Join host Ryan Paul on a deeply moving edition of the APEX Radio Hour featuring multi-Emmy award-winning actor, director, and beloved Sesame Street icon Alan Muraoka. Currently directing the festival’s massive musical production of Something Rotten, Muraoka shares how a 28-year legacy of childhood storytelling guides his creative vision to infuse slapstick physical theater with genuine internal heart. From personal historical reflections on familial triumph over wartime internment to comedic tap-dance battles, this conversation illuminates the transformative, universal necessity of kindness and inclusivity on modern stages.
Connect with SUU APEX & the Uta Shakespeare Festival:
[Reese Whitaker]
You are listening to The Apex Hour, hosted by Ryan Paul on KSUU Thunder 91.1. This show allows more personal time with our guests, allowing them to give us their stories and opinions. We will also give you new music to listen to, hoping you enjoy some new sounds and genres. Welcome to this episode of The Apex Hour.
[Lauren Bird]
Welcome to The Apex Radio Hour, Utah Shakespeare Festival Edition. I'm producer Lauren Bird, and I'm here today with Director of Apex and Professor of History, Ryan Paul, and our special guest, Alan Muraoka. I'll turn it over to you, Ryan.
[Ryan Paul]
Thank you, Lauren. We are so excited to have Alan Muraoka in the studio. Alan is an award-winning actor, director, writer, and shopkeeper.
[Alan Muraoka]
Fair, absolutely fair.
[Ryan Paul]
And as my wife and I have talked about multiple times, co-parent to our children.
[Alan Muraoka]
Oh, that's sweet.
[Ryan Paul]
So thank you for being here. Alan is currently directing the musical, one of the musicals here in the 2026 Shakespeare season, Something Rotten. And we'll get into that.
And I should explain the co-parent, Alan, for the last almost 30 years.
[Alan Muraoka]
It's been, I'm going into 28th season.
[Ryan Paul]
28th year has been a fixture on a little-known television show called Sesame Street. So he is the owner of the store.
[Alan Muraoka]
That's right, Hooper's Store. That's correct.
[Ryan Paul]
So we're excited to talk about that and talk about Shakespeare. But I always like to start with a question, kind of a how we get to now question. Sure.
So can you talk a little bit about where you grew up and kind of how you decided to do what you do?
[Alan Muraoka]
Fantastic. I grew up in a little town called Mission Hills, which is in Southern California in the San Fernando Valley. It's a suburb of Los Angeles.
And, yeah, I was a latchkey kid. So I grew up watching TV, watching all of those like 1970s Brady Bunch portrait family. And during that time, I realized that I had this dream of being one of them, being one of the Brady kids, the adopted kid.
And so. The new cousin Oliver. The new cousin.
Oh, I hope not. Those last two seasons were like they were grasping a little bit. But but yes.
And I sang with my dad in church. And so I knew I loved singing. And as I got older and older in junior high school, I started to do all the plays.
I was in the drama club by high school. I was in musical theater. I did the theater program.
I did a folk rock group. So I really knew that it's a place where where when I was in it, I loved it. And I was in a really special, happy place.
And despite the knowing the pitfalls and the lack of employment opportunities, I realized that when I was deciding when where I was going to go for college, I was like, oh, I think I want to do theater as a major. And so luckily, UCLA was 45 minutes from my house. And so I told my parents, hey, I think I want to do this.
They were, of course, trepidatious and was like, you know, this is a very hard career. We decided on UCLA because if I had to bail out and not be a theater major there, there was plenty of other opportunities. It's such a big university.
And so I went to UCLA. And within the first year, I realized that I was home. This was the right place for me.
I started to cast in shows. Carol Burnett had a musical theater competition that she sponsored. So I auditioned for it my second year of the show of my sophomore year.
And I got in the finals. There were eight of us. And I didn't win that year, but I was in the finals every year for the next three years.
And then I finally won it on my third year. I should explain that Carol Burnett, when she went to UCLA, she was very poor. And so she had an anonymous sponsor pay for her tuition all throughout UCLA.
And when she became Carol Burnett, the star, she gave back. And that's why she created the musical theater scholarship.
[Ryan Paul]
But she never found out who that sponsor was.
[Alan Muraoka]
She never did find out who that sponsor was.
[Ryan Paul]
So what was your second choice? Like if theater hadn't worked out and you're in the broad canvas of UCLA, what would you have done?
[Alan Muraoka]
You know, there was part of me was like, I like animals. Maybe I'll be a veterinarian. You know, luckily, you know, those were all very like weak second choices.
So luckily the first choice panned out because I didn't really have a plan B. Yeah, I didn't have a backup plan really.
[Ryan Paul]
What, Lauren, what's your backup plan if mechanical engineering doesn't work out?
[Lauren Bird]
I haven't gotten that far yet. We'll figure out.
[Ryan Paul]
So I liked this other question I ask pretty much everybody as well. But because I'm fascinated by it. What did your parents do for a living?
[Alan Muraoka]
Yes. So my mother was a preschool teacher. My dad was a tax assessor for L.A. County. So he did land taxes and things. And so, yeah, so he tells me this story about back in the 70s. He had to go out to this place called Spahn Ranch to assess it.
And this is where you won't remember, Lauren, but there is a little infamous group called the Manson family that lived at Spahn Ranch. And he said when he went out there, he just felt like eyes were on him. It was completely looked deserted, but he felt like he was being watched.
And in retrospect, he was because they were probably hiding. Squatting there. Squatting there.
And this is an infamous group that ended up like three very, very horrible murders that they did. One of them, an actress called Sharon Tate and her husband was Roman Polanski, a very famous movie director. So, yeah.
Wow. I'm sorry I brought that up.
[Ryan Paul]
That felt like what a downer. What a world. Sesame Street and tangentially connected to the Manson family.
[Alan Muraoka]
And the Manson family. There we go.
[Ryan Paul]
So what is the first thing you remember wanting to be as a kid?
[Alan Muraoka]
Wanting to be. I think it was I wanted to be on the Brady Bunch. I wanted to guest star on that show.
And, yeah. Or a part of the Partridge family. Those were sort of my little beacons of light as I was growing up.
But I also watched a lot of Warner Brothers cartoons and that's kind of where I get my humor. That and I Love Lucy episodes. And so, yeah.
That was kind of the little inkling, that little spark that I wanted to be that. And so, that was my goals and never got there. But got somewhere else instead.
[Ryan Paul]
So it's interesting to me that television, which makes sense because I think you and I are probably close to the same age. I'm a 70s kid. But television is this gateway into acting or being part of that.
When does theater come in?
