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're here. On the show today, Actor Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter will be here to talk about starring in Waiting for Godot on Broadway. We'll also talk about the new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art devoted to Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, and we'll learn about the history and the tradition of quilting. Plus, call in and tell us about your family quilts. That's our plan. Let's get this started with Gruesome Playground Injuries.

[music]

The Off-Broadway revival of a play known throughout the theater canon gets a new jolt of energy from its stars, Kara Young and Nicholas Braun. The play is Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph. The play is about two friends, Kayleen and Doug, who met in school in the nurse's office when they were 8 years old. Kayleen has a tummy ache, and Doug decided to see if he could ride his bike off the roof, resulting in a bloody face gash.

After Doug allows Kayleen to touch his wound, the two of them become instant besties, and they form a bond that lasts 30 years with some ups and downs and plenty of injuries. Through the death of a parent, dead-end jobs, drifting apart, and intense feelings, these two are put through the wringer.

However, they still manage to find one another time and time again. The Off-Broadway revival of Gruesome Playground Injuries is running at the Lucille Lortel Theater through Sunday, December 28th. Playwright Rajiv Joseph is here with me now to discuss. Hi, Rajiv.

Rajiv Joseph: Hi, Allison.

Alison Stewart: Alongside Nicholas Braun. Hi, Nicholas.

Nicholas Braun: Hi.

Alison Stewart: And Kara Young.

Kara Young: Hello.

Alison Stewart: So good to see you.

Kara Young: So good to see you, too.

Alison Stewart: Gruesome Playground Injuries has been staged many times since 2009, right?

Rajiv Joseph: Yes.

Alison Stewart: How have you thought about the play's significance as time has moved forward?

Rajiv Joseph: I think that the play always exists in a sort of timeless place. It's not rooted in any kind of current event. There's no technology. It feels like it's this slice of life of these two people. It's a love story, and I think those are always sort of relevant.

Alison Stewart: This spans 30 years, Kara.

Kara Young: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What opportunities does this give you as an actor?

Kara Young: I feel like it's a beautiful exercise in jumping from one age to the next in-- You literally are going from 8 to 23 and then to 13 and then to 28 and then to 33, and then to 23 again, and then to 38. It's quite a tough mutter. Nick and I don't leave the stage.

Alison Stewart: Ever.

Kara Young: Ever.

Alison Stewart: Ever.

Kara Young: We don't leave the stage at all. Nick is doing all of his injuries, and we're changing in front of you. We're changing the space in front of you. It's literally like the beauty of theater. I feel like Rajiv has given this piece of art to us. Why it's so iconic, why all the students love it, why students are coming and telling us that they've done all of these scenes, or people who have graduated, they're like, "I directed this. This was my thesis." There's a reason why it's so iconic because it's really giving all of the essence of what theater is.

Alison Stewart: Nicholas, what intrigued you about the premise of this play?

Nicholas Braun: It's some of the same stuff, but I think it's a strange relationship. You could call it toxic. You could call it, I don't know, romantic. It's just too-- I don't know, there's something about this relationship where it's kind of enviable. Like, you kind of want somebody that you're as close to as Doug and Kayleen.

It's kind of a beautiful thing. I don't know. I don't have a Kayleen, really. It's an extreme friendship. There's something about that that felt like we-- I think people will really respond to it or get moved by it or get uncomfortable watching them. I think it's shocking in that way, too.

Alison Stewart: Rajiv, you've seen many actors in these two roles. Talk about them like they're not here. What about their chemistry struck you as, okay, this is real?

Rajiv Joseph: That's the amazing kind of luck that we've had, and I think all three of us in this whole production is-- because I don't think you guys knew each other before.

Kara Young: We didn't know each other at all. I don't know this man. [laughter] Now I do.

Alison Stewart: Okay, Kiki.

Rajiv Joseph: It's been incredible to watch these two actors work together and to find not only their way through this play and the story, but also watch their own relationship evolve over the last few weeks. I really feel that for this play to be successful, these two people have to love each other. I really feel the love between Kara and Nick.

Alison Stewart: Kara, when was a moment during rehearsal or when you first went up that you knew this chemistry is going to work?

Kara Young: It all starts in the room, and it all starts with the safest, most beautiful space. Our incredible director, Neil Pepe, created such a great environment for us to feel free and for us to explore, and for us to feel safe to explore. I definitely feel very connected to Nick. We finish each other's sentences or say the same thing at the same time. The other day, in my head, I was like, "Wow, I really want a piece of that cookie." On cue, he just hands the bag to me. I only said it in my head.

