Bernard Gersten and Anne Cattaneo

00:04 Okay. I'm an cattaneo. I am a friend and colleague of Bernard Gerson were speaking on May 20th 2009 at Lincoln Center on the Plaza just behind the Metropolitan Opera.

00:19 My name is Bernard Kirsten. My age is 86. The location is Lincoln Center, New York, and I and an our friends and professional colleagues for Lo these many years. We were together at Lincoln Center theater 20. I work with you for 20 years. I've known you for longer than that, and my first question is going back to before you came to Lincoln Center as a employee and to run the theaters. I'm looking for some memories that you have of seeing plays at Lincoln Center.

01:01 Well, my earliest memories go beyond or before seeing a play at Lincoln Center. My first memories were when construction began at Lincoln Center, which is at the moment of serving its 50th Anniversary. So some 50 years ago. I was the executive stage manager at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut. And in the spring of 1957. I vividly remember walking along the block of 65th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue on my way to a rehearsal Hall that we were using on the next block between Amsterdam and West End Avenue where I we were in rehearsal for my first season as the stage manager of the American Shakespeare Festival with the director John Housman in the co-director Jacqueline, Du and walking along 65th Street. I remember the fence and I thought I owe this is where they're building Lincoln Center little did I think in

02:01 Long ago time. What is it? It's not 50 years ago more than 50 years ago that this number of years later. I would be sitting here recording my memories of Lincoln Center theater and the last 24 years, which we're about to get to the end of in which we have been running Lincoln such a thing and that there was a rehearsal Hall in the next block because I also in at one point at Lincoln Center was was researching when we were working on mulebone by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes wrote the book Force for streets with a street scene.

02:43 Yes, but streets eating and I think that was set on 65th Street and I was under the impression that the whole block was basically tenements before it was torn down. So I'm surprised to hear that that there was an actual building large enough to have rehearsal studios in it was a building that was used. It was a garage factually for one of the New York City theatrical transfer theatrical hauling firms. It was the Schumer haulers had a warehouse building where they kept their trucks and on the second floor of this Warehouse, which was at 50 ft Wide building, which is very good for rehearsal Hall without columns. And on the second floor is where we rehearsed. It was a garage and did you see any of the plays when the first incarnation of Lincoln Center was still in the tent down at Washington Square? Yes. I did. I saw I saw a man of lamancha which

03:43 Not a Lincoln Center production, but one that's followed the season that Lincoln Center the precursor Lincoln Center theater was there and I don't remember specifically what I saw but I think I did see the Arthur Miller play after the after the fool and and I think they also did the changeling I didn't see the trailer and then and then then they came up here with the new new any any shows you particularly remember from the Irving Blau years were dismissed and forgotten. Cuz they end and Whitehead to quickly leave the first management of the intended Lincoln Center theater at Lincoln Center theater, although it had various names through the years and perhaps the most. Well, it's been leaking.

04:43 For 24 years and that was our name for the theater. It previously was known as the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center. I know they would never achieve a state of being an actual Repertory Theater. That was the name it went by and then it was called the Vivian Beaumont theater during one regime and so it's been a mix of names and the most consistent name has been Lincoln Center theater name that we chose when Gregory Mosher and I were appointed to run the theater in 1985 and we thought Lincoln Center theater was a pretty good name because it told you a lot about it right then and there and that's so that's the name that it we've been going by ever since.

05:26 It any any plays you particularly loved and remembered from the earlier. So that's before we get to our ears.

05:35 I remember thinking of the theater is being a rather stiff and formal place in an unusual-looking theater. I must say that my love for the theater which I pray deeply have cultivated over the years was not as great when I was just a member of the audience. I didn't begin to appreciate it as much as I do now after working here for 24 years and that's why I think that's understandable because there's nothing like working at a theater to get to know it and to appreciate its its virtues and its values but we also made changes in the theater that improved considerably and we learned all of us learned about the theater as we as we practiced in it and that was logical as well. And although it was a theater that has over the years been much-maligned by practitioners and critics alike in the more recent years. I think more recent is the last 20 years easily and perhaps more and appreciate.

06:35 Love the feeling what could be done here has grown considerably and in my opinion it is one of the great theaters out of of the United States and one of the the greatest theater in the United States is not in my view an exaggerated opinion. I remember being quite overwhelmed by the Threepenny Opera for ones. I just come to the east coast and discovering Raul Julia and people who later become friends Blair Brown was in that production. That was an absolutely mesmerizing. I thought use of the space and incredible acting company and wonderful music.

