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Princeton Summer Theater Tackles Sam Shepard's 'True West' · Jersey Arts Podcast

• 0:02
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: This is Gina Marie Rodriguez, and you're listening to the Jersey Arts podcast.
• 0:07
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: If you're familiar with the notion of sibling rivalry, today's episode may be the one for you.
• 0:13
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Today I'm speaking with the cast and director of Princeton Summer Theater's production of True West.
• 0:19
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Written by Sam Shepard, the play first debuted off Broadway in 1980 with Peter Boyle and Tommy Lee Jones in the leading roles.
• 0:28
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1983 and went on to receive four Tony Award nominations, two Drama Desk nominations, and one an Outer Critic Circle Award for its Broadway debut in 2000.
• 0:40
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Directed by Wasif Sami and starring Joe McLean and Jordan Rashdan, Princeton Summer Theater's production will tackle the dark comedy this July.
• 0:49
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Stay tuned to learn more about the show and the work that goes into building a gritty, grounded examination of masculinity and sibling rivalry.
• 1:00
  Wasif Sami: Hi, I'm Wasif Sami and I'm directing True West.
• 1:03
  Wasif Sami: Hi, my name is Jordan Rashdan.
• 1:05
  Wasif Sami: I'm playing Austin in True West.
• 1:08
  Joe McLean: My name is Joe McLean, and I'm playing Lee in True West.
• 1:13
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I am so excited to meet all of you today and to talk to you about True West, which this is going to be my first introduction to the show.
• 1:20
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I haven't seen it nor read it.
• 1:23
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I'm curious if this is also your first introduction, or had you guys been familiar with the show before you were cast, before you began directing it.
• 1:33
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I want to hear all about it.
• 1:35
  Wasif Sami: Yeah, I can start.
• 1:36
  Wasif Sami: I read the play a year ago, right after I graduated college.
• 1:40
  Wasif Sami: Um, and I had mostly read new plays uh that were written in the last 10 years.
• 1:45
  Wasif Sami: But then I was like, you know what, I haven't ever read a Shepherd play.
• 1:48
  Wasif Sami: And he's kind of this Titan of the American theater, known for writing these gritty, complex, you know, psychological characters, but he also is known to have an experimental kind of rock and roll side to him.
• 2:02
  Wasif Sami: So I was actually on campus directing a show for Princeton Summer Theater last year.
• 2:08
  Wasif Sami: And I went to the library, found True West, and then I was, yeah, I was overwhelmed by the rock and roll of it, by these two brothers battling, and I was like, I want to work on the play.
• 2:19
  Wasif Sami: So that was it.
• 2:20
  Wasif Sami: It's been a year of knowing this play for me.
• 2:22
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I love that.
• 2:23
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: How about how about the actors?
• 2:25
  Jordan Rashdan: My knowledge of Shepard is uh, especially his male characters, is very um uh there's a lot of like dominance and aggression that he writes about, and um, just as me as an actor, um, is not typically what I get cast in because um I do have like a very, I don't know, like kind eyes that are kind of hard to escape from.
• 2:48
  Jordan Rashdan: But it was really interesting the direction that they wanted to go with this and uh kind of encouraged the this softness from this character, this kind of emotional state, and you know, allowing that to kind of counterbalance from Joe.
• 3:03
  Jordan Rashdan: Um, but yeah, I've never I never really read it.
• 3:06
  Jordan Rashdan: I kind of was afraid of Shepard because he is quite a Titan.
• 3:09
  Jordan Rashdan: He is he is a hard, hard man to to tackle when you when you are in the room.
• 3:15
  Joe McLean: Uh I read the play in high school when I started reading plays and really getting into acting, and I kind of I remember being blown away by it and flagging that it would be a good either of the brothers would be, you know, uh a dream role.
• 3:31
  Joe McLean: And Shepard is kind of the a playwright in in the area that I'm the most interested in, kind of 20th century American realism and being a very tall, broad guy, a lot of those parts fit my stature in a really nice way.
• 3:48
  Joe McLean: So um, and also throughout college, because of that, I I tend to get cast uh kind of opposite to Jordan in these sort of patriarchal, domineering, uh kind of masculine roles.