[Alan Muraoka]
Theater didn't really come in until junior high school when I started to do more plays. And there were classes. We had a play production class.
We had a musical theater class. And that's kind of where I went, oh, this feels right. This is, you know.
And there was that part of me that always was a director even back then. I remember one of the things that I pitched and we did in junior high school. There was this Saturday Night Live book that had scripts in it.
And so, I was like, hey, we're gonna do Saturday Night Live for this, for a 45-minute version of it. So we did the Coneheads. We did the Weekend Update News.
And it actually turned out really like, you know, that was like a hit show back then. And so, the kids ate it up. I was always at odds with my principal, with content sometimes.
In high school, I wanted to direct Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Pretty heavy subject matter for high school kids. And then I had to have a meeting with my principal.
And 30 minutes later, he said yes because I was so passionate and driven about the project.
[Ryan Paul]
Was it a hit at Mission Hills High?
[Alan Muraoka]
It was a hit. It was a hit at James Monroe High School. Yes, it was.
Yeah, we had a very talented group of kids back then who some of them are still in business now. So, yeah, we did some good work.
[Ryan Paul]
So, Lauren here sitting next to me does a pretty fantastic job in preparing notes and things for our guests that come on over the years. And she has a note here that I'm interested in that says, started acting at the age of 10 at a movie theater during the intermission of a double feature.
[Alan Muraoka]
Yes. So, one of the things that I did, I don't know if you remember the song Candyman from Willy Wonka. Sammy Davis Jr. made it a hit. His only number one hit. His only number one hit. And so there was this movie theater in downtown L.A. that was geared for like Japanese movies. You know, I'm sure they played all of those Godzilla movies, but it was a double feature. And so I had a friend who decided that, oh, we should do a little, you know, song and dance in between to, you know, for the old women, you know, the old Japanese women downtown who wanted to, you know, who were there. And so they came up with this premise of like Candyman as a song.
So it was me and 12 teenage girls dancing and singing. And at the height of it, I had all of these hands of hard candy that I threw into the house. So I was pelting old Japanese women with like, you know, little peppermints and things.
It's very surreal when I talk about it now, but at the time it felt really charming and like the right thing to do.
[Ryan Paul]
And that's a great story. So, I mean, thinking about this as a historian, were your parents at all involved in the internment?
[Alan Muraoka]
Absolutely.
[Ryan Paul]
Of Japanese Americans in World War II?
[Alan Muraoka]
Yes, absolutely. So both of my parents grew up in the Southern California area. And so when World War II began and the internment happened, my dad's side of the family went to a place called Manzanar, which was in Central California, you know, deserty and yet mountainous as well.
And so it was freezing in winter and blazing hot in summer. So, you know, conditions could not have been worse. My mom started at – they took her to – they spent, I think, a couple of months at Santa Anita, which was a racetrack.
So they lived in the stalls in the racetrack. And then they moved them to Heart Mountain, Wyoming. So that's where my mom's side of the family spent the internment, which was, I think, four years or five years.
[Ryan Paul]
We did have an internment camp in Utah as well called Topaz up in Delta. There's a very interesting museum there. The camp, of course, doesn't exist, but the community has put together a really nice museum.
But interestingly, did that experience – did they talk about that when you were a kid? Was that informative in their lives?
[Alan Muraoka]
My dad talked about it more than my mom. We went to Manzanar on a vacation to somewhere. We dropped us off.
And back then, they didn't have the monuments that they have erected now. So really it was – as we drove in, it was just the guard shack that was – this stone guard shack that was, of course, dilapidated and just in terrible shape. And then we drove in and it was just desert.
And my dad pointed to the spot and said, this is where I lived for four years. And it was like in the upper 90s and windy, and so wind was blowing and so dust was getting in our eyes. And that was kind of life for them.
So it really did sort of make me – even back then, I think it was eight or nine – really, really understand sort of what he went through.
[Ryan Paul]
That's a very interesting story and time. I hadn't thought about that connection before.
[Alan Muraoka]
Yeah.
[Ryan Paul]
And then they come back and almost live the American dream, right? Yeah. I mean what – it's fascinating to me what those individuals went through and then came back and supported the country.
[Alan Muraoka]
And absolutely. And I'm so proud of my parents and my grandparents for having survived that and then coming out of that to just be the people that they were, have successful careers. My grandfather was a gardener, but he was a gardener to the stars.
And so he was Bob Hope's gardener, Henry Winkler's gardener. And so that was – on my summers, I would go and help him. And I think part of – that was part of the Starstruck thing as well.
We'd go to these mansions and we never really saw any of those stars. But just that connection and being so close to it really made me go, oh, okay. This is possible.
This is a possible future.
[Ryan Paul]
Which is probably a stellar moment we just had here that Henry Winkler is mentioned in the same sentence as Bob Hope. It probably doesn't happen that often.
[Alan Muraoka]
No disrespect to either one. Absolutely.
[Ryan Paul]
So college, you go to theater. What – where does that – when does it kind of click for you?
[Alan Muraoka]
My first year, I was – I knew – I got cast in a show and it's called Land of the Dragon by – and my director was our children's theater director, Patricia Harder. And she taught me so much. And it was based on this Chinese folk tale and so the whole thing was sort of Chinese opera based.
And I knew nothing about that. And so she taught me this style of theater that also had a lot of comedy in it. And so it was very physical, very stylized.
And that was my first show at UCLA and it kind of put me on the map there. It did very well. I was one of the comic characters in the show and it landed really well.
And so from there, I – UCLA's theater department did not have a musical theater department within it at that time. So I had to go over to the music department to do musicals. And so I auditioned and I got in one.
And that's when I found out about the Carol Burnett Awards. And here's my little OCD confession. I didn't really know a lot of musicals at that time.
But UCLA had a pretty extensive music library. So on my off time, I would go and I went from A to Z. I started with a chorus line to Zorba and I listened to every musical cast album that they had at UCLA.
And then that set me up then when I auditioned for the Carol Burnett Awards. I had all of this material to choose from. And so it was this really great sort of education that I gave myself because I was determined to get into the Burnetts and to win the Burnetts.
And that's how I did it.
[Ryan Paul]
Were they on vinyl? It's just like a standard record.
[Alan Muraoka]
They were absolutely on vinyl.
[Ryan Paul]
So you just pulled the record out and set the big old headphones on?
[Alan Muraoka]
Absolutely on vinyl, yes. And ironically, the first thing I did was a song from She Loves Me that got me into the finals. So here we are, full circle.
It's not my show, but it's in the season. So, yes.
[Ryan Paul]
So interesting. When you're not having any much musical experience and you start with A and go to Z, were there any shows that really popped for you that really said, oh, there's something here other than just this slog of Broadway musicals?
