Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in SoHo. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you are here. Today, we'll hear highlights from our sold-out Get Lit with All Of It event at the New York Public Library. We hosted author Katie Kitamura for her novel Audition. We heard new music from Broadway star and musician Reeve Carney.

We'll also kick off a week of Tony's coverage leading up to Sunday's awards. We'll start with the team behind Operation Mincemeat, the Broadway musical about a World War II deception mission. It's been nominated for best musical. That's the plan. Let's get this started with an off-Broadway play, a skate park love story.

[music]

When casting the play Bowl EP, a posting on Instagram from 2024 read, "Quentavius da Quitter and Kelly K Klarkson need to find a name for their rap group. Through flirty interludes, cringy overshares, and practicing their ollies, they grow increasingly close. Skating and smoking. Skating and drinking. Skating and exorcising a demon. Enter Bowl EP; a skate park in the middle of a wasteland at the edge of the galaxy."

Okay, that sounds like a lot, but it really is a love story set in a makeshift skate park. It's really an empty swimming pool, and you'll find it right there in the theater on 15th Street. That's the stage with the audience surrounding it. Two people meet, they flirt, they dream of making a hip-hop album, they take some drugs. That is when the truth and the trepidation take hold.

The first part of the play is set up like a track list. The second part is an acid trip with an animated persona with some stories to spill. Bowl EP was a New York Times critic's pick, and it called it poignant and memorable. A collab Vineyard National Black Theater and The New Group. It's at the Vineyard Theater through June 15th. It was written and directed by Nazareth Hassan, who is here with us alongside actors Felicia Curry and Essence Lotus. Welcome to all of you.

Felicia Curry: Thank you.

Nazareth Hassan: Thank you for having us.

Felicia Curry: Thanks for having us.

Alison Stewart: Naz, what-- Nazareth?

Nazareth Hassan: Nazareth is fine, yes.

Alison Stewart: Okay, Nazareth. What was the seed in the story of Bowl EP?

Nazareth Hassan: I think the seed of the play was really about me wanting to understand desire and understand how desire lived in my body. The relationship between desire and risk. I think when I wrote it, I was-- I wrote it about six years ago, and at this time was really trying to figure out what love was like, how to love. I think as I was writing this, I was really feeling experimental in terms of how I could figure that out for myself. I think that's where the skateboarding came in. I feel like skateboarding itself is a very risk-driven and experimental action to do with your body. It involves very clear boundaries about what is and isn't going to work.

Alison Stewart: Essence, what did you think when you read the description of the play and then of your character?

Essence Lotus: For me, when I read made a lot of sense because I know the genius that is Naz. [chuckles] In terms of the way how all of these different elements come together to tell the fullness of a story and make each character full, and helps us to reflect on ourselves and the form itself as a medium, it made a lot of sense to me.

Alison Stewart: What did you think of your character's description?

Essence Lotus: It was very fun and I think accurate in terms of-- It's a very colorful description for those of y'all. Hopefully, when the play gets published and y'all get to read it, y'all will see the beautiful descriptors that describe my characters. It did make a lot of sense. These are real, embodied, fleshed-out beings. I think Naz does a great job of creating real people.

Alison Stewart: Felicia, what did you think when you read the play? Then what did you think of your character?

Felicia Curry: When I read this play, I knew that I was reading something that was revolutionary in the world of theater. I had never read anything like it. I knew I had never seen anything like it. I knew as an actor, I'd never been anything like it. That, to me, was incredibly exciting. I knew I needed to be part of it if I had the opportunity. When I was asked, I jumped on it. It was scary. I knew it would be challenging, and it was. The benefit and the takeaway because of Naz's brilliance is everything. This is not just going to a theater and sitting back and watching people. This is an experience. You are living in this world with Quentavius and Kelly, and Lemon Pepper Wings. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: That is the name of your character.

[laughter]

Felicia Curry: That is the name of my character. You are experiencing everything with them. We don't allow you to turn away or to turn it off. We ask you, we challenge you to be in the middle of it, whether you like it or not.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask you later, but I'll ask you now. One of the things about your character is you engage with the audience, right? You are in their faces. You are speaking directly to them. How do they respond to you?

[laughter]

Felicia Curry: Lots of different ways. Some people are really engaged and are connecting with me with their eyes and are smiling. Some people have their arms crossed and are not as engaged. As you'll find out when you come and see the show, Lemon Pepper Wings is a manifestation of something, someone, some it that lives inside of all of us. Any type of reaction you're having is because you're feeling something on the inside. That, once again, is the brilliance of what Nazareth has written in this character and in this dialogue.