• 4:01
  Joe McLean: Um, and so I'm I'm doing the same thing here, but Shepard's writing is so good and the character is so rich that it feels like those it's a lot more layered and and that that kind of intensity and that aggression is coming from a some kind of necessity, some kind of early wound.
• 4:18
  Joe McLean: And that's really, really interesting to play.
• 4:20
  Joe McLean: And it and it feels kind of like that the role is a great merriment of um things I've done in the past, and then kind of pushing the vulnerability of it.
• 4:30
  Joe McLean: So it's it's really, really exciting.
• 4:31
  Joe McLean: And I it's um uh yeah, to play this role so young is is a is a real treat.
• 4:37
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I love the way both of you speak about these characters.
• 4:40
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And I guess I'd like to know more about the roles themselves.
• 4:45
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Who are you playing?
• 4:46
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: What are their names?
• 4:48
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Uh, what do we need to know about these characters before we meet them?
• 4:51
  Joe McLean: Yeah, so I'm I play Lee, who is the older brother.
• 4:55
  Joe McLean: Um has been living on the desert, the Mojave Desert, for three months and has been estranged from his family and his brother for almost five years.
• 5:07
  Joe McLean: And the start of the play, the mom, the parents are separated or divorced.
• 5:13
  Joe McLean: It's not spelled out, but uh the mom has gone away and has asked Austin, the younger brother, to take care of the place.
• 5:22
  Joe McLean: Uh, and I've kind of showed up out of nowhere.
• 5:25
  Joe McLean: Um, and I'm uh uh a drifter and a thief.
• 5:29
  Joe McLean: I steal um electric devices, televisions, and stuff from people's homes, and that's how I make a living.
• 5:35
  Joe McLean: I'm very much kind of like this kind of living in a very primal way in a time in America where things are really getting very cookie-cutter and you know, fully developed in this kind of aged Western mythology is no longer.
• 5:53
  Joe McLean: And I think Lee, for for kind of the prologue to the play, has been trying his best to keep that going and live in this um kind of dog eat dog world.
• 6:04
  Joe McLean: Uh, and then he's coming back to his to you know east uh East Los Angeles to get another chance at civilization, essentially.
• 6:14
  Joe McLean: Um so he's and so it's in he's in a bind, really, and trying to get involved in that world.
• 6:21
  Jordan Rashdan: Yeah, Austin is a really complex and not a very uh necessarily quote unquote common character in Shepard's play.
• 6:29
  Jordan Rashdan: He kind of represents this struggling artist that um is a is a writer and he comes out into the middle of nowhere to have his final attempt at writing something successful, something that's going to start up his career.
• 6:45
  Jordan Rashdan: Um and then it is interrupted by his brother.
• 6:49
  Jordan Rashdan: And his specific relationship with his brother is his brother is this very aggressive, very similar to his his father, like Joe said, drifter, kind of everything that Austin doesn't want to be.
• 7:01
  Jordan Rashdan: And I think it's really interesting that he writes these characters who are raised by the same family but are so different.
• 7:08
  Jordan Rashdan: And I feel like Austin has tried so hard to run away from what his father is and what his brother is because he doesn't want to be a mess.
• 7:20
  Jordan Rashdan: Uh, and so therefore he's trying to write.
• 7:22
  Jordan Rashdan: He went to an Ivy League, he's very well educated, but he's not writing anything successful and nothing is working.
• 7:29
  Jordan Rashdan: And so this is kind of his last attempt.
• 7:32
  Jordan Rashdan: So they're kind of both in this place of desperation when they're in this house in the middle of nowhere.
• 7:38
  Jordan Rashdan: Um and you know, for people listening, like the show, like I don't I don't know how much of spoilers I'm allowed to give.
• 7:47
  Jordan Rashdan: But things get it turned on its head.
• 7:50
  Jordan Rashdan: Um, they kind of mirror each other, and that and that's a big theme in the play, is this arc.
• 7:55
  Jordan Rashdan: And it's honestly such a treat as an actor to be able to have such a big arc and change, and it's so I mean, Shepard really writes it in there for you, like, you know, like, yes, I do have to do a lot of work, and yes, it is really challenging, but it's just this big change in every scene.
• 8:12
  Jordan Rashdan: You see these cracks about his ego and that he can't quite get things right and the fracture between the brothers' relationship.
