show is a good excuse to go.
• 14:11
  Mark Edward Lang: Absolutely Come on down.
• 14:13
  Mark Edward Lang: You can be our guest.
• 14:15
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: It sounds like a plan to me.
• 14:16
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Now I have to stop myself from singing.
• 14:17
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Be Our Guest from Beauty and the Beast.
• 14:19
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Oh, focus, Gina.
• 14:20
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: So, Joseph, I'm going to ask you what led you to the theater?
• 14:27
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: What was your journey to becoming an actor or, in Mark's case, writer, director of this piece?
• 14:33
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: But, joseph, I know that you're also wearing multiple hats as well, so theater is a broad scope of everything that you do.
• 14:40
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: But what brought you to the theater?
• 14:43
  Joseph Travers: I think you know I had a love of plays and of reading plays from elementary school.
• 14:48
  Joseph Travers: We in our school as a lot of schools did, I'm sure we read plays in in class and we were all given parts.
• 14:54
  Joseph Travers: I was a pretty good reader, so I enjoyed that.
• 14:56
  Joseph Travers: I got some really good parts that way.
• 14:57
  Joseph Travers: Uh, and then, um, I love to go see theater.
• 15:02
  Joseph Travers: We went on school trips where we went to see theater, which was wonderful and very inspiring.
• 15:08
  Joseph Travers: Uh, and then I went to school for science.
• 15:10
  Joseph Travers: I was a physics major, but I wound up starting to do theater in high school and then, when I went away to college, I was very involved in the theater while I was studying physics and finally realized I'm actually headed in the, not the direction I want to go in.
• 15:25
  Joseph Travers: I want to go in this direction, and so I switched schools and I went to school for theater and kind of never looked back.
• 15:31
  Joseph Travers: I was I've been involved in one way or another, as an actor, as a director, as a playwright, as I've spent 30 plus years as a fight director and stage combat teacher, uh, and there's there's something about the ability to be part of an experience that happens live in front of other people, in which everyone, including the audience, is part of creating something that's unique.
• 16:01
  Joseph Travers: Every evening, even though we rehearse, even though we prepare, even though we know, quote unquote, what we're going to do, we don't know what's going to happen because we don't know what the audience will experience and what their response will be, and they become a really important part of the whole experience.
• 16:17
  Joseph Travers: That circulation between audience and actor is so important.
• 16:20
  Joseph Travers: So I think that's certainly one of the big things that has drawn me to.
• 16:24
  Joseph Travers: It is that kind of magical experience of it being new every time.
• 16:29
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: What an important note, how important the audience itself is and what you guys bring.
• 16:36
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I'm talking to our listeners now.
• 16:37
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: You guys bring a lot every time you come to see a show.
• 16:40
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: That energy that the audience brings is what feeds actors.
• 16:46
  Mark Edward Lang: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 16:48
  Mark Edward Lang: I mean, if there are two characters on stage, the third character is always the audience and their energy feeds our energy.
• 16:55
  Mark Edward Lang: And if we're having fun, they're having fun, and if they're listening intently, as they almost always are, there's just nothing like it.
• 17:02
  Mark Edward Lang: I mean, I love movies, I love television, the theater, you know, even as an audience member, when they take the bows at the end, it just there is something magical about it.
• 17:15
  Mark Edward Lang: So I agree with Joe on that.
• 17:17
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Live theater is.
• 17:19
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: It is unique in its own way and I hope that everyone listening will travel to you, but will also travel to their local theaters.
• 17:29
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: You know, let's not lose this art form Right I think COVID threw us all for a loop when we weren't able to go to theaters for a while, and now that they're back, I know that.
• 17:40
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: You know some local theaters are still struggling, so let's just get out there and go see theater, because it's amazing and why not?
• 17:46
  Mark Edward Lang: Definitely, definitely.
• 17:48
  Mark Edward Lang: And speaking of multi hyphenates, I think I should mention Arthur.
• 17:51
  Mark Edward Lang: Conan Doyle was trained as a medical doctor, which some people may not know, not unlike Dr Watson, and practice was not super successful, but his writing certainly was.