Alison Stewart: Nazareth, this is a real. Nuts and bolts question. Your actors are on skating a lot-

Nazareth Hassan: Oh, yes.

Alison Stewart: -in this show. First of all, did you ever skate before, Essence?

Essence Lotus: No, I didn't skate before. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Amazing that you can skate as well as you do. I was interested what that does for you as a director to have actors on skateboards. They go past each other, which is really interesting at interesting points in the play.

Nazareth Hassan: I think that something that was really exciting as a director, the challenge of the play was that you have to or I had to give in to the risk of it all or the possibilities. We had to build in, as I'm sure Essence and Ogie know, we had to build in what it's like to fall. What does that mean for your characters? If you fall during this scene and you're not quite comfortable with each other yet enough to touch, how do you help each other up versus 10 scenes in, and you've maybe been exploring each other's bodies a little bit more. You're going to be a little bit more comfortable.

I think it was an exciting opportunity to really let the best part of performance to me, which is the inaccuracy and the probability of everything, be the guiding principle.

Alison Stewart: I know this is a little bit of an easy question, but is it hard to act in skate, Essence?

Essence Lotus: No, not in a way that I feel like Naz structured our rehearsal process, and again, going back to some of the things that was communicated around I think even building chemistry and awareness, because I never skated before. At a certain point, they made it so easy, especially with the help of our skate coach, Faheem Allah, that the skating just became secondary to the chemistry and the connection that was being fostered. That's what we really had to focus on.

At a certain point, it becomes more challenging, I think, to tell the emotional story than it is to be on the skates. But it's also was so brilliantly worked that all the trust and everything that we developed in skating and going past each other, as you said, in such a small amounts of space it created the dynamic and contributed to that story. It all felt like a fully marinated soup.

Alison Stewart: Felicia, you're listening to Kelly and Quen have this evolving courtship, and you're getting ready to burst onto the scene. What's it like for you as an actor about to come out? You're going to blow the things up a little bit, but you're also listening to their courtship happening.

Felicia Curry: It's so interesting that you say that, because I actually don't listen a lot of it. I hear some of it because it is on backstage, but I'm not actively paying attention to it.

Alison Stewart: Are you getting into your character?

Felicia Curry: Yes. They really are, Lemon Pepper Wings, the insides of Quentavius. I don't need to watch. I know. I'm experiencing it with them. I'm going through every moment they're going through. Or at least I want you all to think that, because that's what it is. I am a manifestation of Quentavius insides. I've lived through everything that they've gone through, and the things you haven't seen, which is why I can tell the stories I tell, which is why I feel the way that I feel.

I know people hear demon, and there's one thought about that. It's angry and it's upset, but there's so many other things, because this is the shame, the grief, the fear, the love, the passion. All of that exists in Lemon Pepper Wings. All of that exists in Kelly and Quentavius. In this one little moment in this skate park during this summer, we get to see it and hear about it.

Alison Stewart: Nazareth, the acts in the play, they're like track lists. We get to see them on the skate park. We get to see what's happening. What do you like about these short acts? It's interesting. There's 25 of them, I think.

Nazareth Hassan: There's 25 of them. I think I've always, as a writer, thought of playwriting as composition. I'm a musician, and I think that's how I approached writing for the theater, writing for performance. I think I'm very keyed into the particular rhythm of the thing, the subject, I guess. I think this play functions like a memory play in that, like how does it feel to reflect on a relationship in the past? Like you really only remember the little tidbits that actually stick out, right? These little bits of memories. These, I guess memories start to collide with each other and exist almost outside of time.

I think it was really important also in that respect that we weren't trying to, I guess represent time in a narrative way. When you're thinking about a relationship and when you're thinking about intimacy and the body and all these things, especially when you're young and impressionable, oftentimes your memory starts to shape itself around the way it felt. Even though it might have been sunny and whatnot, it might feel like you have a spotlight on you and it's just you and this person, or might feel shadowy and dark in a moment because you're experiencing these fantasies that you're ashamed of or what have you. I think that quick rhythm came from that feeling.

I also think it was something to do with the cultural landscape that we're in now, like how people that age, our age, what have you, are like experiencing their own egos and experiencing themselves reflected back to themselves, like on their phones or on apps or through media.

Alison Stewart: We're Talking About Bowl EP. It's playing at the Vineyard Theater until June 15th. My guests are Nazareth Hassan, Felicia Curry, and Essence Lotus. We'll have more after a really quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are Nazareth Hassan, Felicia Curry, and Essence Lotus. We're talking about their new play, Bowl EP at the Vineyard Theater until June 15th. All right. Felicia played Lemon Pepper Wings.