[Alan Muraoka]
Sure. I knew that I had this passion for it as well. And so I was lucky enough that my parents supported that as well.
And so I remember going to see A Chorus Line, one of the first national tours of A Chorus Line. I remember seeing Evita when it was in Los Angeles. So they were very supportive in making sure that I got an education.
And then they became musical theater lovers as well because of it. But if it wasn't for me, I don't think they ever would have gone to a live theater performance.
[Ryan Paul]
You know, interestingly, Michael Barr, who's the executive producer, we're friends, he has a very, not as similar to being in a show, but grew up in this small rural Utah town and discovered the cast album of Pippin.
[Alan Muraoka]
Yes.
[Ryan Paul]
And he tells the story of listening to Pippin on the record player with his big headphones and just kind of following this path as well. And you have been on Broadway. Yes.
Multiple times. Seven times. Seven times.
[Alan Muraoka]
So how was that experience? It's what you hope it would, you know, it's both a great dream and then a hard reality of like, oh, I'm here. Oh, it's eight shows a week, right?
Oh, it's six days of my life. And so the reality is it's hard to do, especially if you have a lead role. You spend your entire time then trying to maintain your health, maintain your fitness to be able to do that.
You become an athlete, really. And so I learned that very quickly that, oh, this is not just I've arrived. Now there's work, more work to be done.
But it's the greatest. It was the greatest thing ever. And it brought me lifelong friends.
It brought me professional connections that I use to this day. One of the actors in Something Rotten, he and I shared a dressing room at Aladdin. And so this was before the pandemic.
And during the pandemic, he and his family moved back to Dallas where he grew up. And so I was like, oh, he might be available for this show. And lo and behold, he is.
And so this is our first time back together since our time on Broadway.
[Ryan Paul]
But this time you don't share a dressing room.
[Alan Muraoka]
This time we do not share a dressing room. And he's being so lovely. We understand each other's humor very well.
[Ryan Paul]
So has directing always been like you didn't just want to be an actor once you figured out what this was. You wanted to direct as well.
[Alan Muraoka]
So, yes. So here's my story. Yes, I always wanted to direct.
And then back in 1990, I want to say six, was I did a production of A King and I on Broadway. That was a revival. And, you know, I'm just going to say it.
The director wasn't very good. And so it made me realize that, oh, well, you know, if this person can attain this, then it is possibly within my reach. But I have to have the bravery to go for it.
And so I was like, okay, I'm going to direct. And I searched and I searched. And one of my favorite shows when I was at UCLA was this thing called March of the Falsettos, which is a part of a trilogy of this family, this Jewish family whose the father realizes that he's gay and leaves his family for a man.
And it's the aftermath of that and how they create this, he creates a chosen family for himself. And yet his family is still a part of his lives and how they learn to adapt with each other through the pain to find love for each other. And so the third part of this trilogy was called Falsetto Land, which was set in 1981 at the onset of AIDS.
And so it was a show that just really touched me to my core. And so I thought, oh, you know what? I'm going to do this.
But I'm going to do this with an all Asian cast. And so I pitched it to two theater companies in New York. One of them, NatCo, National Asian American Theater Project.
And a woman, Mia Katikbach, said, this sounds very interesting to me. Let's do it as our fundraiser and we'll invite Bill Finn, the composer. And so we did.
And at the end of the night, Bill was like, you have to do this. I give my permission. I'll give my rights, whatever.
And so we did it six months later. And it got a love letter from the Times. And we ran all summer, sold out all summer.
And that was my first directing, professional directing thing. And it was, you know, part of it was my passion and my desire to show my friends who are so talented, you know, to a wider audience. And it succeeded and exceeded extremely well.
One of my friends, Anne Harada, is in Schmigadoon right now. She's done tons of Broadway things. She was in the TV version of Schmigadoon.
She was my Trina. She was the wife in that show. And it kind of launched all of our careers.
[Ryan Paul]
It's interesting to me that that's kind of this Doctor Who turn right moment, right? That if you would have had a director that was passable, who knows where you would have ended up, right? I mean, you decide, like, I could do this.
But if you would have had somebody who was a rock star, you know, a Shakespeare, then it would have been different, right? Yes. For me, here's the thing.
[Alan Muraoka]
I have been in rooms with all different types of directors. I know what gets the best out of me, and I know what shuts me down. And so when I am in a room with actors, my first thing I say is, like, this is a collaborative room, and I don't have all the answers.
You are part of this journey. So I will pitch something if you don't like it, say so, and pitch something back. So what that does is creates a lot of trust.
And I have gotten feedback from actors throughout the years. It was like, oh, this felt like a very safe room. And with comedy, it has to be a safe room.
You are not going to do brave things in a room that you don't feel safe in.
[Ryan Paul]
It's so interesting to me that you say that, that you say if you don't like it, you say so, but then you follow it up with and pitch something else. Not like, if you don't like it, just don't tell me you don't like it. Give me a solution to it.
[Alan Muraoka]
That's exactly right. And the whole makeup of the journey of Utah Shakes, it's a very quick process because we have seven other shows that we're doing, and so you don't rehearse six days a week. You rehearse three days a week.
And so the idea then is you have to come in with a plan. And then if that plan, you know, but I now am comfortable enough. It was like coming in with a plan, but then being able to veer if that plan doesn't feel like it's working in the room.
And so honestly, I was a little trepidatious coming here given the time frame, but after the first week, I was like, oh, no, this is fun. This is going to be fun. And my choreographer and I, you know, we both sort of dropped our, like, you know, exhaled and dropped our nervousness because everyone was prepped.
Every actor was prepped to, like, perform already. You know, they had stuff memorized already. And so my choreographer mapped out all of the choreography, so we were able to actually we never got behind.
We were always right on time.
[Ryan Paul]
So let's stop there. Let's take our first break. And then when we come back, we'll talk about Utah Shakes and how that plays out in the show you're doing.
So for those of you who've listened to the podcast or the radio show before, know that instead of doing commercials, we ask our guests to come up with four or five songs that we can use as breaks. And it's always a fascinating thing. Lauren has put together a Spotify list of our hundred guests that we've had and all the songs that they've done, and it's a pretty wide variety.
And I've got to tell you, we've been doing this for a while, and you've got some solid ones here. In fact, I was telling you on the way in that you have one of my certainly in the top five, if not in the top two. So we're going to start there.
And the song you've given us is The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.
[Alan Muraoka]
That is right.
[Ryan Paul]
Can you tell us about why you chose that song?