07:19 And I was in love with my husband who I'm never been married to for 30 years and I had saved all my money and gone to Pearl paint. My husband's a painter and bought an incredibly expensive tube of his most favorite color cadmium red light, which is a very expensive color and I was rushing to make the curtain and I came back and went into the wonderful bathrooms at the Vivian Beaumont and I almost dropped it and broke it but it did I saved it was a sort of all my saved everything up for months to be able to buy this. So I associate my discovery of the Threepenny Opera with the cadmium red light and my husband many years ago 3, Penny Opera was during the brief residents of the New York Shakespeare Festival where I was the associate producer at the time at Lincoln Center theater, we were there for that.

08:19 Two and a half three years during which the most notable Productions were in the Threepenny Opera and rather fantastic Cherry Orchard with them. I mean it will I really worth and directed by Andres Urban and I think the wrecked Designs By Request a very memorable tell you what your that was and the stage was never better used before and maybe it has been sent it. When at the final in the final act when I really worth made great great Loops running around to the stage saying farewell to the home and we haven't talked to her yet about about our wonderful theater downstairs, but used to be called The Forum and then was renamed the Mitzi Newhouse because during that same time I think you had a wonderful production of David, Rabe streamers.

09:19 If you go back up, if you go to the library and you look is that ran for quite a while. I don't know exactly how long but if you look at the roster of who came in as Replacements on the guards because it was a course of military setting in Vietnam setting. It's incredible who Brian Dennehy was a guard. I mean, they're all kinds of people that have gone on to Greater Fame who will work through that production carrying rifles. And then how many lines it's quite true. That's one of the great things about having the library here to it that you can always go referencing things that you've heard of semi forgotten and said, oh my god, look who was in that show etcetera. What's interesting to me about the theater is that it's now it's now nearly 50 years old and will be 50 years old next next year and during its first 25 years. It was a highly trouble theater in people came and wrestled with it free for different regimes actually worked on running the state of the first four white heading.

10:18 And they had a difficult time and before they worked at that pre-preliminary temporary theater down in Washington Square and after a couple of years Whitehead was fired by the board and when Whitehead was fired cuz I unquit and that was the first rasheem the next machine to be hired where two men named Jules Erving and her Blau who had been running the San Francisco actors workshop. And the amazing thing was that San Francisco is a small City in those years relatively small. I've been still small and the theater there was a it was virtually a semi amateur operation. There was theater was not a notable activity of San Francisco at that time. It was long before a CT and it was long before any of the theaters that have since given San Francisco sort of reputation as a theater tell

11:16 Any white cloud Irving came and blough lasted I think two years and then he left in disarray and she'll stay down for seven or eight more years. That was very troubled. He never had enough money to do anything he wanted to do and that was I think the principal problem that he had they never got to shake down the theater and shake down whatever technical problems that had such as Acoustics in the seating arrangement has not altered ever ever ever and the use of the stage which was built as a. Multi-purpose going to do a purpose stage that might be used as a proscenium stage or might also be used as a Thrust. They had not yet been proven her tried out sufficiently and it wasn't until subsequent years. And in fact in the early years of Lincoln Center theater that the stage was clearly delineate it as a Thrust stage no matter how you how much

12:16 Mucked around with that you didn't improve it by trying to deny or or ignore the fact that it wasn't its best formation as a threat stay with the great surrounding area that the theater provide as areas for great Scenic the spine and Specialty theatrical moments and day it is ex machina. Yeah. I know that there's a story to Dan Sullivan. Tell Stan Ben Sullivan who's worked at Lincoln Center, as you know many times and it's one of the best directors in the city was the first actor on stage at the Beaumont. And the first actor on stage at the Mitzi. He was a son culotte coming on in downtown Steffi at the alliance and I I don't remember what he was in downstairs we go out for walks or without love, but no lie.

13:16 San Francisco actors Workshop in the high 60s was one of very few know towards a poor theater very rough hewn actors doing everything themselves building set etcetera. So he describes a production they did I think a good person of setzuan by Brak or something where they all pushed the scenery on and moved it themselves and you know, it was an ensemble feeling and then when they came to Lincoln Center, everything was mechanized and even though it worked actually better because it went bad Cruise helping them. The spirit of the Enterprise was so radically different in the Glamorous surroundings of the Beaumont said that the production just wasn't as successful. It didn't have the same Spirit or the same energy when you transplanted. This was heard of Scrappy acting company out of San Francisco. I brought it into the heart of New York. Well, I think that the expectations were so distorted that San Francisco. Being a theater town.