• 18:02
  Mark Edward Lang: And so you know he pivoted, as one might say, and as I mentioned earlier, he was so successful with Sherlock Holmes that you know he had written all these other you know types of works and was much more proud of them than Holmes.
• 18:36
  Mark Edward Lang: But he got pulled back and you know, once he brought the, I think it was another 20 years he was writing Sherlock Holmes stories after the character was revived.
• 18:46
  Mark Edward Lang: So I guess you know he had to sort of learn to love the character as much as everybody else did.
• 18:56
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Well, that's another way in which I suppose Joseph is similar to Arthur Conan Doyle, both with a science background, and then led you right into the arts.
• 19:05
  Mark Edward Lang: Well, there you go.
• 19:06
  Mark Edward Lang: I am not a scientist at all.
• 19:08
  Mark Edward Lang: I have many engineers in my family, including my dad, who was also artistic, but he appreciated the arts.
• 19:15
  Mark Edward Lang: He did beautiful drawings and paintings as a young man and played a little classical guitar and you know.
• 19:20
  Mark Edward Lang: So you know it's cool to and my grandfather as well was from Germany and played the zither on 86th Street and copied out scores, beautiful calligraphy.
• 19:31
  Mark Edward Lang: So he was a visual artist and a musician as well.
• 19:36
  Mark Edward Lang: As for myself, I grew up in New York but we didn't see a lot of theater growing up, but I was fascinated by the process, particularly of film and television, like how is that put together?
• 19:48
  Mark Edward Lang: And mentioning Star Trek.
• 19:51
  Mark Edward Lang: As a young man I read this book called the Making of Star Trek, where they went into all the writing and the design and the scripting and I just thought this is incredible.
• 20:02
  Mark Edward Lang: So when I was in high school they had the worst video equipment in the world, but I signed up for TV production class and was writing and directing and performing and doing graphics for videos, sometimes comedy videos and things.
• 20:17
  Mark Edward Lang: And then my friend was sort of like the dealer who said you know, man, you got to try the live stage.
• 20:23
  Mark Edward Lang: Man, I'm like no no I don't want to be in front of all those people.
• 20:26
  Mark Edward Lang: And no, no, no, really you should try it, man.
• 20:29
  Mark Edward Lang: And the rest is history.
• 20:32
  Mark Edward Lang: I started doing theater.
• 20:34
  Mark Edward Lang: I wound up majoring in theater at Vassar College and you know, learning the old school from three old hands who'd been there forever Doing scenic design, doing directing and acting, many of whom had been there since.
• 20:58
  Mark Edward Lang: Meryl Streep was there back in the 70s, so I'll drop her name also.
• 21:02
  Mark Edward Lang: So that was sort of how I got into the theater thing, and I was, I guess, lucky in that I was able to come back home to New York and start auditioning without having to make the move as so many actors do in New York.
• 21:16
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Well, shout out to Meryl and your wife all the Jersey girls that we're mentioning here, that's right, that's right.
• 21:20
  Mark Edward Lang: Meryl and your wife, all the Jersey girls that we're mentioning here.
• 21:22
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: That's right.
• 21:23
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: That's right.
• 21:23
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I love that.
• 21:23
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Film and television was your gateway medium, so to speak, your gateway to theater.
• 21:28
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: It's usually well, I shouldn't say it's usually the other way around.
• 21:31
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: It was the other way around for me.
• 21:33
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I'll say that I can't speak for anyone else, but I was a theater major in school and then I somehow pivoted to film and television.
• 21:41
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: So there you have it.
• 21:42
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: We are polar opposites here.
• 21:45
  Mark Edward Lang: But there's, there's the same thing and to the extent that it's all about the storytelling, it's all about touching an audience, making them laugh, making them cry, making them, you know, making the heartbeat faster.
• 21:55
  Mark Edward Lang: I mean, one of the things about Sherlock Holmes is, people said, this fascination with murder and and and figuring out puzzles.
• 22:04
  Mark Edward Lang: And it's certainly true.
• 22:07
  Mark Edward Lang: In the podcast world, which you can see in Only Murders in the Building, which kind of takes the podcast world and the murder mystery world and mushes them together with comedy elements, there's so much to be mined there.