• 8:20
  Jordan Rashdan: But you also get to see some really beautiful moments between them, and that's that's probably my favorite parts of the show.
• 8:26
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: You both speak so beautifully about this show.
• 8:28
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And Jordan, you just brought up something that I find very interesting that these two brothers are they grew up in the same house, but they're so very different.
• 8:36
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And it reminded me of something that I I'm gonna butcher his name.
• 8:39
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I'm so sorry.
• 8:40
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I think Dr.
• 8:41
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Gabor Mate, I don't know if I pronounced that correctly, but he had previously said that no two siblings or no sibling is raised by the same parents, even though you may indeed share parents and grow up in the same house, you know, you have a different experience with each of those parents.
• 8:59
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And I feel like that must have been at play for these two characters because they are so different, and one clearly favors his father more so than the other.
• 9:09
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: But I love hearing about that dynamic.
• 9:11
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I'm very interested in the whole sibling rivalry thing.
• 9:14
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And Wassif, I guess I want to ask you as the director, what is your approach?
• 9:20
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: How are you guiding these actors and these characters?
• 9:24
  Wasif Sami: As a director, the first thing you have to do is develop your personal connection to the material.
• 9:30
  Wasif Sami: The cool thing about plays is that a writer lays out the story, but because we are live humans embodying it and putting on the show each night, our point of views and our interests bring different parts of the story to the fore for the audience.
• 9:45
  Wasif Sami: So in my preparation, there were two things that really stood out to me that I wanted to lift.
• 9:51
  Wasif Sami: One, I was really aware that these two brothers represented Shepard, an artist, dealing with two parts of himself that he felt were battling with each other.
• 10:01
  Wasif Sami: One, the cowboy, the self-destructive part of him, the violent part of him, and the other, the guy who wanted to sell his art and make it in Hollywood, in civilization.
• 10:12
  Wasif Sami: And so I think knowing that these two brothers represent a split nature helped me tease out things from Joe and Jordan and wanting to see both sides of Shepherd in each of them, and both sides of Shepard represented by the two of their characters individually.
• 10:30
  Wasif Sami: Um, and I think secondly, I really wanted to explore two brothers dealing with the aftershock of a violent childhood.
• 10:39
  Wasif Sami: And the question of are we marked by who our parents are?
• 10:43
  Wasif Sami: Are we cursed?
• 10:45
  Wasif Sami: Are there generational curses that we can't escape from no matter how hard we try?
• 10:49
  Wasif Sami: So as a director, you come up with these inquiries and then they kind of play out in rehearsal through the images you build or the ways that you work with designers to highlight certain moments.
• 11:00
  Wasif Sami: Um yeah, I would say deciding what I care about and then feeding that into the different parts of the process through collaboration with others.
• 11:10
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I am so fascinated by this analysis.
• 11:13
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I love that it really is this dichotomy of one person that has been split into two.
• 11:20
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I wonder if it's fair to say that envy is a central theme in the play.
• 11:26
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And if so, how are Joe and Jordan, how are you tapping into that as performers?
• 11:34
  Jordan Rashdan: Yeah, uh towards the end of the play, Austin really wants to give up on what he's worked his whole life for, which is writing, and go and live on the desert and become a drifter like Lee.
• 11:49
  Jordan Rashdan: And it's so it's that's why this is such a dark comedy, is it's like it's so funny that this Ivy League button-up guy wants to go and do something so gritty, and he wants to do that, and he wants to relive what his childhood was.
• 12:05
  Jordan Rashdan: And like I think it's that kind of envy.
• 12:07
  Jordan Rashdan: It's like um, you know, he ran ran so far away from what he doesn't want to be that he suddenly just slingshots back into it, and and he wants it more than anything else in the world, more than what he's worked at um at school for for writing.
• 12:25
  Jordan Rashdan: And um, so I think Austin has a lot of subconscious envy, like throughout the play.
• 12:30
  Jordan Rashdan: It's like, oh, my brother, he's a thief and he does these crazy things, and I'm put together.
• 12:36
  Jordan Rashdan: But in the back of his head, it's there that like oh, but it would be so cool to live a little.
• 12:42
  Jordan Rashdan: I never got to live.
