Alison Stewart: This is All of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I am grateful that you are here. On today's show, we'll talk about how ChatGPT is upending college with reporter James Walsh, who wrote about it for New York magazine. Comedian, Mateo Lane will be here to talk about his new cookbook titled Your Pasta Sucks, as well as his new Hulu special, but this hour we're spending on Broadway with two shows, each with a powerful message. We'll speak with the director and one of the stars of the Tony nominated play Good Night and Good Luck. We'll get started with a look at what happens when #MeToo meets a high school English class.

The new play, John Proctor is the Villain, has earned Sam seven Tony nominations, including best play but this new play is directly in conversation with an old one. In small town Georgia, a group of teenagers is reading Arthur Miller's the Crucible for the first time. Their beloved teacher, Mr. Smith, is walking them through the characters and themes.

The year is 2018, and the #MeToo movement takes on a new meaning for these teenage girls. Among those girls is Raelynn, played by Amalia Yoo. When we meet her, she's had a falling out with her best friend Shelby after Shelby messed around with her boyfriend. The thing is, Shelby hasn't been back in school in weeks, and Raelynn isn't really sure what's going on until secrets begin to surface.

The New York Times says that John Proctor is the Villain is, "urgently necessary". It's running now at the Booth Theater. I'm joined now by playwright Kimberly Belflower. Hi, Kimberly.

Kimberly Belflower: Hi, Alison.

Alison Stewart: And director Danya Taymor. Nice to see you again, Danya.

Danya Taymor: So great to be here.

Alison Stewart: And actor Amalia Yoo plays Raelynn. Hi, Amalia.

Amalia Yoo: Hi. Thanks for having us.

Alison Stewart: So Kimberly, why the Crucible?

Kimberly Belflower: Well, I reread the Crucible in 2017 in the wake of the MeToo movement after Woody Allen called me to a witch hunt in an interview and I went back and read it and was just really struck by how different it was than the play I remembered reading in high school. And just the power imbalances between John Proctor and Abigail mirrored a lot of things that were going on in the MeToo movement in that moment.

Also the setting of Salem, of this Puritan American setting. I grew up in small town Southern Baptist Georgia, and it felt like there was a parallel there as well and just as Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as an allegory for McCarthyism, I felt like, oh, I think there's an opportunity to continue this allegory.

Alison Stewart: What was your relationship with The Crucible, Danya?

Danya Taymor: I'm a huge Arthur Miller fan in general. I think he's an incredible writer who's exploring morals. I saw the latest production of The Crucible on Broadway three times. In a way, I guess you could say I was a super fan, but I love the play, I love his characters, I love what he's wrestling with. And when I first read Kimberly's play, it made me so excited to revisit this thing that had hit me in my guts with a different lens.

Alison Stewart: How about for you? What was your first experience with The Crucible?

Amalia Yoo: I also got to see the production on Broadway. I grew up in the city, and I remember there was one summer where my mom and I just decided to see as many Broadway shows as we could. I am a huge Saoirse Ronan fan, so I went in with that, and I didn't really know anything else about The Crucible.

I think I was 13 or 14, and I was just blown away by that production. It shook me to my core and then I think we read it in drama in high school and it was pretty scandalous to read in high school. There's an affair, there's talk of religion and justice, and we ate it up. We loved it. I loved it.

Alison Stewart: Kimberly, when did you come to the conclusion that John Proctor is the villain? My friend and I, we were like, of course he's the villain.

Kimberly Belflower: It was right after I reread it in 2017, and I was talking to-- My family has a farm, and I was staying on their farm, and I was talking to my parents about it, and I heard myself say like, and it's so funny because it really feels like John Proctor is the villain. I heard myself say that, and I was like, hahaha.

Then we talked a lot in rehearsal where I'm like, I don't know if I believe that fully. I think it's an intentional provocation. Also, I don't think there is a clear villain and not villain. Multiple things can be true at the same time. And so John Proctor certainly has villainous aspects of his character and treats the women in the play abhorrently and also takes very necessary moral stands about truth.