14:16 Not have a Cadre of actors. That's the equivalent of what Chicago has had for example for so many years and having a theater at all in San Francisco was it seems to me had to have been a great achievement just up persistent and it's scraping by and having actors who at that primary employment to sustain their lives. And that's a very different business then running the theater in New York, which is the heart of the American Theater Willie or Nelly like it or don't it still is it's where all the resorts is are where the best playwrights are where the best directors are and where lots and lots of known actors in young actress and other actors from all walks of America. Come to really act Associates where they come here is where they are. Let me let me switch and ask you another thing.

15:09 I'm just wondering what your favorite moments have been your on the inside your offices, you know of 15 ft from 15 yards from the stage while you've been at Lincoln Center any favorite stories to tell about about things that happened backstage or things that you saw on the stage or you things you had to do or just a wonderful moments like never went to Serafina company was here and they all sang Christmas carols in the lobby and that amazing South African acapella intonation. I mean, it was just a thrilling Christmas celebration that was just for the company in the staff and we all gathered in and they had just arrived here.

15:49 I'm just wondering other other moments backstage with companies that you that you recalled it that gave you great joy better so frequent in there. So they happen all the time that I ice. I forgot them. I forgot them the minute after they happen but just as you speak. Well remember when Bishop tutu came the time when Miriam Makeba came backstage and the company dissolved into tears of the idea of meeting her and we just happen to have a documentary camera crew at hand at that moment. I saw I remember that very vividly but other memories are of a different nature. I remember one day when the job required that I go to Washington to inform a touring company of anything goes that we had sent out telling him telling them that they were going to be on the road for a year. So they all gave up their apartments and got into road traveling mode and the show was a disaster.

16:49 On the road and we had four terrible weeks in Boston and then went to Washington and had four more terrible week and the tour just fell apart and I have that they had to go down and tell the company that we were closing the following Saturday and I think it was a Wednesday and I went down there and told them and of course they they were shocked and disappointed. They will have these terrible problems about what they were where they were going to live having sublet and but they were very cheerful. I thought I'd get them this terrible news and at the end of my little speech backstage they all applauded me I said, why are they letting me what I bought them such terrible news that I flew back to New York in time to meet with a Seraphina company, which also had been performing that day and I saw them at the end of their show and I had to tell them that they the show is going to be extended and they couldn't go home for the holidays as they had hoped to do because we're extending it and so they fell into tears because I

17:49 Tell you they weren't closing. So that was a very funny day to have both those experiences in a single day. But I don't remember special circumstances so much as the overall conditions of the theater like the most recent thing was seeing curtain up on South Pacific this afternoon, and they are the actors all gathered together in their the thousand people in the Overture play and the other pit of the orchestra rolls back in the audience is thrilled and there are a thousand people thrilling to the sounds of Some Enchanted Evening. And that's real that immeasurable Unforgettable ongoing thrill of a play that excites an audience that attract an audience and excites an audience and satisfies an audience is the best thing there is in the theater. There's nothing better and downstairs below. There's a new musical called Happiness and I will see curtain down in about

18:49 Half an hour of it and they're also the only answer surprised by it and delighted by it and come away a little bit chasing a little bit sad and then a little bit happy to have spent the past 2 hours in a play called Happiness and meanwhile down at the Belasco Theater where we have a very very highly regarded and then extraordinaire least successful production of Joe Turner's come and gone August Wilson's unquestioned best play unquestionable best play beautifully beautiful directed by Bartlett Sher and beautifully performed by a company that has been nominated for I think six or seven Tony's in the whole world and having three such companies going on plus rehearsal for another new play that's in the LCT 3 Series experimental Wing if there is such a thing since the whole place is one big experimental wing.

19:49 Of Lincoln Center theater theater that's a 24 years in enjoys all the thing that enjoys anthropomorphically the theater enjoys itself. That's identity as a living breathing pulsating regarded.

20:08 Able ambitious theater, I I've always been fond of the very unique car that takes place in the rehearsal room cuz I spend a lot of time in rehearsals and and when plays are really cooking there's a very unique atmosphere in each rehearsal room. When I think of a number of them quite fondly we did a production years ago of Erica goshen's play Suburbia. And in any example that you're talkin about you can think of all the wonderful actors and directors and designers who participated in those and that was an extremely intense rehearsal where everyone smoked even though I think it was just on the at the time when smoking was about to be or just had been banned in all of our buildings, but I have never been in a room with more smoke and the entire company was so intense. This is Steve Zahn and Josh Duhamel.