• 12:43
  Jordan Rashdan: I I spent my whole life trying to be so good, and and the only time I ever did something bad was when I was a kid with my brother, and I missed that, and and I I and I do envy that.
• 12:55
  Jordan Rashdan: And I think you're very smart to say envy is envy is the one.
• 12:59
  Jordan Rashdan: That's that's the sin of the play.
• 13:02
  Joe McLean: And it's it's a special kind of envy because it's not as simple as I want to be like my brother.
• 13:10
  Joe McLean: It's really I want to be who I am, and then also have everything that my brother has as well.
• 13:18
  Joe McLean: I want I want the abilities and the resources of two people as one, which is impossible.
• 13:26
  Joe McLean: You kind of think of the play as like, you know, a vat of oil and water, and you're trying so hard to meld them into one, but it's impossible.
• 13:35
  Joe McLean: Um, because clearly what Shepard is playing with is his own double nature, is you know, I've had this amazingly successful career as a writer, and a lot of that is based on the freedom and the dwelling of being this kind of cowboy.
• 13:56
  Joe McLean: But in order to express that and formalize that, you need to have the skills of a writer.
• 14:03
  Joe McLean: So constantly, like it's you're kind of envious of a self that you aren't.
• 14:10
  Joe McLean: You cannot be these two things at the same time, and that is really, really hard.
• 14:16
  Joe McLean: And I think a lot of people can relate to that.
• 14:18
  Joe McLean: People have two sides of themselves that they constantly get to kind of lily pad between instead of, oh, I I can't synergize these parts of myself.
• 14:28
  Joe McLean: It's impossible.
• 14:30
  Joe McLean: And that's basically the kind of cynical but you know almost comforting conclusion to the play is that you cannot reconcile the differences in between you.
• 14:41
  Joe McLean: They will constantly be fighting and merging at times and disconnecting and and grappling with each other.
• 14:47
  Joe McLean: Um, but you're you're left with that kind of eternal fight.
• 14:50
  Joe McLean: And so the brothers really dramatize that because it's not they don't want to just be the other person, they want to be themselves and the other person, which is an amazingly kind of tragic envy.
• 15:03
  Joe McLean: So it's kind of playing that.
• 15:05
  Joe McLean: We don't want to lose ourselves, but we want to almost absorb the other person.
• 15:10
  Joe McLean: It's like the twins in a womb.
• 15:13
  Joe McLean: It's uh it's that it's that high stakes.
• 15:15
  Joe McLean: Um, so that that's the kind of thing.
• 15:17
  Joe McLean: I mean, it's hard to make that actionable, but that's my read on the characters.
• 15:22
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Twins in a womb.
• 15:23
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Wow, I really loved that that breakdown there.
• 15:27
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I think it's really relatable too.
• 15:30
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: You know, I think your audiences will understand where these characters are coming from.
• 15:34
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And as someone who always jokes that I want to learn through osmosis, I kind of get that idea of just wanting to absorb somebody else's talents just by being around them.
• 15:44
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I think that this show is amazing and everything that you're you're bringing to the table is really exciting.
• 15:51
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: But what about the folks who aren't familiar with Princeton Summer Theater?
• 15:56
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: What can you say about this company that is going to encourage new audiences to discover you?
• 16:02
  Joe McLean: The great thing about SummerStock, especially if you go to all three of the shows, um, is you kind of get to be a part of this journey of these four people in this incredibly compressed amount of time trying to make three wildly different texts all work and fire on all cylinders.
• 16:20
  Joe McLean: I mean, the play we're doing right now, the 39 steps, I mean, it's a total farce.
• 16:26
  Joe McLean: It's a heightened universe, it's silly, it's goofy, you leave with a bright smile on your face.
• 16:33
  Joe McLean: And part of me is a little bit concerned for people who are gonna come to True West and be incredibly sullen, entertained, but you know, dealing with some pretty heavy stuff.
• 16:44
  Joe McLean: Um, but that's so exciting for us, and I and then I think um by proxy the audience, because um the the the joy of that is seeing these the same faces tackle all these different things things.
• 16:59
  Joe McLean: So there's kind of a meta element.
• 17:00
  Joe McLean: I don't know.