It's interesting to wrestle with that and to look at, who is he the villain to and why and in what moments and how does that ripple out through the rest of the play?

Alison Stewart: Now, this play came through the College Collaboration Project. Would you explain that?

Kimberly Belflower: Yes, the Farm Theater, which is a development theater here in New York, has this program called the College Collaboration Project, where they go in with different colleges and universities across the country to co-commission an early career playwright to develop a with their theater students.

From I had this idea, but I hadn't written a word of it, and then I got to interview, work with, and then attend the productions of the early drafts of this play at three different colleges in Kentucky, South Carolina, and Florida. It was an invaluable resource as I was developing the play in its early stages.

Alison Stewart: Danya, the show is set in 2018, so we're in the midst of the MeToo movement. What do you remember about that time seven years ago, think about it, and the conversations you had that helped you figure out how you were going to direct this play?

Danya Taymor: The thing I remember most about that time is when the first article came out in the New York Times about Harvey Weinstein. And I remember being glued to it, sitting on my couch at home, and my then boyfriend trying to say something to me about dinner and I was like, just a minute. And I just had to read this thing and get through it.

I just sat there and I think what happened to many of US after the MeToo movement started to come out and all these stories came out, is we started to rethink our own experiences, and not just our own experiences, how we thought about our experiences and our lives and intimacy and desire and all these different kinds of experiences we had had.

And it became actually more confusing, more murky, because we were able to look back at our experiences and say, oh, wow, maybe this was more complicated, complex than I thought. In some cases, maybe this was actually more clear than I thought. And when we started to look at the play, I think remembering that flood of emotion, the confusion, the intensity of that moment felt so important to bring into the space and remind us all.

The other thing I think came up so much in the wake of MeToo, was how personal it all felt for everyone in society in different ways and I think that's something that Kim really brought out in the play so well. What happens when it's not somebody you read about in the paper? What happens when it's somebody in your community who you love and respect, who has good qualities what do you do then? I find that to be incredibly important to wrestle with.

Alison Stewart: Amalia, when we meet your character in the play, Raelynn, what's going on with her?

Amalia Yoo: She has been through it. She's really lost her entire support system. She has broken up with her boyfriend of seven years after he cheated on her with her best friend and she has some of her other friends still by her side, but really her closest anchors are lost and she's coming to terms with that and also coming to terms with the idea that she can choose who she wants to be, and she has no idea who that is.

She's in a place of self discovery and confusion and hurt and loss, but there's still a little twinkle of hope and excitement of getting to discover who that person might be and who that person-- Who it is she wants to be.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Tony nominated playwright Kimberly Belflower, Tony nominated director Danya Taymor, and actor Amalia Yoo. We're discussing their new play, John Proctor is the Villain, which is up for seven Tony Awards. It's running now at the Booth Theater. This play has a lot of different reveals, Kimberly, in it, as we get to know the characters, as we get to know what's been going on with them. How did you work on pacing those reveals?

Kimberly Belflower: That's a good question. It really evolved over time. I mean, I started writing this play in 2018, and I think the core story with Raelynn and Shelby's friendship with Shelby's central reveal, not to spoil anything, that was always in the play. Then stuff with Ivy's dad and other characters that were these micro reveals leading up to the major reveals.

That came around later when I was like, oh, how do I-- I know that I have this big piece of information coming that maybe some people are going to see coming, but how do I make it as surprising as possible for as many people as possible? And so I think that helped me then deepen the characters that were surrounding this core relationship of Shelby and Raelynn and figure out, like, okay, what play can I make people think they're watching?

What questions can I make the audience ask ahead of this thing that changes everything? And then even if you do see it coming, how can I make it happen in a way that's surprising? Sometimes it's not the information itself, but the way that the information is communicated in the moment. And so, yes, I think there have been versions where that big reveal comes earlier, comes later, and then trying to figure out, like, okay, how.