21:08 Martha Plimpton and and wonderful company and they would they would leave the actual, you know center of the room. There's no stage down. There is sit down in their chairs and light a cigarette and then worry about what they had done and something about the smoking contributed to the intensity of that production, which just you know, which between that and the very kind of loud hit music bled into the excitement that the audience is felt when they finally got to see it in the theater itself, but I always remember these through the Suburbia smoking rehearsals and the and the and the wonderful rehearsals were down George Turner. We Had a Little Lamb again a little reunions with her friend Taj Mahal who came in but he composed the music for Mule Barn and I remembered in that particular production the wonderful rehearsal breaks because he was in a room for a month with a band and we had in that production in a Theresa Merritt ebony Joanna mean he's amazing singers and we would all just sing and dance at the rehearsal brakes.

22:08 We have to get a company of I think that was it 42 or something with Stage managers and cruise and it was like I was like a party but Taj Mahal was playing with his van and it just did not get any better than that that and the and the rehearsals for the for the rundown Curtain Call for the coast of Utopia. Where among the most fun things. I remember of those years will speak has that for a handle. Perhaps the most thrilling part of a million Thrills, which is what the coast of Utopia provided for everybody in it never in my life has a place so infested infected effected a group of about 35-40 actors and perhaps the greatest days of all were the days of the marathon when the cast after having mastered or at least gotten through all three plays having stage them barely part 3 and play them in rap for sports.

23:08 Wedding part 2 other rehearse part 3 and then part 3 was added to the Repertory. So they were 9 hours of the coast of utopia and on a series of Saturdays. We played the three plays in sequence for 9 are stretch from 11 in the morning till 11 at night with two one hour dinner break for the comfort company and for the audience and I remember the reaction of a company to the first one that you were kind enough to feed everyone lunch dinner. So the company wouldn't troop off stage and the audience would have to go to restaurants. But the company got to go down to the large rehearsal room and we're fed up the lovely lunch in the lovely dinner, but the sheer prodigious nest of the past and the breadth of the assignment especially for the leading actors was

23:59 Nothing in the theatrical literature quite matches that I mean there have been Shakespeare Marathon that have gone on for 12 hours to say this because it was a contemporary flight and about a. In Russian history that you could almost touch because it was that that contemporary and that brilliantly written in one of my favorite. My favorite notices was I think of the New York Review of Books which gave it a wonderful review and and they said to see to see a young person walking her lie across the plaza at Lincoln Center at 11 at night dialing a cell phone and then speaking into a cell phone and say I guess what happened about a play about a 19th century Russia socialist of plays that have been done in the past twenty-four years. It's something in the hundred and fifteen fast and of those hundred and fifty

24:59 Play the number that have been noteworthy in find my account not by the critics account or Not by the audience response has been extraordinary some 34 35 of them have been extraordinary. That means there been others that have been exceptionally good or very good or excellent, but the extraordinary ones are what's impressive and understanding you and I remember the very very, well the Henry the fourth. Was there anything ever more delightful than Henry the fourth unless it was Ivana Ivana for such a room. And and so it goes in one of my favorites was a man of no importance musical work that we did in the and contact the musical original Musical that started in the Mitzi and went up to the Beaumont area Dairy Queen Sisters. Rosensweig by Wendy.

25:54 So the list is really long and remarkable. I have I have the privilege while your office has a window and you are 30 ft from the stage. My office is an old dressing room. So I'm actually lucky enough to be down on the Beaumont level. So there's my office and then the casting office and then the dressing room start right there and I I have an a sofa in my office which I've inherited from the set the speakers to push in play gave me my most recent sofa which which features many actors who sit there and pour their hearts out to me. I'm always having somebody knock on my door for you and Oberon who I of course adore who was Tsar Alexander heard significance of Utopia used to stick his head in and say my Oracle they are you here. Can I come and light on your couch? I think emitter Campbell Scott used to come by when we were doing measure for measure and I look up and say who is this incredibly handsome guy? There's always Cavill.

26:54 I am the dead mother, which is a great privilege.