• 17:00
  Joe McLean: I think that that I feel like as an audience member, that would be a lot of fun to see the shift of the same company and kind of take that artistic journey with us.
• 17:10
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Now, when you say the same company, you you, the performers, are also in that show.
• 17:14
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: You're in all three shows?
• 17:15
  Joe McLean: We're in all three shows, yes, the four of us.
• 17:17
  Joe McLean: We had another actress who was in the first show only, because that's a that was a five-person play.
• 17:22
  Joe McLean: But yes, we are doing all three shows.
• 17:25
  Joe McLean: So we started with a a period piece romantic comedy.
• 17:29
  Joe McLean: Then we did a almost sketch comedy-esque farce where Jordan and I play clowns, we play uh like 30-ish characters each.
• 17:38
  Joe McLean: Uh uh, we play women, we play dogs, we play uh old Scottish men, we do tons of different accents, uh, all very heightened, you know, um vaudevillian.
• 17:50
  Joe McLean: And now we're taking it into grounded, gritty realism.
• 17:56
  Joe McLean: So, and what's the most kind of mind-bending thing is we'll have a nine to five rehearsal of True West, and we're in this, you know, we're going back and forth and we're really getting into it.
• 18:06
  Joe McLean: And then at night we have to go put on clown makeup and and dance around and make a fool of ourselves.
• 18:12
  Joe McLean: So it's a it's uh a lot of I feel, you know, in a really lovely way, feeling very stretched as an actor.
• 18:19
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: That sounds incredibly daunting, but so impressive.
• 18:22
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Like I guess I hadn't r really fully understood the depth of work that you guys are doing to jump between these two very different genres in one day.
• 18:36
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: It it for some reason I hadn't processed that it was all happening in one day.
• 18:40
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: You rehearse in the morning and then you perform at night.
• 18:42
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: My gosh, congratulations to all of you for being able to do that.
• 18:46
  Jordan Rashdan: Thank you.
• 18:46
  Jordan Rashdan: It's a blast.
• 18:47
  Jordan Rashdan: It is, it's definitely a lot of work, especially because each of those shows only get uh two weeks of rehearsal and then we put them up and then immediately start on the next one.
• 18:58
  Jordan Rashdan: It it's a tight chip.
• 19:00
  Jordan Rashdan: But uh the to go to your question about PS uh Princeton Summer Theater, it's it really is like a small community.
• 19:08
  Jordan Rashdan: It's not, I don't feel like I'm in like um a machine of if I were to say I was like on, it's hard to put into words, but it's like this is a family versus in I'm in like an office.
• 19:21
  Jordan Rashdan: You know, we wake up, we go all eat breakfast together, then we rehearse, like we spend a lot of time together, just the four of us, and um and in in all of like e-board of PST.
• 19:33
  Jordan Rashdan: Um, and it is not for profit.
• 19:35
  Jordan Rashdan: So we're like kind of all in this together.
• 19:37
  Jordan Rashdan: It just feels like we're all here for the love of the art and to just do some good stuff.
• 19:43
  Jordan Rashdan: Uh, but it is a lot of work, it's very daunting.
• 19:46
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Well, shout out to the executive board as well, all of every role is important.
• 19:50
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: We need to acknowledge that.
• 19:52
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Uh, but Wassip, can you weigh in as well?
• 19:55
  Wasif Sami: Yeah, I think what's remarkable is trusting young people with a lot of responsibility, you know, with the responsibility of huge parts that, you know, in a normal theater, these guys would never play these parts for another 20, 30 years.
• 20:09
  Wasif Sami: But how cool is it that they can attack this material now?
• 20:12
  Wasif Sami: And I feel the same as a director, you know, and also with the executive board and everyone behind the scenes, like we're taking responsibility for selling tickets, marketing the shows, designing the posters.
• 20:23
  Wasif Sami: Um, and you're like running a small business, running a theater, running doing it in a very family-style way, as Jordan was saying.
• 20:30
  Wasif Sami: Um, I'm pretty amazed by what 22-year-olds can do, and it gives me hope for our generation and the future too.
• 20:38
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Well, as someone slightly older than 22, it also gives me hope for the future.
• 20:44
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Uh what is it that you I mean, I can tell that you guys are so in love with what you do, which is I I love to see it, but what is it that you're excited to share with these new audiences?