That comes from workshops, from readings, from different development stages, but being like, where is the audience's patience at this point? Where are they getting ahead of the play? Where is the play getting ahead of them? And how do I calibrate accordingly?

Alison Stewart: Danya, this is something I'm so glad I get to talk to you about because I saw the play Saturday night and I was really struck by the moments that each character is in the spotlight, and the world around them shivers and their brain quivers, and everybody's got a different expression. Each character has it.

It's the lighting around them is out of sync. They seem to have something on their mind. We're not sure exactly what they have on their mind. Tell us about this decision.

Danya Taymor: Kimberly's play is amazing, and it has 15 transitions. And Kimberly has so much trust for directors because she doesn't tell you how to do them. What the play is doing is it's dropping you deep inside these teenage girls and it's letting you experience the world through their perspective and so these moments that we call girl focus--

Alison Stewart: Is that what they're called?

Danya Taymor: We call them that, yes. That's our unofficial title. Are these moments where what we make external, what one of these characters is feeling internally, and we allow the audience in to what she might be feeling, even though she's not exposing that to the world around her. My hope is that then when you look at a kid or you look at a teenage girl, you look at any human being, and they're presenting one way, you might be curious to think, oh, what's actually going on underneath there? Are they okay? Maybe it's not what it appears.

These moments of interiority with each of the characters are so intimate. They require so much of the incredible actors because they're looking at the audience. They're super exposed, and in many, many moments, it's their most vulnerable. In the transitional language, I wanted to deepen the work that Kimberly was doing through my own directorial lens with the characters, with the design team, and make sure that these transitions were still doing storytelling without adding any information, just letting us go deeper into the souls of the characters.

Alison Stewart: Amalia, can you tell us a little bit about your girl focus moment, conversations you had with Danya about how to portray that moment where there's no dialogue, it's just your face.

Amalia Yoo: I love micro-focus.

[laughter]

Amalia Yoo: I feel lucky because it's the first time, mine is the first time that it happens. And at that point in the play, we're still teaching people how to watch the play. Conversations that we had about it just reminded me of that feeling, especially in high school, where you're hurting so bad. There's so much going on in your interior world, but you can't show it and you have to put on a brave face.

You have to get through the seven periods that you still have left in your day. It's scary because we're looking out into the audience and seeing their faces. That's frightening sometimes, but it changes every night. It's really powerful. It feels powerful in the moment, doing it. Even though Rae feels completely powerless.

Alison Stewart: One of the main characters, Sadie Sink, she plays Shelby. She doesn't really show up for a good 30 minutes into the play. How did you want to build suspension and tension for the arrival of Shelby?

Kimberly Belflower: We find out pretty early on in the second scene of the play that this thing with Shelby and Raelynn and Raelynn 's boyfriend Lee, this whole situation has gone down. And then for those first 30 minutes of the play, we hear a lot of the other characters talking about Shelby and see-- the audience finds out these things like, oh, she slept with her best friend's boyfriend. Oh, her friends are talking about, she's always been, like, a little "crazy."

It's really fun to tell the audience about someone before they meet the someone and then they have to wrestle with, is this true? Is this not true? And then to know that I'm planting these preconceived notions of someone that then later is hopefully going to surprise them, but then also Sadie, just has such a totally transparent face, and you see everything she's feeling, but then you feel the armor being put back on.

It's really fun to play with those expectations of-- and I think that's happened to all of us in our lives, especially with women. We hear, she's a lot. Oh, she's a little much sometimes, or all these things and then you meet the person and maybe you take those things that you've heard into your experience with them, maybe you have your own experience with them and have to wrestle with why did that person say that?

It's just a really fun position to put the audience in to wrestle.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about John Proctor is the Villain. It's at the Booth Theater now. My guests are Kimberly Belflower, Danya Taymor and Amalia Yoo. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All of It. You are listening to all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We are talking about John Proctor is the Villain.