[Alan Muraoka]
So I was born in the early 60s, so my music tastes are like of the 60s and early 70s, and that's all folk rock stuff. So Carole King and Simon and Garfunkel and James Taylor and Gordon Lightfoot. And so, yeah.
So if you could read my mind, it was one of those things that I would listen to all the time. But then I heard Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and I love a story song. There's just something about it.
And so it really, songs that sort of move me or make me feel something are always songs that inspire me. And so this song just has such sorrow in it as he's singing these events. And I don't know if you knew this, but like for me, I thought, oh, this was a ship that was from like the early 1900s.
I thought like there was some historical thing about it. It was actually, it was written in 1976. Actually, the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was 1975.
It was kind of a current event in the place where he lived on Lake Superior, so he was inspired by the news events enough to write a song about it.
[Ryan Paul]
And they're still doing, there's still books coming out about it and podcasts. And I'm a huge Edmund Fitzgerald fan, and I love Gordon Lightfoot. So you just, I mean, we are now friends.
Yay! That's okay. All right, so this is The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.
[Lauren Bird]
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down The big lake they call Gitchego The lake it is said never gives up her dead When the skies of November turn gloomy With a load of iron ore 26,000 tons more Than the Edmund Fitzgerald we'd empty That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed When the gales of November came early The ship was the pride of the American side Coming back from Somerville in Wisconsin As the big freighters go it was bigger than most With a crew and good captain well seasoned Concluding some turns with a couple of steel films When they left Haleilo with the clay boom That night when the ship's bell rang Could it be that north wind they'd been feeling Hail song in the wind The rich in November come stealing The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait When the gales of November came slashing When afternoon came it was freezing rain In the face of a hurricane west wind When supper time came the old cook came on deck Saying fellas it's too rough to feed you At seven p.m. a main hatchway gave in He said fellas it's been good to know ya The captain wired in he had one good ship And the crew was in peril And later that night when his lights went out of sight Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald Edmund Fitzgerald Does anyone know where beloved God goes When the waves turn a minute to hours The searchers all say they'd have made whitefish pay If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her They might have split up or they might have capsized They may have broke deep and took water And all that remains is the faces and the names Of the wives and the sons and the daughters Lake Huron rolls superior scenes In the ruins of her ice water mansion Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams The islands and bays are for sportsmen And farther below Lake Ontario Takes in what Lake Erie can send her And the iron boats go as the mariners all know With the gales of November remembered In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed In the Maritime Sailor's Cathedral The church bell chimed to the ground twenty-nine times For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee Superior they said never gives up her bid When the gales of November come early
[Ryan Paul]
It's poetry. It is. It is Shakespeare.
It is Shakespearean. We are here with Alan Marocca. He is a multiple Emmy award-winning actor, director.
For the last 27 years, going into his 28th, he has played Alan on Sesame Street, which we'll talk about a little later. But currently he is here, Utah Shakespeare Festival, directing the big show, the biggest show this season, Something Rotten. I've been in the Grove with patrons talking about shows and orientation seminars for 15 years.
And of course, since the show came out, one of the questions we get every season is, when are you going to do Something Rotten? And my answer, one, was it's above our pay grade. But the other thing is, it took some time to, we are in the right space to do this show now.
[Alan Muraoka]
Absolutely.
[Ryan Paul]
But this is not your first experience with Utah Shakespeare Festival.
[Alan Muraoka]
That is correct.
[Ryan Paul]
Let's talk about the first time you directed for us.
[Alan Muraoka]
So yes, I directed a show called Gold Mountain back in 2021. It was right as the pandemic was coming, we were coming out of it and theaters were opening back up. This happened to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad and the two trains from the East and the West meeting in Promontory, Utah.
And so Gold Mountain is about the Chinese railroad workers and their contribution in helping build the Transcontinental Railroad. So all Asian cast, mostly all Asian cast. And so a gentleman named Max Chang in Salt Lake City was on the Golden Spike Committee, the 150th anniversary committee.
He found our show and he championed it. And it just so happened that one of his best childhood friends was Jeffrey Nelson, who is on the board of Utah Shakespeare Festival. So Jeffrey then brought the show to Utah Shakes and because it had not been doing a full season because of the pandemic, they agreed that they would bring the show to fruition and we brought it to Salt Lake City, but we rehearsed it here in Cedar City.
[Ryan Paul]
And it was one of the first shows that we had done outside of Cedar City.
[Alan Muraoka]
Yeah.
[Ryan Paul]
Right, a full production up in West Valley.
[Alan Muraoka]
That's correct. That's correct. And I was just so proud of it.
And there are two, three people from that production who are at Utah Shakespeare this season. One of them, Allie Ewalt, is the lead in She Loves Me, playing Amalia, and a lead in our show, Something Rotten, playing Portia. So it's great that she's back.
And then her understudy for that, for Gold Mountain, is also in our show, in the ensemble.
[Ryan Paul]
So Gold Mountain was really a big undertaking and quite popular at the time and it was a good show for us in many ways. But now you're back with Something Rotten. Something Rotten is one of two musicals.
Rarely have we done two musicals in a season. Runs in rep in the Randall with She Loves Me and See How They Run. So let's just talk about, briefly, the elevator pitch of the plot of Something Rotten.
[Alan Muraoka]
Okay, so why is it perfect? Is that it's about Shakespeare, right? And the premise is, what if Shakespeare actually didn't write all of his plays?
What if it's such pressure to make hit after hit that he actually steals some ideas? And so he steals them from this troupe that he had started with called the Bottom Brothers, Nick and Nigel Bottom, and Nigel is the playwright who has brilliance, Shakespearean brilliance, shall we say, and comes up with ideas and language that Shakespeare goes, oh, that's great! I think I'm gonna grab it!
And so Shakespeare is the rock star of his time. The Bottom Brothers, nobody knows who they are. So they can't complain to anybody because no one would believe them.
And so that's the conflict of this show is these two are creating, actually, work that is Shakespeare-worthy because they wrote it and Shakespeare takes it and then takes all the credit. And that's the pitch. And one of the brothers is very jealous of that.
One of the brothers is extremely jealous of that. And they are so contentious and have, they get so mad at each other, there's a confrontation, and instead of a duel, they have a tap dance-off at the end of Act One. So yeah, there's lots of silly fun in it.
And yeah, it's gonna be a blast. And a celebration of theatrical musicals. It's both a celebration of theatrical musicals and Shakespeare.
And so what I'm interested in is if Utah audiences of Utah Shakespeare audiences are gonna get more of the Shakespeare references, you know, because they're so, that's so ingrained in Cedar City than the musical references. So, you know, it's something that we're gonna see.