• 20:56
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And what is it that makes this show?
• 20:59
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Let's let's go back to True West for a second.
• 21:01
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: What is it that makes this show so unique?
• 21:04
  Wasif Sami: I'm excited to share with audiences a chance for them to examine American masculinity.
• 21:11
  Wasif Sami: You know, I feel like there's a lot of big guys right now taking the country in many different directions, whether politically, in tech and Silicon Valley.
• 21:20
  Wasif Sami: And I feel like art is a way to reflect on that.
• 21:24
  Wasif Sami: What is the desire to dominate?
• 21:26
  Wasif Sami: Um, what is the desire and what are the consequences of unchecked glorified masculinity, but also where does that come from for individual people?
• 21:36
  Wasif Sami: Um, Shepard doesn't totally say these brothers are amazing and you should be like them, but doesn't also discount them either.
• 21:43
  Wasif Sami: And so that study, it's cool that theater can do that in a way that's also like really funny and entertaining and dramatic.
• 21:52
  Wasif Sami: Um, so we can sit with ideas in a way that's exciting and entertaining too.
• 21:57
  Wasif Sami: That's what I'm looking forward to.
• 22:00
  Jordan Rashdan: Yeah, personally, the story that I'm really excited to tell the audience is not to get too personal, but like this show is very um it deals with like, you know, alcoholic abuse of parents.
• 22:14
  Jordan Rashdan: And as someone that grew up with that, there's it's how what a gift that I'm able to tell this story of someone trying to deal with that trauma, that that that that thing that is just overtaking you as you grow up.
• 22:31
  Jordan Rashdan: Um, it's really, really beautiful to tell a story of how someone deals with that, whether or not this play has a happy ending.
• 22:37
  Jordan Rashdan: You're getting to see someone, a story that you can relate to, um, something that happened in your life.
• 22:43
  Jordan Rashdan: It's just really exciting to be like, oh, these are these people are like me.
• 22:47
  Jordan Rashdan: I'm watching this man who's very broken and trying to be masculine, but just is fighting.
• 22:52
  Jordan Rashdan: And I'm really excited to see, to have the audience see this character struggle to find that sense of self.
• 23:00
  Joe McLean: I um uh I don't want to plagiarize, but I was listening to um Philip Seymour Hoffman talk about the play when he did it on Broadway in the early 2000s.
• 23:10
  Joe McLean: And I think he made a really he said something really great, which was that, you know, with Shepard, any moment can inhabit any emotional state.
• 23:21
  Joe McLean: You can, you know, you read the text and it's so poetic and and so free that you could you could do that same page laughing, jovially, reminiscing, or you could do it as an angry out and out brawl, and it all works.
• 23:37
  Joe McLean: And that's what's so great about it being kind of a two-hander for the most part, is we get to veer with each other and dribble with each other and and see where it goes, and that audience will feel that kind of electricity, that alive thing.
• 23:50
  Joe McLean: It's not just hitting the beats of the story, it's really this kind of alive, alive uh thing.
• 23:57
  Joe McLean: Who's gonna win?
• 23:58
  Joe McLean: It's it's almost like, you know, hopefully it can get to that same kind of level of you know, sportsmanlike almost feel, like you're watching a game of tennis or uh, you know, um an invasion game.
• 24:12
  Joe McLean: And um, I think that's what's what suited so well structurally in the play that we can really play that game for the audience.
• 24:20
  Joe McLean: And I think that's gonna be a lot of fun and it'll be feel different every night.
• 24:24
  Joe McLean: So that that's the kind of stuff, the kind of work that I I cherish the most.
• 24:28
  Joe McLean: So yeah, I'm really excited about that.
• 24:30
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I'm so impressed by listening to you, gentlemen, especially in a time where, yes, we are discussing what is masculinity, what is toxic masculinity, what is positive masculinity.
• 24:42
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And it really is hopeful for me as a woman in the world navigating, dealing with men who are having this crisis of self, listening to you be so aware of your own, your own masculinity, your own vulnerabilities.
• 25:00
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And I thank you so much, Jordan, especially for sharing your own personal stories and bringing that to the stage because you're right, art is how we connect and how we understand one another.
• 25:13
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: So I just wanted to thank you for being so vulnerable and for sharing that.