• 22:21
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: You two have known each other for a while, as you said, so I'd just like to know what are you looking forward to in working together on this show?
• 22:30
  Joseph Travers: I.
• 22:30
  Joseph Travers: I mark's waiting for me to respond.
• 22:32
  Joseph Travers: 1984, I think that, or five one of the two, 85, I think 85 a long hell of a time at the New York Renaissance Festival is where we first met and worked together as actors together.
• 22:46
  Joseph Travers: So it's been a very long, wonderful journey.
• 22:49
  Joseph Travers: And one of the most fun things about Mark beyond the fact that we're both Star Trek fans and a little geeky about that it's always fun for a Star Trek fan to find another person that they can talk Star Trek with, because a lot of people just kind of you see the glaze go over their eyes when you start.
• 23:07
  Joseph Travers: But also we've had a lot of wonderful experiences of sort of a comic back and forth between the two of us.
• 23:14
  Joseph Travers: So I think it's great that we're playing Holmes and Watson in a context where there isn't a lot of comedy for us to have back and forth about.
• 23:23
  Joseph Travers: I'm sure we will enjoy rehearsals in that way, but when we're actually performing I think it'll be great for us to be able to bounce things off of each other in serious contexts for a change.
• 23:36
  Mark Edward Lang: Well and just to build on.
• 23:37
  Mark Edward Lang: Well, that's, you know Joe's a gem and so talented, and, and you know, and it's, it's.
• 23:43
  Mark Edward Lang: You know Joe's a gem and so talented, and you know, people kind of get busy with their own things.
• 23:47
  Mark Edward Lang: You don't always get a chance to spend time with old friends, so this is a chance to kind of go side by side.
• 23:53
  Mark Edward Lang: And you know, in the story there are these two characters who've known each other for years, and so we can build that into this presentation as well, which is so cool.
• 24:04
  Mark Edward Lang: And maybe we'll work some Star Trek jokes into it because, you know, leonard Nimoy also played Sherlock Holmes.
• 24:11
  Mark Edward Lang: He did Another fun fact.
• 24:15
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I did not know that.
• 24:16
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: That's fantastic.
• 24:18
  Mark Edward Lang: And if you think, about the character Spock is very logical.
• 24:21
  Mark Edward Lang: You know there's some Sherlock Holmes elements in there and if you think about the character Spock is very logical, there's some Sherlock Holmes elements in there that built into it from the beginning, very stoic, that sort of thing.
• 24:29
  Mark Edward Lang: So you can see the connection.
• 24:34
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: This is the kind of Star Trek trivia I didn't know that I needed, but you do, you absolutely do, gina.
• 24:38
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: You're going to have to sell me on Star Trek later, but first, how about you sell our audience on your show?
• 24:46
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: How would you like to speak directly to our audience and let them know that they should come to see this show?
• 24:53
  Mark Edward Lang: Well, let's start with Cape May.
• 24:54
  Mark Edward Lang: We're talking a little bit about Cape May.
• 24:56
  Mark Edward Lang: Cape May is amazing.
• 24:57
  Mark Edward Lang: East Lynne Theater has been around for over 40 years.
• 25:00
  Mark Edward Lang: Amazing East Lynne Theater has been around for over 40 years in South Jersey.
• 25:17
  Mark Edward Lang: We perform in this beautiful historic church right near the ocean.
• 25:20
  Mark Edward Lang: There are fantastic restaurants.
• 25:21
  Mark Edward Lang: Everywhere there's shops.
• 25:22
  Mark Edward Lang: Even if you know the stories, maybe you don't know all the details of the stories.
• 25:26
  Mark Edward Lang: Holmes' arch nemesis Moriarty makes his biggest appearance, basically, and who's behind this whole crime wave?
• 25:36
  Mark Edward Lang: And Holmes is the only one who knows that that's going on.
• 25:40
  Mark Edward Lang: And so there's this whole cat and mouse game that they play and they travel all over Europe.
• 25:45
  Mark Edward Lang: I mean the way that Conan Doyle plotted it out.
• 25:49
  Mark Edward Lang: They follow each other around.