[Ryan Paul]
So we have a, my wife and I have a 13-year gap between our number two and number three kids. I've got two kids in college and one in third grade. So our eight-year-old loves this show.
I mean, she hasn't seen it.
[Lauren Bird]
Yeah.
[Ryan Paul]
But she's listened to the soundtrack. I don't know, we listened to Omelette a million times a day. But so she's very excited to see it.
And so I've been, I've seen the show before, but I've been living with the music for the last few months in the car and everything else. And it is a joy. But a challenge, I would imagine.
What are some of the big challenges? You said that when you were asked to come in here with the short timeframe we have, that there were some concerns. What, first of all, what preparation did you do?
And secondly, how do you help get those puzzles, pieces fit together in the time you have?
[Alan Muraoka]
The biggest challenge for this and for us is that there are, I wanna say, seven or eight large production numbers in this show that are pretty intricate and pretty detailed. And so in the prep of that, my choreographer and I had to come up with both ideas of humor and actual steps that, you know, and the challenge was it can't be too hard that we can't teach it in this finite amount of time. And yet it can't be too easy that it looks kind of pedestrian.
So she has been so brilliant at finding that middle ground for this, that it's challenging enough and yet very, very fun for an audience to watch. And so, yeah, that was probably our biggest challenge was the timeframe element of it. And then, so I had to go through the whole show.
I literally had to block every moment of the show. Again, to bring in and say, this is what I have. Do we like it?
If we don't like it, what's another, you know, pitch another option. And so it's been a really lovely collaborative experience of, because again, I also, we hired everybody off of audition tapes of videos. And so I never really got to meet anybody in person.
And so I didn't know personalities. I didn't know style, comic style, comedic style until we were all in a room together. And so for the most part, that it's been like, oh, you do physical comedy really well.
Let's try to add that to this moment. And so, yeah, it's been a great collaboration. And like I said, so far so good.
I think it's going really well.
[Ryan Paul]
So I don't watch part of my work at the festival in the university, watch rehearsals, partly because I'm too insecure to watch people. You know, it makes me, I can't even go, I can't even go to a yard sale. I'm nervous negotiating over people's stuff.
So to watch the process of deconstruction and reconstruction and everything else. But my question is, the only vision that I have really is like a chorus line, like the Michael Douglas character in the movie sitting in the dark, smoking a cigarette. And the chorus, you know, five, six, seven, eight.
No, no, no. I mean, that's not how it is, right?
[Alan Muraoka]
That is not how it is. Not in my room.
[Ryan Paul]
Because you're smoking a cigar.
[Alan Muraoka]
Yeah, I'm not smoking a cigar, yeah. I'm eating an almond, maybe. Yeah, but, you know, the process is, you know, the process is different for every director.
And my approach is, okay, here's my idea. If it doesn't fit, great, let's pitch other ideas. Let's have two other ideas out there.
And let's see which one is the funniest or has the most heart. You know, for me, it's always the one little criticism I had about the Broadway production that I saw, which actually the person who directed that, Casey Nicholaw, he and I went to college together. So we are friends.
And so the one thing I thought was missing was the heart of the show. Because they were stretching so hard for the comedy. And so in this production, the idea is we have found more moments of heart.
We have found my approach to the Shakespeare is when Nigel writes something, like so Nigel writes the to be or not to be speech in this version of the show. And so, you know, the note was, when we read this, it's transformative for you as an actor. You know that you're reading something that is going to last for the ages.
And so we have moments like that that were not a part of the Broadway show. And I hope that resonates with people because I feel like it really is important to them. It's not only a love letter to musicals, but it is a love letter to Shakespeare and the craft of Shakespeare as well.
[Ryan Paul]
I think it's interesting you think about the idea of have that heart and transformation. And what I thought about when you said that is, have you seen Operation Mincemeat?
[Alan Muraoka]
Yes.
[Ryan Paul]
So the Dear Bill song? Yes. Where it transitions from talking about Bill to talking about Tom.
And if you're not, it's like, wait a minute, did that just happen? And you see the people, I mean, that is what lands that moment, right? This connection.
And all of a sudden, without needing to understand, spelled out the backstory of that character, everything becomes so much more present.
[Alan Muraoka]
Well, and that is a prime example of something can have slapstick and physical comedy and be really raucous, but doesn't mean that heart can't be a part of that journey. And so that, to me, is the importance. And it's actually even more satisfying to have that moment where you're like, why am I crying?
Why am I crying at this comedy? It's just more, that journey is much more fulfilling for me.
[Ryan Paul]
So when you get this, in this case, something rotten, that you're directing that has been done before on Broadway and other regional things, do you go back to Broadway cast recordings to listen to the music? Absolutely. Do you talk to your friend who directed it before?
Or do you just say, I need to start this in my own world right now?
[Alan Muraoka]
I definitely go back to the cast recording. That's sort of the Bible, right? And the script is, those two things are the Bible of it.
And then you go, okay, this is what I remember when I saw it back, you know, however many years ago. What can we do that's different sometimes? And how can we add more humor to this moment?
Or how can we add more heart to this moment? And we have found several things that I think the audiences are really going to pick up on, which is great.
[Ryan Paul]
So I think it's interesting that you talk about that, specifically with our audiences, because in the past when we've done shows that everyone thinks they know or love and they see it and they say, well, that's not, you know, or they just had listened to it in the recording and they say, well, that's not how I pictured it. Right. How do you get over that idea?
Do you just say, I'm not going to worry about that and just give people what is going to be beautiful to them?
[Alan Muraoka]
You have to have, stay true to the vision that you are trying to create. And the wonderful thing is then pitching the idea then to the actors and then see that light bulb go off for each of them of like, oh, yeah, this is good. This is the journey that I want to take.
The gentleman who's playing Nigel, Jason Rex, I think had seen versions of it where Nigel is just very quirky and nerdy and nebbishy and that was all he was throughout the entire show. And then for me, I was like, Jason, I think there's more in here. Like he discovers his first love in this and then he loses her.
So the sorrow that you have that then inspires the writing of Hamlet, that pain has to drive everything. And once you have your voice that Portia has given you, then you become a different person. And so for me, and that easily could be played for comedy and keep him nebbishy and with a funny voice, but it's not as impactful as you're following his heart journey through this show because of that lost love.
[Ryan Paul]
Yeah, and one of the things I like about, that I find interesting in this show, is the idea that as you say, it is a love letter often to the words of Shakespeare, right? I mean, there's this whole idea of cultural canon that what if Shakespeare really wasn't that good of a guy? Like I keep thinking back to that, I don't know if you've ever seen the David Tennant, Doctor Who episode where they meet Shakespeare, right?