27:06 It doesn't mean anything to us because we don't do it to me. See I see them a lot of till they open and it's always us Egyptian question because it's it's always something that I think audiences do not insist don't receive any difference. They can see the first preview they can see you two weeks in and they seen it but for those of us who work on the place, we see enormous differences from performance or performance and this also maybe something that the people on the outside back at the adjusting a lot of people don't know this even on the inside that after every rehearsal and every performance of a play the stage manager writes a report and the report is sent to all the people working on the play The Producers the designers and others and it outlines what happens, for example, I am very fond of our stage manager for Joe Turner's come and go

28:04 Who's wrangling a big company downtown? And she has to double check on you know, is it is it did this to the set-pieces come out correctly? And is somebody subbing on a follow spot and who's laid to half hour but we have two pigeons in this play and I say to my children the only people who have the only objects or whatever who have been perfect are the pigeons and in the reports everyday Narda says Eugenia was wonderful tonight. She came hard for her appearance, but it's only Eugenia who's been perfect every night, but we'd we document and eventually goes up to the library every performance of every play and each one is quite different in the stage managers will note. You know, what really connected tonight and act 1 scene 2 and South Pacific. It's interesting to hear my friend or tell us that you know, they did nothing like a Dame is were great tonight and in that Kelly and Powell or grape, you know when their scenes and we will exhaust

29:04 So so audiences don't notice it but we do and I think that you'd I think they just a final thing to say on it. It's one of the best things to do is to see a show and it's closing because given the opportunity that actors can take when they're really playing a show in they discovered so many things that they that they didn't have didn't have the time to know even though we give them lots of time when the show first opened and those performances are so rich and so amazing and Enterprise I was think totally different than than they were when they first opened so you don't get tired of watching a show many times cuz you see so many different things Little Things.

29:46 Show us theater has this transformative capacity. What is it like to see people walk into a show in one state and then leave the theater perhaps that's a very interesting question because I think that those of us who spend our professional lives there are economic lives in the theater in part are committed because we see the theater is being important not just to ourselves into her co-workers, but to those people who join us as as audiences well and the word transformative is is a word that you don't get to use very often one doesn't get to use it because so little of life seems to be transformative. I think that the election of the president that was Bob was a transnational he's speaking the transformative moment that is stretched into past the hundred days already and the transformation goes on but in the theater

30:47 And it'll probably even when it's less than it best. The theater is prospectively a transformative Force. I believe that the theater was life-enhancing that you live longer. If you go to the theater, I believe that laughter in the theater, which I think is better than I don't know laughter in a saloon say Earl after watching a television set that the laughter of the theater is life-enhancing headed that sends transformative and I have a vivid memory of sitting on the steps during a performance of the House of Blue leaves John where is play when it was revived and it was a revitalizing force and I say force in the biggest sense of the word and when it was done at the Mitzi Newhouse enliven the theater at brought life to the theater, which is been sitting dead and still and unused for so many years before I was sitting on the steps watching them perform and a gray-haired couple were sitting to the right of me and see if I didn't I didn't identify who

31:46 They were but they were sitting there and they were rocking and rolling in their seats with the laughter and I watch them and I thought that's going to make them livable over this being at the place going to make them live longer and then when they got up I knew them they were it was. I forgot the same the guy who wrote the best profiles for the New Yorker the classic stylist hamburger hamburger hamburger, and I think was am but I'm not that it was them and I spent a long time with Philip was writing a profile on joke. Anyway, I saw them in that was such an imprint on my memory that I've never forgotten the side of them at the play.

32:29 In the expanding or lengthening their lives by being at a flood and so the theater has that capability. It seems to me and in that sense. It is transformative Beyond its reach another where the theater only reaches a thousand people 1500 people 300 people or a hundred people, but it doesn't matter what the number is the effect is improved perspective light. Obviously, we have clouds in the audience set, you know, if threw a stone or Rock their heads and it wouldn't transform them. But so those are the resisters, but for most people if you allow the play into your life into your mind into your emotion, they are indeed prospectively transformative.

33:22 Well, since you didn't get in any I'm just going to jump in the way transformed. My life is my life has been for low all these years a constant process of finding play finding means having place that I'm associated with it. I've been either the stage manager of an early day or the associate producer of where the executive producer of displays in my life there. What I do is either people make things out of wood and some people poor steel ingots and others build walls out of brick and stone and marble and stuff like that. One of which is tremendous task is no question about them and that are building blocks of life in an advanced culture and society and God knows I haven't even mentioned Educators and scientist and those who look Beyond, you know, right up to the exterior, wherever the hell the end of the universe. Is there as far as you can see so all of us all

34:22 Engaged in this remarkable work. I if I had it to do all over again. I wouldn't I had nothing that has appeared to me appeals to me more yet. Then does the theater my pleasure at walking through the to the dressing rooms today and just welcoming of the actress to the matinee that they're about to go into is one of the great pleasures of of Life there dear friends and co-workers and colleagues who lend themselves to this grand scheme in which we put on these places where a manufacturer that puts on plays for what are we doing now for about twenty thousand people a week will come to the three theaters that were operating it and other ones are always being prepared. You're fighting new place that we're getting ready for next year. So that process that ongoing process which is not driven by money by the way, it operates as a result.

