Let's All Tend Our Own Victory Gardens

I Survived Theatre School

Toxic showrunners, giving feedback, halitosis, The Taking of Pelham 123, Victory Gardens Theatre, Autism Spectrum Disorder.

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):
2 (10s):
And I'm Gina Kalichi.

3 (11s):
We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it.

4 (15s):
20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all.

3 (21s):
We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet?

2 (34s):
You're committed to that, Joe, how you doing pal

1 (41s):
For your big adventure?

2 (42s):
Getting ready for my Pee-wee's big adventure, by the way, I watched that movie again, not too long ago and I liked it even more. I

1 (53s):
Was so thrilled to hear.

2 (54s):
Yeah. I really, really liked that movie. I think it's so funny. The other thing I, oh, so you had texted me earlier about into the woods.

1 (1m 3s):
Oh yeah. I actually genuinely wanted to know cause is this w two in this episode, are we going to hear from C? Like, is this the,

2 (1m 12s):
He didn't make the cut. I'm sorry.

1 (1m 16s):
Are you kidding?

2 (1m 17s):
I'm not kidding. It just, it did. Well, it was,

1 (1m 21s):
Oh gee. I feel sad in my heart. What?

2 (1m 25s):
I'm sorry. It was just boring. It was just boring. You know, there's an age that kids reach. There's just a line. They go past a line. It's like, okay, you're not as

1 (1m 35s):
Sweet a minute. Wait a minute because it's

2 (1m 37s):
When they're not. So it's it's because she's no, she's self-aware

1 (1m 41s):
I like had the bus time.

2 (1m 43s):
I'm so glad and I'll forever treasure it in my heart as this beautiful, lovely conversation that I, and, and my family and you will love, but it was not giving me it was not giving me. Okay,

1 (1m 57s):
Great. Well, that's important. Like maybe it was a good, like,

2 (2m 2s):
It was a good experience. It was a good experience for her and, you know, and we had wanted to do it. And so when, when, when I did crew for, into the woods, you know, we had to listen

1 (2m 15s):
To that.

2 (2m 18s):
We had to listen to that song or that, that music constantly. And actually, I think that when you, when we were in crew, like we didn't get to see the show

1 (2m 29s):
Ever. Never, never knew

2 (2m 31s):
Listen to something only, and you don't get to take in the whole thing. It's just not the same. And so I had it in my mind that I really hated that show. And when the movie came out, my kids were really interested in seeing it. I kind of liked it. I at least understood the story. I was at least like, oh, this is what this is about. But seeing it on Broadway, I was like, okay, now I get it. I get it. I totally get why. And it's not just that it was on Broadway. Is that I understand what it's about now, because,

1 (3m 10s):
Well, I think, I also think it's so interesting about the theater school aspect, right? So when we were in theater school, we, I didn't have any capacity to understand about loss and love. Yeah,

2 (3m 28s):
Yeah, yeah. So it was great. So I loved to NPV. I loved so I've, I'm actually, I had wanted a lump for a long time to ask you, you told me about a few things that you've watched rewatch haven't hold held up, which we all have those things. It's like, oh, this is not nearly as good as I thought it was, or it's funny, but what has, have, has anything gotten better? Like you didn't appreciate it at the time. And then

1 (3m 55s):
Yeah. So all the like old political movies or movies that have a bent with social justice stuff like, so the taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 is my favorite movie of all time.

2 (4m 11s):
I don't even know what that is.

1 (4m 13s):
You have to, they made a remake with Denzel Washington and John Travolta that's horrific, but the original is Walter Matthau and a bunch of other dope actors. And it's about, it's a train heist movie. It's about New York city and the train thunder, obviously the subway being taken over brilliant acting, brilliant writing, great social commentary about the haves and haves nots anyway. So that has held up and gotten better. But all of John Hughes movies should be burned in a heap,

2 (4m 53s):
Just trash.

1 (4m 54s):
What, what the fuck? What are we doing?

2 (4m 57s):
God, there's so much, we didn't know. There's just so much. We didn't know. And actually that's been kind of, my theme recently is like, you know how we always say, oh man, think about how many people before there was this acceptance around LGBTQ, think about how many people just died and you know, for him, for all of history up until that point, it was just horrible for those people. And I, so I've been wondering recently, well, okay, well, so what's our version of that. What's our thing that we don't know. We, we ascribe something to something that it's not, and that we'll understand later or, or not at all. And one example is autism.

2 (5m 42s):
I have recently learned that somebody I love is on the spectrum and it has really positively changed my perception. It's literally like a person does a behavior and you interpret it this one way and then you learn something. And then that same behavior no longer is interpreted that way.

1 (6m 13s):
Absolutely

2 (6m 14s):
Behavior that drove me crazy made me angry, riled me up. Now I'm like, oh, you have autism. Got it, got it. I'm so sorry. I didn't get it. And actually I'm looking back through my family tree and I'm going, oh, I bet my mom's mom had autism. And actually she had a therapist who said that to her at once. And when my mom told me that I'm like, what? She didn't have autism, but she was on the spectrum. Right. When rain man came out, it taught us that it made us think that all autism was that right.

1 (6m 49s):
Right. Was like savant or like, so on the other end of the spectrum, right? Oh my gosh. Yeah. So autism. Yeah. That's so interesting. Well, you know, I, I think I've mentioned on the podcast that like, I use the word lame and my cousin called me on it and I called someone else on it recently. And that's how change is made. Like literally. And so there is, I'm like obsessed with the idea of how does real change get made? Like not in, just in words, but like, what is the alchemy that happens with change?

1 (7m 32s):
And I know the answer, but I'm doing a lot of research.

2 (7m 36s):
Well, the thing that you just mentioned about using that word reminds me of in medical school or medical training, it's they say, see one, do one, teach one. So when you're learning procedures, you watch it once you do it once and then you teach it, like, that's, that's the, that's the rate at which you're expected to absorb information, but actually that's exactly what you did with that word. You heard that you heard or saw that, that wasn't okay. You started to do the right thing yourself and then you taught somebody else. But that's how change happens.

1 (8m 18s):
Let me run this by you. with this highlight

2 (8m 32s):
Beachy wave, actually, that's funny because earlier today I was like, should I get my hair cut before

1 (8m 38s):
I love that? See what you want? So it change the way change gets made. Okay. I have a little story about a show about show running. Okay. I was talking to it. What I want to ask you. I was talking to a friend and she's dope and she's a new friend and she's fancy. Or, and then I am in terms of where she's at in her career as a writer. Okay, fine. Has this great idea for a series has a lit agent, lit agent says, Hey, every production company read this dope script and th...