• 25:50
  Mark Edward Lang: They wind up in Switzerland, of all places.
• 25:53
  Mark Edward Lang: By the way.
• 25:55
  Mark Edward Lang: I went on vacation last year to Switzerland and my cousin said, oh, my cabin is right near Reichenbach Falls.
• 26:01
  Mark Edward Lang: And I said what?
• 26:05
  Mark Edward Lang: So?
• 26:05
  Mark Edward Lang: Yeah, my mom is Swiss and so I have Swiss cousins, and there I was, having been working on this script, and there was the Reichenbach Falls.
• 26:13
  Mark Edward Lang: So for those of you who come and you hear the sound of the Reichenbach Falls in our radio show, it is the actual sound of the actual Reichenbach Falls.
• 26:23
  Mark Edward Lang: I'm just saying that's authenticity.
• 26:25
  Mark Edward Lang: Even though it just sounds like static, it's the real sound of the real Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, but you get to see Joe Travers play the lead role, and so what could be better?
• 26:37
  Mark Edward Lang: What could be a better way to spend a Friday or Saturday night in Cape May?
• 26:41
  Joseph Travers: I'll be there, for sure, that's right.
• 26:43
  Mark Edward Lang: Either or be square.
• 26:46
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Oh my gosh, what an Easter egg that is.
• 26:48
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Speaking of sound, though, it's so important in a radio show.
• 26:52
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Is there a sound designer that you'd like to shout out, or is that you also?
• 26:56
  Mark Edward Lang: I would be me also.
• 26:57
  Mark Edward Lang: I mean, you know I love tech stuff.
• 26:59
  Mark Edward Lang: I was doing videos forever, and so you know digital audio is, is um?
• 27:05
  Mark Edward Lang: Actually, the person who I need to shout out to is my brother who's speaking of multi hyphen.
• 27:09
  Mark Edward Lang: It's as a, as a, as a doctor, he's a veterinarian, but he's also loves music, and so when I needed a theme song, I thought maybe I'll ask Andrew if he wants to come up with something, and he came up with this delightful little bumper intro outro for the shows, including a little violin sound, because Sherlock Holmes played the violin, and so I give the shout out to my brother, Andrew.
• 27:35
  Mark Edward Lang: He did a fantastic job on that.
• 27:38
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: It's a family affair.
• 27:39
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: That's fantastic, Joseph.
• 27:41
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Would you like to add to that that it's a family affair?
• 27:42
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: That's fantastic, Joseph.
• 27:42
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Would you like to add to that?
• 27:43
  Joseph Travers: That it's a family affair.
• 27:45
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Or what you'd like to say to our audience.
• 27:48
  Joseph Travers: I would say, in addition to everything that Mark just said, and having been to Cape May multiple times, I want to second everything he said about the atmosphere of Cape May.
• 27:56
  Joseph Travers: It really does feel like you're walking around in the past when you're walking around, and it's beautiful to be so close to the shore and I, for one, love to be near the beach in the fall, as opposed to in the summer, when it's a little less crowded and it's wonderful and beautiful to walk along.
• 28:13
  Joseph Travers: In addition to that, I would say that the script that Mark has put together bridging really two stories together in one evening because, as he mentioned earlier, these were separate tales the tale in which we lose Holmes and then the tale in which we get him back and he's bridged them into one story, one continuous story, and it is exciting, it is compelling.
• 28:35
  Joseph Travers: You get a taste of the relationship between Holmes and Watson.
• 28:41
  Joseph Travers: That really gives a sense of the affection between Holmes and Watson.
• 28:42
  Joseph Travers: That that really gives a sense of the affection between them and also their ability to work together as a team.
• 28:48
  Joseph Travers: And you get a sense of Holmes's mind, which is incredibly perceptive and at the same time, he's constantly having to adjust to changes because Moriarty and the people who are supporting Moriarty are the creme de la creme of crime.
• 29:04
  Joseph Travers: So he doesn't know all the answers already and I think the conclusion of the piece, which I will not give away, is it's a great turn at the end of the story and a wonderful way to finish it up.
• 29:18
  Joseph Travers: Returning to what feels like Doyle agreeing with the audience that he's willing to continue writing this character now for, as Mark put it, another 20 years.
