The Tamesis
I have to ask, because I’m looking at my Blu-ray collection right now, and I know you and Tracy are big proponents of physical media: What’s your media diet like when you’re on the show?
Usually, if I’m at home, Tracy and I watch movies every night. we watched Bakurao Last night; Tracy honors filmmakers [Kleber Mendonça Filho] We haven’t looked at it yet and always try to do our due diligence. Tracy picked everything and it was our arrangement. I go downstairs and I don’t know what we’re looking at, and then he puts something on and I look at it – and for me, as someone who has to make a lot of decisions every day, that’s a very liberating thing. But now I’m doing a show and I stay in town after ten o’clock. So I can’t make any decisions when I’m alone, let alone turn on the TV in a hotel or apartment that I’m not familiar with. It never worked so I gave up. I completely gave up and I just read my book. now i am reading Sonia and Sonny’s lonelinessI was reading a book I had in my kitchen and they asked me to do an audiobook of it, by an author I really liked.
I’m struggling a bit with my Blu-ray-
Because of storage?
Storage, everyone says everything is streaming. But, back to the show’s paranoia—
Yes, you will no longer have access. It’s a big part of who we are [collecting]. We have probably 13,000 people now. We receive DVDs every day. Tracy delivers them every day I think people will never see some of the stuff we have, and it will never be available to the public for streaming again. There are gatekeepers. As long as there are gatekeepers, you’re going to be limited, and Tracy didn’t want to be limited. He doesn’t buy a sports car, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t do drugs, he doesn’t buy clothes, so it doesn’t matter. It was a bad habit of his, and it was harmless.
As someone who straddles the stage and screen, do you feel completely at odds with stage performance, which should be ephemeral?
Yes. I mean, look, I believe anything that gives people access is really special and really important. Tracy and I both grew up in small towns. Without the movie we wouldn’t know Virginia Woolf. That’s why Tracy has always been positive about adapting his plays into films, even though it’s difficult and doesn’t always translate. He believes this because some kids in Oklahoma might see something they wouldn’t normally have access to and be inspired by it.
A recorded performance of a movie rather than a play?
Yes of course. When the pandemic happened, the only way to see a live performance was to record it and play it widely. For people who are immunocompromised or have accessibility issues, cultural exposure is actually a really important thing. When my son was two years old during the pandemic, and he had never seen a screen until then, one of the only things we let him watch was orchestras and ballet because that was the only way to watch those things. There’s something to be said for recording a live performance and making it available. They did an amazing job screening good night and good luck David Cromer directed it and a lot of people watched it. That’s so powerful. It’s still a collective experience, so I’m not against it. it yes Different medium; I think it doesn’t quite translate, there’s nothing like the experience of being in a room with other people.