• 25:17
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: But Jordan, you were about to say something.
• 25:19
  Jordan Rashdan: Yeah, of course.
• 25:20
  Jordan Rashdan: I think like it's so uh the gift of being human is that everyone has their own story, their own story to tell, you know, you know, man, woman, you know, queer race, like everyone has an upbringing and a story that they can tell other people, and you know, that's the beauty of theater.
• 25:36
  Jordan Rashdan: But what I was saying before about the play being so poetic, it, you know, for people listening, um, Wassif on day one of rehearsal shared something, but it one of the lines is we all sound the same when we're sloshed.
• 25:50
  Jordan Rashdan: We sort of just echo each other.
• 25:52
  Jordan Rashdan: And a big part of this play is um is those very beautiful poetic things.
• 25:56
  Jordan Rashdan: And um, it's fun to tackle as an actor because you don't want to sound like you're being a poet.
• 26:01
  Jordan Rashdan: But Sam Shepherd wrote it poetically, and so you just have to let that carry with that intention.
• 26:06
  Jordan Rashdan: So, in a way, this play is very much like a poem.
• 26:10
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: So beautifully said, everyone.
• 26:12
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I this has been a genuine joy speaking to you about this show.
• 26:16
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I'd just like to ask you is there anything you'd like to say to your audiences before we close out?
• 26:24
  Wasif Sami: It's gonna be a ride, hopefully, you know, and enjoy it and ride the ride.
• 26:29
  Wasif Sami: Um, and have fun and be prepared to think and feel and root for one brother, and then maybe change allegiances.
• 26:38
  Wasif Sami: Yeah, I'm inspired by what what Joe said too.
• 26:41
  Wasif Sami: Yeah, you're coming to a game, and the game is these two brothers connecting and fighting and everything in between.
• 26:50
  Joe McLean: Yeah, and maybe, I mean, you know, I even Sam Shepherd says at the start of the play in the in the play script, you know, uh for the design team and the directorial team, you know, don't make a choice that takes away from the truth of the scene to elicit some kind of statement or point, um, but to go against his wishes, you know, it's uh watching them and being in that uh taking on that experience, and then, you know, again, thinking about what that double nature might look for you.
• 27:20
  Joe McLean: I mean, you know, for so for me, I was thinking about it's like I clearly, you know, I love the theater, I love acting, and and the and the and the fragility it takes to excel in that.
• 27:34
  Joe McLean: But my upbringing, I would went to all boys' boarding schools, I was in, you know, rugby locker rooms four times a week.
• 27:41
  Joe McLean: The very masculine charged, who's on top atmosphere was a huge part of my my teenage years and and and still is.
• 27:50
  Joe McLean: And um and that's a weird thing to kind of um you know going from a theater rehearsal and then going to a frat party, you know, something like that.
• 28:01
  Joe McLean: And and um getting, you know, how do you how do you reconcile the two wolves within you, basically?
• 28:08
  Joe McLean: I think that that's that's something to think about.
• 28:11
  Jordan Rashdan: Yeah.
• 28:12
  Jordan Rashdan: You're in for a treat.
• 28:14
  Jordan Rashdan: It's gonna be a fun time.
• 28:17
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: A fun time and perhaps a personal reckoning.
• 28:21
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I suppose it all depends on how you perceive the two wolves inside yourself.
• 28:25
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: For more information about True West and the 39 Steps, be sure to visit Princeton Summer Theater.org.
• 28:31
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: If you liked this episode, be sure to review, subscribe, and tell your friends.
• 28:36
  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.com.
• 28:43
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: The Jersey Arts Podcast is presented by Art Pride New Jersey, advancing a state of creativity since 1986.
• 28:49
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: The show was co-founded by and currently supported by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
• 28:55
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: This episode was hosted, edited, and produced by me, Gina Marie Rodriguez.
• 28:59
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Executive producers are Jim Atkinson and Isaac Serna-Diez.
• 29:03
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: And my thanks, of course, to Wasif Sami, Joe McLean, and Jordan Rashdan.
• 29:07
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: I'm Gina Marie Rodriguez for the Jersey Arts Podcast.
• 29:10
  Gina Marie Rodriguez: Thanks for listening.