35:22 Having the money to spend and collecting money, but that's not what it's about. It's about what we do which is where the Transformations we come in here and get a little bit transformed and I think I think that's a very good point and maybe a good way to to approach the end of our conversation because because when you get good at what you do you in the theater, it's because you learn how to collaborate and and that word is so overused in some regards. But if you if you are a theater person and you been at the other person for a long time, you you intuitively know what that means which is that the product of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and if you are working with equals or people who are born a better than you are. It's a wonderful feeling it stretches you in an indent Allen jizz you and and you become friends and colleagues in a wonderful way and the directors who who really can can lead this.

36:22 As well as any and we've been fortunate to work with some are ones who know I guess the TV the famous saying is they ride the horse in the direction. It's going they they control things but they are able to ask of their actors in The designers surprise me show me and it's a very heavy environment to be in its 1 where you have to trust your collaborators, but it's when were you can dare to do to do your very best and Adam that comes a kind of transformative Joy. You really become very close friends and people always say in the theater. How is it that you can spend? You know, I spend some time some days and nights here with marimba Tech rehearsals and production meetings at midnight. Everything should work on seems to be that 3 hours show you spend an enormous amount of time with people for a. Of time like a month or something maybe a month-and-a-half and then you would see them again for 2 years, but when you run into them again, it's like no time has passed and if you can just go right back into a conversation and when you spend enough time in this business, you you Loop

37:22 Get into all the actors you've done that with all the designers and you have a huge family that is a very peaceful family a cuck. I mean, they're people have disagreements occasionally, but in the end you leave it behind you and and we've been working together for 20 years. We don't have any disagreements on the staff. We we rarely have disagreements sometimes in Productions, but we work through them and I think that's something that that is a unique quality. Maybe it happened in sports too. But as its unique quality of our profession is this particular way we have of collaborating that's very emotional and very freeing but also very bonding in terms of family. And I remember when I was first thing about the theater Matic most important characteristic was it was that the theater must engender Trust on the part of the artist another way to succeed in the theater. You have to have the clock.

38:22 Relation of the artist to comprise the workers of the theater and to get that to get those artists to work. They have to trust the theater where they're working and it begins with a playwright who and trust her or his play to the theater and said don't screw it up. You know, I trust you to do this with Integrity. I trust you to do this with Artistry. I trust you to have the money that you say you're going to have to pay the actors or whatever. It is to buy the scenery. So trust is essential and I always thought that the trust of the theater was like the trust that trapeze artist must have I don't I was never a trapeze artist, but I thought what wouldn't what would embolden a flyer in a trapeze act to leave a safe place and fly through the air trusting that the catcher will be at the appointed place at that appointed fraction of a second when the flyer has to catch the catcher and the catcher has to catch.

39:22 The flyer. Well, I thought that must be of the greatest manifestation of trust in the physical universe that I could think of and analogizing that to the theater. The theater is indeed the catch in the theater and all the artists who work in the theater are essentially flyers and if they don't trust the catcher, they don't want to fly and it's only to the extent that they have learned over a. Of time that the catcher will be there for them at the appointed moment with the appointed Goods, which are two outstretched hands and and that has great vividness for me. There's another thing I wanted to mention which was the sense of collaboration writers for the theater playwrights in the theater or I think held in great.

40:10 Other writers were there newspaper writers of fiction writers for writers who work on their own behalf are jealous of play, right? Because play rights are. Their typewriters day and night day and night until they turned into a publisher playwrights get the right and right writing and they turned into a theater and then the playwright are allowed to attend rehearsals and to interact with the directors in with a design is it to have a pinion and to be rejected so they're implying so their lives are all the Richer because I get to be not the solo artist in a Garret and is clean well-lighted room, but in a rehearsal Hall dirty Smokey formally Smoky Hill family and the Lord of movies. There's no equivalent experience in the movie movies you act on call when somebody says action and you were acting you active page of dialog if you're lucky.

41:09 Orsini a scene or kiss or a hug or a look or but it's not doing a play for a night or doing 9 hours of a play for a night or a day or spending twenty years together. Thank you Bernie.

41:26 It's over.