• 29:30
  Joseph Travers: So I would say the story itself and the way that Mark has dramatized it is a great reason to come and enjoy in the frame of the radio play format, which is really a lot of fun.
• 29:42
  Joseph Travers: We've come to it and enjoy the evening well, I'm excited.
• 29:46
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I think it sounds like such an amazing production and it's about time that I re-familiarize myself with Sherlock Holmes.
• 29:54
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I can't, I can't have only read that one book.
• 29:57
  Mark Edward Lang: That will not be enough for the rest of my lifetime, although it's like a podcast, you don't you know, if you come to the show, you don't have to read those two stories because we, you know, we present them very faithfully.
• 30:07
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I must say that's the way I can get around reading.
• 30:16
  Mark Edward Lang: Let's see.
• 30:16
  Mark Edward Lang: I mentioned that Holmes is the most portrayed human literary character according to the Guinness Book of World Records, and I'm like wondering who's the most portrayed non-human literary character?
• 30:28
  Mark Edward Lang: But that's a question for another day.
• 30:31
  Mark Edward Lang: Supposedly there are.
• 30:34
  Mark Edward Lang: The other statistic was that there are 25,000 plus adaptations of Sherlock Holmes between stage, TV, film and print, and so if we're 25,001, so be it.
• 30:48
  Mark Edward Lang: It's still a ton of fun.
• 30:51
  Mark Edward Lang: These characters are so rich, these puzzles have so many layers to them and it's a great bunch of actors who are going to have a lot of fun presenting it.
• 31:05
  Mark Edward Lang: Um, as I said, it's been a tradition now in Cape May for many years to radio-style these shows.
• 31:10
  Mark Edward Lang: Uh, there are other things going on that weekend that, uh, Cape May MAC has put together.
• 31:15
  Mark Edward Lang: So, uh, you know, for those of you who have some, For those of you who have a free weekend in November, we're running for those two weekends and you can find out more at ELTC.
• 31:24
  Mark Edward Lang: info or EastLynneTheater.
• 31:26
  Mark Edward Lang: org, where it's all laid out for you.
• 31:30
  Mark Edward Lang: And there's a Christmas show as well, Christmas Cabaret.
• 31:33
  Mark Edward Lang: So if you're there in early December, there's more going on before the end of the year.
• 31:39
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Thank you so much and I have to say, since this is a radio play, I have to comment on how wonderful both of your voices are, so I'm looking forward to hearing you again on stage.
• 31:49
  Mark Edward Lang: Well, thank you.
• 31:49
  Mark Edward Lang: Should we do English now?
• 31:50
  Mark Edward Lang: Let's go English, all right.
• 31:53
  Joseph Travers: If you insist.
• 31:54
  Joseph Travers: If you insist, no problem, no problem.
• 31:57
  Joseph Travers: Yes, let's not give away the show, though.
• 31:59
  Joseph Travers: Watson?
• 31:59
  Joseph Travers: No, certainly not Holmes.
• 32:05
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Certainly not.
• 32:06
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: The Death of Sherlock Holmes runs two weekends only Friday and Saturday, November 15th and 16th, and November 22nd and 23rd 7 pm .
• 32:14
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Please visit EastLynneTheater.
• 32:15
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: org for tickets and more information.
• 32:18
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: If you liked this episode, be sure to review, subscribe, and tell your friends.
• 32:22
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: A transcript of this podcast, links relevant to the story and more about the arts in New Jersey can be found at JerseyArts.
• 32:29
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: com.
• 32:30
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: The Jersey Arts Podcast is presented by Art Pride New Jersey, advancing a state of creativity since 1986.
• 32:38
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: The show was co-founded by and currently supported by, funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
• 32:46
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: This episode was hosted, edited and produced by me, Gina Marie Rodriguez.
• 32:52
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Executive producers are Jim Atkinson and Isaac Serna-Diez, and my thanks to today's guests, Mark Lang and Joseph Travers, for their time.
• 33:00
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I'm Gina Marie Rodriguez for the Jersey Arts Podcast.
• 33:03
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Thanks for listening.