There's something really wild happening with Nick and I doing this play. I think that it's all connected to Rajiv and his work and these characters. I think Kayleen and Doug are looking for all of the things that the human is looking for. They're looking for love, they're looking for connection, they're looking to connect. It's quite remarkable what's happening on the other side of the page with us.

Nicholas Braun: The play works on you. I think that does some of the work in rehearsal, where it's like, we're trying to learn how to be 8-year-olds together. We're trying to figure out how to talk like 8-year-olds, run around, we're trying to figure out 13, we're trying to figure out the heaviness of where they're at in 38. Some of that, watching another actor's process also helps you get to know them. We come from different worlds. Kara is like a theater vet.

Kara Young: What.

Nicholas Braun: Like theater all-star hall of famer.

Alison Stewart: Two-time Tony winner.

Nicholas Braun: Two-time Tony winner, like all the accolades. And this is my first play. This is my first real play.

Alison Stewart: Were you scared?

Nicholas Braun: Not really. I was really excited. I knew I would be inspired and I would learn from Kara Young. I'd heard so much about her. So many people were so excited that she was going to do the play, and I was going to get to work with her. I went into it with that kind of excitement. Then, watching her figure out this character in front of me, trying all sorts of things, she's very experimental, passionate, imaginative person.

The list could go on and on. I just felt well matched. I'm like, "Oh, man, she and I, she's going to--" It's like when you're doing movies and tv, there's smaller performances, and people are not necessarily like going-- they're not necessarily on their front foot in the way that like the first day when I met Kara Young, I'm only going to use her first and last name together because that's just how we do it, but I was just like, "Yes, she's going for it. Yes, she's using her voice and her body." I think that was exciting.

There's just very few actors I've met that are so, like-- I don't know, it takes like a courage, I think, and a boldness. Anyway, I could literally spend this entire interview talking about how inspired I am by her, but I love watching her and learning from her. I think we're going out there and throwing it back and forth at each other every nigh, and that's really fun. That's the best.

Kara Young: So much fun.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the Off-Broadway revival of Gruesome Playground Injuries. Actors Kara Young and Nicholas Braun are here, as well as playwright Rajiv Joseph. Gruesome Playground Injuries will be running at the Lucille Lortel Theater through Sunday, December 28th. Rajiv, these characters, they go back in time over 30 years, and it's not chronological, which is harder on you guys, but what aspects of the characters' lives did you want to show during this 30-year period?

Rajiv Joseph: I think that the title kind of tells you in some ways what it is. The play is based on this question of why might some people hurt themselves to get another person's love or otherwise how might pain bring people together. I was looking at these traumatic events.

They meet in the nurse's office when they're eight and she has a stomachache, like you said, and he's cracked his head open. Then we meet them at these points of injury. These points of injury end up being the chapters in their story. That evolves and devolves that we go back and forth in time into a more dangerous and fraught relationship than your average love story.

Alison Stewart: Kara, we meet eight-year-old Kayleen. What's important to Kayleen when she's eight?

Kara Young: What's important to Kayleen? I feel like Kayleen is really loving to be alone. She wants to connect with people. I feel like she is facing rejection from the world right now. We meet Kayleen in isolation and safety. Yes, she has a stomachache. I think that she wants a friend, and I think that it's that kismet point of contact with Doug when he enters the nurse's office.

Because she just wants somebody to respond to her questions, and she gets that. She's curious, inquisitive, she's filled with all sorts of magic and imagination, and it feels very hopeful in the beginning. There's the point of contact, the point of connection with Doug. It's as if the possibilities of the purity of us when we're children, before the world comes at us, there's so much hope and so many possibilities when we meet them.

Alison Stewart: We meet Doug after he attempts to ride his bike off the roof. Nicholas, spoiler, he does not stick the landing. Why does he do this in the first place? In your mind, why does he ride his bike off the roof?

Nicholas Braun: He comes from a family where he's the youngest. We think of a handful of brothers, I think, maybe three other brothers or something. Nobody pays attention to him. Part of it is he just wants people to pay attention to him at school, at home. I think he gets a thrill, but also his mom's got to pick him up from school if he gets hurt and bloodied.

He's also just one of those guys that just wants to feel and just wants to throw himself around. He's also just a type of person, and it's kind of, I think, a lonely existence in a way because Evel Knievel's all by himself going off those ramps. [laughter] To find a partner in that I think feels good because he's doing most of it alone.