And he tells his companion Martha now be very careful what you say here. And she kind of accidentally drops all these lines. He's like, oh yeah, that's a good idea.
[Lauren Bird]
Writes it down.
[Ryan Paul]
But it's this idea of, what if Shakespeare were just a regular, he's not what we think that he is on this pedestal. I love how this show really leans into that.
[Alan Muraoka]
Absolutely. And then I think there are people out there that think that Shakespeare didn't write all of his canon plays, that he had help, or they borrowed from each other. He was living in a time when these writers were all very close and actually taking things from each other and putting them in their shows.
So it, you know, nobody really knows. So this is just the big what if, dot, dot, dot.
[Ryan Paul]
Just like nobody really knows why the Edmund Fitzgerald sign.
[Alan Muraoka]
Exactly.
[Ryan Paul]
So I think, I always, when I talk to people about this, and I'm not a Shakespeare scholar, but I am a believer in, the thing that I like about Shakespeare scholarship now is that we're finding out he was much more collaborative than we like to think that he was. And for some people, that's like, how dare you? But to me, it's like, no, that shows the power of the human spirit, that these guys sat in a tavern and talked about things and worked together.
And it was a community of artists that saw success could work for everyone. One person rises, other people will as well. And as an American, as a historian, I think that's the great lesson of history, right?
That we do better together than we do individually.
[Alan Muraoka]
Well, and I, for research, I read this book called Will in the World. And in it, there's a moment where, when he arrives in the city, when Shakespeare finally arrives in London, he goes to see a show and he is smitten with the language and how the language is, you know, is being portrayed. And then he has this aha moment of, hmm, a soliloquy.
I could create something poetic of somebody having a monologue, right? And so, and when he starts it, it's not great. But by the time he gets to his later plays, he has really created something beautiful.
And around the time that Hamlet is written, he writes Hamlet, he's sort of mastered it. And so that was very interesting to me, that he actually, the inspiration for that was seeing somebody else's play and the idea of language and how language can draw you in. So that, yeah.
So we try to use that as well within our show.
[Ryan Paul]
And it's like the idea of giving Shakespeare, even the grace to be Shakespeare, right? That I always talk about when I teach history of rock and roll, that when Elvis walks into the studio for the first time, he's not Elvis Presley. He's Elvis Presley, but not the Elvis Presley, right?
And there's not like one recording and then he becomes Elvis. It's like there's, we think there's A and then B, but what we don't realize is there's A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, before we get to B. And I think Shakespeare is that same way, that we, and everything he wrote was, quite frankly, was good, right?
And I think this play really communicates that in a beautifully wonderful fashion.
[Alan Muraoka]
And the one thing that we are trying to lean into a little bit of, it's the pressure of fame as well for Shakespeare, that there is an undercurrent of fear of failure, that he's not gonna be able to live up to this next play. And so, and he doesn't have that great idea yet until he hears Omelette. And I guess I should explain to readers is that the reason why we have a whole egg theme in Something Rotten is because Nick, in his desperation, Nick Bottom, goes to a soothsayer, and the soothsayer is Nostradamus' cousin.
So it's one removed. And so he's, so Nostradamus is telling him things that he's kind of half hearing, half getting right, half getting wrong. So instead of Hamlet, he thinks that the great piece of art is going to be Omelette.
And so that is why, then, the Bottom brothers create an entire musical based on eggs. And that is the premise.
[Ryan Paul]
Which is also why, you know, by design, it's running in rep with Hamlet. That's exactly right.
[Alan Muraoka]
That's exactly right.
[Ryan Paul]
So, you know, Lauren understands that pressure of fame being our top engineering student. All those people trying to, you know, calculate faster. So let's move to our next song here.
This is a song you chose called Stick Season by Nora Kahn. Noah Kahn. Noah Kahn.
Yeah, Noah Kahn. Yeah, I'm sorry.
[Alan Muraoka]
So why did you choose this one? So because of my love of folk music, any time there's a new artist that feels like they're living in that world, I get completely drawn to them. And so this was 2022.
Saturday Night Live has just started live performances again with audiences. And Noah Kahn was one of the guest artists in one of those first shows when we were coming back from the pandemic. And I think he sang Stick Season.
And I just fell in love with the fact that it felt very folk to me. And yet it was then complicated by his life and his existence. Growing up in New England, having problems with drugs, with alcohol, not being able to hang on to relationships and taking ownership of all of that in these songs.
And yet yearning for connection still was something that really drew me. My husband grew up in Maine. And so a lot of these songs are all in the Maine area or in the drive from I-95 up into Maine.
So it's all of these places that I recognized and have heard of. And so that's the other thing that really I responded to was the idea of like, oh, yeah, I know all these places. I don't know this dude so much because I'm not somebody who, you know, who hangs out in bars and does a little bit too much, you know, whatever.
But it resonated with me. The hope, the idea of the longing of hope still and of that search for love is the thing that I really responded to.
[Ryan Paul]
Okay. This is Stick Season by Noah Kahn.
[Lauren Bird]
As you promised me that I was more than all the miles combined You must have had yourself a change of heart Like halfway through the drive Because your voice dropped off exactly As you passed my exit sign Kept on driving straight And left our future to the right Now I am stuck between my anger And the blame that I can't face Memories or something Even smoking weed does not replace And I am terrified of weather Cause I see you when it rains Doc told me to travel But there's COVID on the planes And I'm a Vermont But it's deceiving of the sticks And I saw your mom She forgot that I existed And it's half my fault But I'd just like to play the victim I'll drink alcohol Till my friends come home for Christmas And I'll dream each night Of songbirds and you That I might not have But I did not lose Now you're tired tracks And one pair of shoes And I'm split in half But that'll have to do So I thought that if I piled something good In all my bad That I could be canceled out the darkness I inherited from dad No I am no longer funny Cause I miss the way you laughed You once called me forever And now you still can't call me back And I'm a Vermont But it's deceiving of the sticks And I saw your mom She forgot that I existed And it's half my fault But I'd just like to play the victim I'll drink alcohol Till my friends come home for Christmas And I'll dream each night Of songbirds and you That I might not have But I did not lose Now you're tired tracks And one pair of shoes And I'm split in half But that'll have to do I'm a Vermont But it's deceiving of the sticks And I saw your mom She forgot that I existed And it's half my fault But I'd just like to play the victim I'll drink alcohol Till my friends come home for Christmas And I'll dream each night Of songbirds and you That I might not have But I did not lose Now you're tired tracks And one pair of shoes And I'm split in half But that'll have to do Have to do
[Ryan Paul]
with Alan Maraca. He's the the director of this season's musical Something Rotten. He's also an Emmy award winning actor director, Broadway star and of course the one that probably maybe you are most known for by millions of children generationally is playing Alan on Sesame Street
[Alan Muraoka]
That is correct
[Ryan Paul]
So I to be fair, just so everyone knows I did ask permission that we could talk about Sesame Street because I'm sure everybody talks about that but the show for me, you know, I obviously was multiple generations before you were on there so I grew up with Mr. Hooper and I remember when the actor died and those kinds of conversations and then you know, I have this gap of when I'm not watching Sesame Street I'm watching more of the you know, I follow along Jim Henson and The Muppet Show and all those things and then I have kids in the early 2000s and right about your era and come back to that show with them and find that while it has changed it still stayed the same if that makes sense.