Felicia Curry: Yes.

Alison Stewart: When we first meet your character, where is she? What's happening with her?

Felicia Curry: She has been conjured up in a moment between Kelly and Quentavius. She is vomited out. I don't want to say too much more because I want the folks who haven't seen it to come see it.

Alison Stewart: Understand she has a lot to say.

Felicia Curry: She does.

Alison Stewart: One of the things that's interesting is she, at one point, is talking to a microphone. She drags that microphone stand from corner to corner to corner, and you just hear it dragging as she's getting ready to say what she wants to say. Tell me about that. Tell me about that decision.

[laughter]

Nazareth Hassan: I think that something that Felicia and I were in constant collaboration about was the tone of this character. Felicia said, Lemon Pepper Wings is the manifestation of shame in Quintavius, but I think they're also like the cultural landscape on which their relationship exists. It's like this character that is both repressed and also spilling out with emotion, and has lost the ability to regulate.

I think this 12-minute monologue that is brilliantly performed by Felicia is representative of that. That polarity. I think once we get to that moment, after this big moment of spectacle, this big moment of violence, I would say, she comes down to this very sobering place to, I guess examine the future of these two people and how their individual shame or their individual emotional spaces don't allow them to remain together.

I think that particular moment is that thing, that feeling that you have when you know something is doomed or something just isn't able to work, but you still are trying. I think when we got to that mic moment, it was like this belabored story that's like dragging the mic across the stage. Like, are you still not getting it? What? Like there's more to it, but we're still trying.

Alison Stewart: It's such a long monologue. Was that tough to learn?

Felicia Curry: I'm going to say no, but that's not to say that it isn't tough to learn a monologue, but when it's really well written, it's easy. When the words not only make sense, but have been infused with all the things that I want to say to the audience, it was easy. It was easy. Then, when we crafted and created how we would tell this story to the audience, it fell on like a glove, truly.

Alison Stewart: She's got all the words. You don't have as many words, Essence, but it's very clear what's important to you and what matters to you. I think that was really interesting, between the two characters. I wondered, tell us what you do with your body to explain what's going on with Kelly, because you don't have as many words, but you let us know what's going on. Maybe it's just acting. I don't know. I just thought it was so interesting.

Essence Lotus: Kelly tells a lot of story through the body, and I think it's just through a real deep sense of love, longing, presence. Obviously, the character Quentavius is really still dealing with trying to-- wrestling with Lemon Pepper Wings internally. Kelly says that she's engaged her own process of that already. I think that allows her to be more embodied rather than to rely on other devices or emotional things to try and relate to who she's fallen in love with. That is why so much of it is embodied.

Alison Stewart: Nazareth, what do you want people to talk about after see the show? They go get coffee, they get a beer, they're going to talk about the show. What do you want them to talk about?

Nazareth Hassan: I think that I would like them to talk about things they haven't felt comfortable talking about before, whatever that means to them. I think that theater has the unique ability to be a place where shame can be processed collectively, because shame is such a social emotion. I hope that after even if it is very forward, it's like they're able to leave the theater and be able to face themselves in a new way, even if it's small. Doesn't have to be the entirety of their ego, but it can just be some new version of themselves that they understand.

Alison Stewart: How about for you, Felicia, what would you like people to talk about? To have conversations about?

Felicia Curry: That it is okay and necessary to face your Lemon Pepper Wings? That it's okay and necessary to have the conversation with she, he, they, to understand why they exist in you and why they're challenging you to question the way that you feel. More importantly, that this story is really about love and connection, and that we're all seeking it out and to embrace it and not to be scared of it.

Alison Stewart: All right, I was going to ask you same thing.

Essence Lotus: For me, both of those things, and I think also that ties into what you asked me before about the telling the story through the body. I think that being able to sit with that he, she, they inside and deal with our inner Lemon Pepper Wings, it allows us to actually be present the people that we love. For me, in terms of what I want people to walk away with is, wrestling with that so that way we can love each other better, that we can actually be present, and to not be afraid of that, to allow love to break us into pieces and rip our guts out. [laughter] You know what I'm saying? Then put it back together, have some clarity, and be courageous enough to love.

Alison Stewart: My guests have been Nazareth Hassan, Felicia Curry, and Essence Lotus. You can see them in Bowl EP at the Vineyard Theater until June 15th. Thank you so much for coming to the studio.

Nazareth Hassan: Thank you for having us.

Felicia Curry: Thank you.

Essence Lotus: Thank you.