Alison Stewart: Kara, your character's injuries are not always due to accidents. Some are self-inflicted. You can see Doug's injuries, but you can't always see your injuries. How are Kayleen's emotional wounds? How do they shape into her adulthood? How do they change into her adulthood?

Kara Young: How does her emotional wounds shape her adulthood? I think that what we're talking about, Rajiv's given us clues, so many clues in regards to Kayleen's addictions. That can be self inflicted until it is a disease. We don't necessarily see that. There's that pivotal scene where she actually talks about how she injured herself.

I feel like it's a raw tunnel that is hard to escape. For those of us who know, know. It's a challenging place to be. When things happen to you and you don't know or don't have the tools to navigate those emotions or those traumatic events, then you're going to constantly try to have a solve or a bomb that you put over it to escape the thoughts, to escape sitting in thought.

Alison Stewart: Rajiv, is this based on a friend of yours?

Rajiv Joseph: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Tell me a little bit about this.

Rajiv Joseph: I have this friend. His name is Keith Benjamin, and I grew up with him. I didn't grow up with him. He's a little older than me, but we worked together in Cleveland when I was in high school and college. One night, we were sitting there in Brooklyn. I'd known him for years, and he was telling me about his life and all these injuries he's had. I knew about some of them because he is an accident-prone guy, but in learning about these other injuries that had started when he was very small, that were so bizarre and so terrible.

I was like, "How are you alive?" Also, if you wrote a memoir, you could have every chapter be an injury. That made me start thinking about marking time through injuries. I thought, if it was a memoir, it could also be a relationship. If it was a relationship, it could be a love story marked by these things. That's what led to the play.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the Off Broadway revival of Gruesome Playground Injuries with its playwright, Rajiv Joseph, as well as its actors, Kara Young and Nicholas Braun. Nicholas, Doug often tells Kayleen that when she touches his injury, it makes him feel better, even though she doesn't necessarily believe him. Do you think that Doug believes that it makes him better?

Nicholas Braun: Yeah, I do. Rajiv-- no. I do think he believes it. I do. I don't know. It's one of those magical parts of the play that is inexplicable. Maybe, like, there's just a thing. It's like how Kara was saying, we finish each other's sentences or I know when she wants some of my food or something. It's like, you just have it, you just have it. Then you start to believe in it, and that person makes you feel better, but these two people kind of can't get out of the way of their own pain. She'll fix him, and then he still keeps doing stunts.

Alison Stewart: Keeps going.

Nicholas Braun: It's that conflict of still wanting to bash himself up, but there's a person that can also make him feel really good. It's like the battle of being a person alone versus being with someone. It's not so easy as like, "Oh, wow, I have a friend and they're going to be my friend forever and this is going to be a perfect friendship." You sometimes can't get out of the way of your own stuff. I think he believes it. I think he believes it.

Alison Stewart: Rajiv, what were you trying to get at? The long lasting friendship? What did you want to explore about this kind of long lasting friendship between two people, which has its highs and has its real lows?

Rajiv Joseph: It's one of the things I love about storytelling is the compression of time. How you can look at a whole life, a whole years and years and years in the span of 90 minutes, which the play is, and see these people at different times in their life and how they've changed and how they've evolved, but also degraded. I find that really moving. Not all of my plays do that, but I do enjoy either writing or seeing stories in which they're epic in scale. This is a small play with just two people on stage and they never leave the stage. It's about them growing up together, but there's an epicness to it because it takes place over 30 years.

Alison Stewart: You never leave the stage, Kara. You change your clothes on the stage, you become a different person or age on the stage. How does working in such a minimal space help you creatively?

Kara Young: Oh, are you talking specifically like-

Alison Stewart: Changing of your clothes? How you become yourself at 18, 30?

Kara Young: This is very vulnerable. I feel like it's very, and I'm not using the word pejoratively, exposing. It feels like I forget the acting teacher, but there's like just put it all out there, whatever they say or something. It feels like, and especially doing that Off-Broadway in a 299 seat theater, there is a level of intimacy that is happening with the audience and us as well, Nick and myself as Doug and Kayleen.

It feels very intimate what we're doing. It's interesting how Neil has directed it because the taking off of the clothes, the getting rid of, the putting on, it feels like we're allowing the audience into the journey as we're going through these changes. I don't know if I answered your question.