It's a timeless piece of television So let's talk about first of all, your experience pre-casting with Sesame Street and then how it kind of led to that
[Alan Muraoka]
So like you I was a latchkey kid and when I got home my parents didn't get home for like two hours after I got home from school and so I was allowed to watch TV and one of the shows I was allowed to watch was Sesame Street and I was a little older but what drew me to it was the humor. Even back then, I understood that there was social satire going on that little part of me that understood that and and so I just remember like you know the baker, you know the number of the day and he's like five coconut cream pies or whatever it was and he fell down the stairs I just thought that that was the funniest thing ever and so it was always been a part of me and so in 19, I believe it was 1996 or 7 I was doing A King and I on Broadway and I got a call from my agent that said, hey, they're looking for this new cast member on Sesame Street and I was like oh, I would absolutely love to audition for that and so I went in and it all went great and then I kept getting called back and called back and at the time they knew that they wanted an Asian American or a person to fill this role and so I saw the group just whittled down whittled down and so toward the end my friend Ann who was in my falsetto was called back as well and we read sides together and she said, you're gonna get this and I went you know I might and the reason I said that was because I knew sort of the things that they needed they needed somebody who had a musical background because there was always a lot of singing on the show and I knew that they needed a warm presence and that was something that I always got feedback from from every casting director that I walked in and did shows for was like, you have this natural warmth and that just brings people into you and so I brought that to the show and then lo and behold I got it and you know, greatest day of my life was walking on set for the first time and then meeting all of the, number one the human cast who I grew up with so Bob and Maria and Gordon and Emilio and Linda all of those people were such a part of my childhood that I already felt at home and then the Muppets all of the Muppeteers came up at a break and then got in a huge line and just was like, hi, welcome, welcome just being really silly but also then being very welcoming as well and so I think it probably took two weeks before I was like, oh no, this is this feels right and...
[Ryan Paul]
In the audition process No, not at all. In the audition process when do the Muppets get involved?
[Alan Muraoka]
Great question so my very last I went in four times, the very last time I had to improv with Telemonster who is this kind of, for those of you who don't know he's kind of this very nervous anxious, I would say, if you know who John Lovitz is it's John Lovitz in felt form and so we had this improv where I was going to make him something at Hooper's store and the thing about improv is one of the cardinal rules is never negate you always say yes and so the first thing that happens is we start the ad-libbing and I say hey, Tele, would you like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? And he said no! And part of me was like, wait, that's not in the rule book and flop sweat started happening but I got my way out of it, we finished the scene and as I walked out I was like that was weird and then I realized oh, he did that on purpose because when you have a kid on set, you never know what they're going to do you can't ever be you know, they sometimes won't follow a script, they will forget their lines and so you have to deal with that so you don't ruin the take and so I think that that was conscious on their part, on the telemonster's part to make sure that I was able to easily work my way out of that situation and lo and behold I did and lo and behold I got the job.
[Ryan Paul]
Thankfully for all of us. So you talk about meeting the OG cast, I mean some had passed away obviously but what about like Carol Spinney? Yes.
What about the Big Bird, Oscar, I mean this guy had been around since I mean he was really the OG.
[Alan Muraoka]
Yes, everyone treated him with such respect and he loved being there. His warmth was genuine. My favorite story about Carol is that after I filmed my very first episode it was going to be the premiere episode of the season to start season 30 of the show and so we had a lunch where we did a screening of it and Carol was sitting in front of me and in this episode there's a bird couture meeting that I throw at Hooper's store and then because of circumstances it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and so I get more harried like I have to make sandwiches for 40 people, I'm running out of bread all of this thing but at the end of the day it all works out and Big Bird and then the whole street sings this song called Welcome to the Party to introduce me and welcome me to the street. And when the episode was over Carol was watching in front of me, he turned around and he was crying and it affected me so much because I realized that it was this universe that was not only about Alan the grocer being brought into the street but it was me then being adopted into this family of people who had been together already for 30 years, a lot of them.
So it just meant so much to me and I told that story at Carol's funeral and it was very impactful for me.
[Ryan Paul]
It's interesting that now you started out and now you're the OG, right? Is there anybody in the cast that is you're the...
[Alan Muraoka]
Some of the Muppeteers are still of that period, that Jim period. The reason I was brought on the show was at that time all of the, you know, Mr. Hooper was always traditionally sort of a grandfatherly character and as the cast aged up they realized they needed the next generation so I was brought on in season 30 to sort of be that next generation and now of course we have other human cast members, we call ourselves the humans who are younger to represent that next generation as well.
So yeah, I'm kind of the grandparent now.
[Ryan Paul]
So there's Nina, right?
[Alan Muraoka]
And who are the other human cast members? Chris. Right, okay.
And then we have Violet and Olivia who are younger kids and that's kind of the main cast. Yeah, our main cast.
[Ryan Paul]
So in the filming when you film a season is that like you're going in and filming a number of episodes in a week? Or one episode a week?
[Alan Muraoka]
No, so our obligation is 13 episodes per season now and then we fill that the rest of the time in with repeats of past seasons and so that takes about a little over two months to do and so yeah, it's like summer camp we get together for two months of the year and have a great time together and get this new content out and then for the rest of the year we do small projects they bring in guest stars the my favorite thing I know that you were gonna ask this later but so I'm gonna, sorry, I'm gonna preempt it now. One of my favorite shows right now is Shrinking on, I believe it's on Apple and the entire cast of Shrinking came on the Sesame Street set and did little vignettes with the Muppets and I was just going where was my call?