It's running now at the Booth Theater. It is nominated for seven Tony Awards. Joining us are Kimberly Belflower, the playwright, director Danya Taymor, and actor Amalia Yoo. Okay, so we only see the adults in the show in their professional settings. We see Mr. Smith and the guidance counselor, Ms. Gallagher. Danya, what conversations did you have with the actors about how they would present themselves at work?

Danya Taymor: With the adult actors?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Danya Taymor: Oh, well, Mr. Smith is the best teacher. He's the teacher we all wish we had. Some of us did have him. I think that he brings out the best in his students, he's really creative with what assignments that he gives, and I think it felt really important for Gabriel Ebert, who plays him, to bring that sense of goodness to the character.

Then Molly Griggs, who plays Bailey Gallagher, she's in between Mr. Smith and the young girls who are in school. She's 24, she's trying to prove herself, and she's stuck between being a teenager and being an adult and she bridges that gap. We see how she is of a different micro generation, even though she's so close to the girls and we're able to see how these differences in how we take up space as women, what we feel like we're allowed to say, what we've been taught even in the span of eight years can shift so much.

With those two characters, I just encourage them to bring their sense of goodness to the characters and then let the play take care of the rest.

Alison Stewart: Amalia, the characters are so into Mr. Smith, some more than others, but they're really into him as a teacher initially. What do they love about him so much?

Amalia Yoo: He listens to them and he takes them seriously. And that is the best thing that someone could offer these teenage girls. There's a line where we say he treats us like adults. He doesn't treat us like preschoolers like all the other teachers do. His assignments are fun and he allows everyone to be their truest self in the classroom.

He creates a safe space where even if you don't always have the best thing to say, you don't always know the best thing to say, you're still invited to say things and speak up in class. He sees every single one of the students and makes them feel like a light.

Alison Stewart: Kimberly, I want to talk-- There are also boys in this play. They're so genius. The boys are so great in this play. What did you want to explore about what it meant to be a teen boy? And also teen boys just as they're turning into young men.

Kimberly Belflower: Thank you for asking that. I love the boys at our play and there are two teenage boys, Lee and Mason. I think that we see in them, they're both at this crossroads, especially Lee has been given a very narrow definition of what it is to be a man in the world. And I think growing up in the rural South, I saw that happen to a lot of boys.

Men don't show their emotions and don't talk about their feelings and keep it down. Strength means one thing and one thing only. In Lee, we see this person who has suppressed all of these really complicated feelings because he doesn't know how to talk about them. He hasn't been given the chance or the instruction of how to talk about them.

We see those feelings curdle and start to become anger and these things. He's acting out instead of dealing with the feelings and then we see Mason, who joins this feminist club accidentally and then we see him-- and he says the wrong thing a lot of the time. We see that maybe he has also been given narrow definitions of things but then we see him being willing to learn and willing to change in a way that Lee is not.

And so I think we see these two boys start to-- it is just the first steps down different paths. We talked about that a lot of Mason never stops trying. Even when he says the wrong thing, even when he messes up, he never stops trying. His ast action of the play is supporting these girls. I hope that the boys in the play make people think about the ways that we talk to young men about their feelings and about what it means to be a man and about the possibilities of being a person in the world. Yes, I love them.

Alison Stewart: Danya, what do you remember about this period in your life that you definitely wanted to bring to this show, that you wanted to share with the actors who are pretty young?

Danya Taymor: I think that when we're teenagers, we're experiencing so many firsts, and they're so visceral and they're so huge. And I wanted to take all of those things so seriously. I remember how serious every single thing felt as a teenager, and so when we were talking about the world of the play and these experiences that these young characters are going through, I wanted to make sure that they could all take up the space that they deserved because we all become the people we are.

Many of us become those people when we're teenagers by these experiences that we have, these things that imprint us in these moments. And so we did a lot of work in the rehearsal room to build an ensemble, but also to make space for these raw, courageous performances. I remember sitting with Amalia and Sadie and saying to them, so we do have to go there every night, eight times a week. Going there is non-negotiable. How can I support you so that you can do that?