Nicholas Braun: Yes, no, no.

Alison Stewart: I--

Nicholas Braun: Also, like the actors' process. I think that's what also makes this play really unique, is like we like to hide our process and we like to come out from behind the curtain or whatever in front of the camera and be like, prepared-

Alison Stewart: Here we are.

Nicholas Braun: -and be in your costume and everything, and here's what it is. Then cut, and then you go away, and you prepare in your trailer, wherever. You do it all secretly. I think it's cool that audiences will get to see us find the next age or character by putting on 13 year old clothes or putting on 38-year-old clothes and seeing how that changes us. There's literally in the transition, I think-- we haven't talked about it that much, but I think there's like a moment where one age goes away and the new age starts to come in.

It's really cool. The music helps and the lighting helps, and all of it, but I think putting on the makeup in front of people, doing it without a mirror, it is very raw and very exposing to see the act. There's an actor in between the scenes. You have to suspend your belief in between the scenes and then the scene will start and hopefully everyone is locked into the scene and they're back into the story and back into the play. It's a really cool blend.

Alison Stewart: I loved when the beds lock, the hospital beds locked in one. It's a real--

Nicholas Braun: If we can get it right. I we can do it at the exact same time, it feels really good.

Kara Young: You can tell [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: There's a lot of eye contact between the two of you. Like, ready, go. It locks in and it gets the audience set for, "Okay, we're on to the next." It's kind of a neat thing. I have to ask one really silly question. There's a huge height difference between the two of you.

Kara Young: But we're the same.

Alison Stewart: But you're the same.

Kara Young: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Okay, explain.

Kara Young: I'll tell you why. Because Nick is so tall, and I am so short. We actually are very alike because everybody comments on our heights. My entire life, it's been about, "Oh, my God, you're so short." I'm like, "It's an illusion." I feel like acting with Nick, I don't feel it, actually. I think people see it because our eyes are trained that way, but I don't feel it. I don't see it until someone points it out.

Alison Stewart: How about--

Nicholas Braun: It's so true. It's so true.

Alison Stewart: Except when you climb on his back.

Kara Young: I like that.

Alison Stewart: I like when she climbs on your back.

Nicholas Braun: That is close. I love that.

Alison Stewart: It's the greatest hug ever.

Nicholas Braun: Yes, totally. Only someone Kara's size could make that-

Rajiv Joseph: Absolutely.

Nicholas Braun: -so good. Yes, I feel the same. The world's not really made for Kara Young's height and my height. It's like, it's actually not.

Kara Young: It's really not.

Nicholas Braun: It's really made for 5'2 to 6'2, but we are outside. I don't know. 5'2, 6'4. I don't know. Shower heads are below my height usually, and plane seats are hard. 'm sure Kara has her own similar things.

Kara Young: Yes, I got to climb on the counter to get-

Nicholas Braun: To get to the top shelf.

Kara Young: -to the top shelf. You can get it, but you know.

Nicholas Braun: But I'll hit my head on a door frame in the same house.

Kara Young: Or I'm like the last person to get in an elevator because I'm so little. Maybe I just push myself, but you know what I mean?

Nicholas Braun: It's true. I think in the play, she and I somehow, whether through blocking or really just-- I don't know. Kara Young also has a big energy, so it's like she brings herself up in that way too. I think it has really somehow evened out. We don't think about it or worry about it.

Alison Stewart: Rajiv, for someone who has already seen this play and decides, "Yes, I'm going to go down to the Lortel and check it out," what would you want them to pay attention to, seeing it again the second time?

Rajiv Joseph: Oh, that's such an interesting question. Number one, just these particular performances. I wrote this play, I've seen it so many times, and when I go and watch these nights, seeing Kara and Nick do it, I'm seeing a different play. A play that surprises me because they're unlocking so many complicated and interesting things in these characters that I haven't seen before.

I think Neil Pepe's production, the wonderful designers who have put this on that stage, and that theater, it's such a beautiful, historic, creaky, old downtown theater. It's like, kind of falling apart. There was a rainstorm. We were in tech rehearsals, and rain was coming through the ceiling. It's a perfect space for this show, and it's so exciting to be down there every night.

Alison Stewart: Gruesome Playground Injuries is running at the Lucille Lortel Theater until Sunday, December 28th. My guests have been Kara Young, Nicholas Braun, and Rajiv Joseph. Thanks for coming to the studio.

Nicholas Braun: Thank you.