It is such a privilege to be the leader of this very young company and to try to remember what it was like to be in their shoes and how serious, but also sometimes hilarious everything was and just to give it that space and life and size.

Alison Stewart: All right, I'm going to read from the playbill for Amalia. It says Amaila Yoo is thrilled to be making her Broadway debut. Born and raised in New York City, she played Luna in Grief Camp at the Atlantic Theater. On screen credits include No Hard Feelings, Netflix's Grand Army. She also played Joey in an Off Broadway production of Slut the play, NPR's green space downstairs, might I add.

She's a Proud Alumna of LaGuardia High School. LaGuardia is not your average high school, but in many ways it is. I have friends, kids who go to LaGuardia, they go to high school. What do you remember from your high school experience that you use every night?

Amalia Yoo: It's crazy that 2018 was when I was a junior and now I'm playing a junior in 2018 on Broadway. I think the friendships that I had in high school that I am lucky enough to still have today, I think about that. I think about those friendships every single night and how even when you feel so far away from your friends, there's still a connective tissue and there's still so much love because you have all of this shared life together, and it's such a precious time, and to get to spend that with other people who know you better than you know yourself is really a gift.

I think about that. I think about those friendships every single night.

Alison Stewart: I don't want to give too much away, but the song Green Light by Lorde is very important in the show. It features an important dance sequence near the end of the play. Let's listen to a little bit about it because we want to hear the song and we can talk about it on the other side.

[music: Green Light - Lorde]

Alison Stewart: Danya, what went into the choreography? Or is that just like a free for all at the moment?

Danya Taymor: Oh, no. Okay, well, first it's starts with Kimberly's incredible stage directions. There's still a lot of freedom in how you tell the story of the dance, but Kimberly's written this incredible story through the dance of what's happening? Who does what, when? what needs to happen? How long it should take? When it turns into something else.

Then working with Tilly Evans-Krueger, the choreographer, who's our movement director, we really created this organic dance that would feel like something that two girls genuinely made in their bedrooms together, and we fused that with Kimberly's incredible stage direction. It feels feral.

Alison Stewart: It really does.

Danya Taymor: Yes, and I was thinking, what is making people so arrested by this? Why is this having such a particular effect on the audience? And something I realized through the watching of it is I think it's one of the only times I've seen young women be wild and feral in a way that is not sexualized.

I think that makes it so special and so unique and people are like, whoa, the power of these young women and the fact that it isn't hypersexual is so incredible. I've been thinking a lot about that and the power of this final moment.

Alison Stewart: What are you thinking about during that scene?

Amalia Yoo: I think about the people who are sitting in the audience who are seeing this for the first time, and how much it would mean to me if I was sitting in that audience watching it. Sometimes I'm thinking about how my body hurts and how I'm tired and how we have to get through it. then also, I'm thinking about how lucky I am that I get to do it with Sadie, that iit's not just one of us having to do it alone. We really are there for each other every single night.

Alison Stewart: You started to dance as soon as the song came on Kimberly. What does that song do for you?

Kimberly Belflower: It does everything to me. Danya said at one point, she was like, you've probably heard this song more than anyone alive besides Lorde. I think that's probably true. At every single time, it gets into my bones. I think that the feeling of the song and I mean, I can talk about the metaphorical resonance of the song and a million things about the song all day long, but I think that it feels to me what it is to move through something painful and get out on the other side and be like, oh, that sucked and also, I'm going to use it.

It gets into your body. Even if you don't have a relationship with the song, I think it gets into your body and it works every time. It's like a spell.

Alison Stewart: The name of the play is John Proctor is the Villain. I've been speaking with playwright Kimberly Belflower, director Danya Taymor, and actor Amalia Yoo. It is up for seven Tony Awards, and it's running now at the Booth Theater. Thank you so much for coming to WNYC, to the studio.

Amalia Yoo:

Danya Taymor: Thank you for having us.

Kimberly Belflower: Thank you so much for having us.