I wanted to be a part of that but yeah, so I had a lot of FOMO but I was so excited to sort of see all of this content and the latest one that they just dropped was Harrison Ford and Oscar having a grouch off kind of situation which just made me the happiest man alive, so yeah So you do the two months
[Ryan Paul]
and that's rehearsal and filming and then you all go your separate ways and then come back two months later and that's why I'm able to do this
[Alan Muraoka]
is because of that that so, you know it's the greatest part-time job ever and then my favorite thing of the year is we still are, we still have a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade so I get to do that every year and I choreograph it as well and so it is, that is the biggest treat of the season, it's my favorite day of the year
[Ryan Paul]
So you're not only the guy in the dark in the desk smoking the cigarette, you're the 5, 6, 7, 8
[Alan Muraoka]
Absolutely
[Ryan Paul]
Very cool, so Sesame Street is under attack is probably not the right word but it has moved homes from various spaces of people buying it and what is the culture thought, I mean, it's gonna continue, right?
[Alan Muraoka]
Like my grandkids, I guess I don't know how soon they'll be here but we'll have Sesame Street in some form or another I know there was a big deal when it shifted to I think what, Netflix or Apple TV It went to HBO but what people don't realize is that it will always be on PBS So there will always be availability of free content because all of these things are streaming platforms that cost, right? But we will always have a presence on PBS which is free So anybody has access to it It's just that with the streaming services, they get it I think it's 6 months prior before PBS does So the content's still out there for access but it's just a timing issue now And now we're at, and now we just started our new homes at Netflix
[Ryan Paul]
And you're at season
[Alan Muraoka]
We are going to start to film season 56 or 57 I believe
[Ryan Paul]
Are you allowed to say your favorite Muppet?
[Alan Muraoka]
I am not No, I love them all for different reasons Telly is so much fun because of the hijinks that we get into They put me a lot with Julia who is our Muppet with autism And so I want to say that a good portion of my social media fan base are people on the spectrum and that just makes me so happy I had a father stop me on a train and just told me how much it meant to him that there was Julia was a part of our show
[Ryan Paul]
It's interesting that, by the way, Grover
[Alan Muraoka]
That's mine
[Ryan Paul]
Since I was a kid from the very beginning I am a fanboy of Grover In fact, in my office I have an Alex Ross drawing of Super Grover Yes And so what are the aspects
[Alan Muraoka]
of Grover that appeal to you?
[Ryan Paul]
I like Grover because he is the most like me, right? That I am sometimes loud, sometimes I speak without talking, but I think I'm a good guy I always wanted to be a superhero But at the end of the day, I think I come I want, I sometimes over, go over the top because I think I'm doing the right thing But it's not out of malice, it's just out of like, hey, let's do this And also sometimes the overlookedness type thing And I grew up with the monster at the end of the book, and that very much is my story, right? This idea of don't do this, don't do this, and then realize, well, wait a minute So Grover to me is always the, I've always been a Grover guy That's beautiful What about you, Lauren?
[Lauren Bird]
I don't know I definitely did watch Sesame Street as a kid, but I don't remember most of it But I've always loved Big Bird just because my last name is Bird
[Alan Muraoka]
Oh, well there it is, that's easy And it is generational And really, when we were growing up Sesame Street was really the only, like, there was like three shows maybe, and Sesame Street was one of them Now, the playing field is much wider, and so you have Nickelodeon, you have Disney And so, you know But I think what is special about our show is that we still try to create opportunities of inclusivity for everyone With the introduction of Julia Our introduction of Tamir and Gabrielle who are our Black Muppets There's Jiang who is our Asian American Muppet And then we have with Olivia, we have Dave Dave and Oh, I'm forgetting his name But we have a same-sex couple now on our show as well So just to create more inclusion in the world is really important to Sesame And just to do that with kindness and to do that with openness feels very, very important to us And we've had some pushback from that from each of those inclusions
[Ryan Paul]
Which is expected, I think It's interesting you say that because I remember growing up, you're right It was Mr. Rogers who, if anything, talked about compassion and inclusivity Sesame Street, which had a diverse cast and The Electric Company which also was a very diverse cast And I remember, I mean I have lasting memories of those things, of those shows I mean, you think about some of those recognizable notes in American music history of the 20th century are those first three or four notes of the Sesame Street
[Alan Muraoka]
You're absolutely right
[Ryan Paul]
And, hey you guys And we could, like, one, two, three, four five, six, seven, eight, and that's still around That's still there, right? And how many things from your childhood are still teaching those kinds of lessons in a relevant way?
[Alan Muraoka]
That's exactly right. I watched a documentary about Mr. Rogers and something that I didn't even realize They had an episode where Mr. Rogers there's this little waiting pool that Mr. Rogers sticks his feet in and then, I think it was the postman who is black sticks his feet in there as well and they just have a conversation while soaking their feet together and this was in politically in defiance of this idea of white only pools where black people could not swim and how impactful that was as an adult knowing the history but also how impactful as a kid just watching that too, just the normalcy of that moment feels very impactful
[Ryan Paul]
without knowing it I think that's we had Beth Lopes here on the podcast and I've been a big Beth Lopes fan for a while but she said this thing last year that I wrote down, I use it in my history classes about as you like it, she talks about going into the forest of Arden and you go into the forest where all of a sudden, all of those things all the things you were no longer matter and all of those things you wish to be now could become a possibility and we talked about this idea of that's like theater, right? Good theater, you come in one way and come out just a little bit different, certainly two hours older, but become a little bit different, right?
And based upon where you are in your life and I think good television like Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers and those kinds of things, you don't know what's happening but in that 30 minutes, 25 minutes, you are becoming something different hopefully something better but certainly seeing a different experience that way and being a part of that I would imagine is at the same time rewarding and humbling
[Alan Muraoka]
Absolutely, absolutely and for me being the face of the show because the humans are the recognizable characters on that show you would pass abacadabby you would have no idea that the actress who plays abacadabby so I take that pretty seriously of being in public and making sure that I'm accessible to anybody who wants to come up.
That happened at Smith's I had one of the workers at Smith's I was like in the produce aisle then went to the next aisle and he ran around and stopped me he's like, I have to ask you and I was like yes you are right, let's take a selfie and then it made it all the way to the checkout aisle and so this guy is about to check me out I was like, oh I hear a Sesame Street guy I'm right in front of you, dude I'm right in front of you so it's just very sweet and you just never know when it's going to happen
[Ryan Paul]
It must be interesting to be one of those few people that is more famous and recognized by kids that are 10 and under than by adults
[Alan Muraoka]
That's interesting that you say that because to me it's more adults that recognize me than kids because it makes me happy because the adults are watching with their kids, number one or it's a generational that they grew up with the show and then recognize me from their childhood I've had many a time where a parent is pushing their child in front of me and the kid has Stranger Danger written on their faces because they also it's weird for somebody younger that box of the TV is a magical place and so to see somebody in public that you recognize from that, it's a little disconcerting to them
[Ryan Paul]
It's probably the parent that wants to use their kid as the gateway to meeting you
[Alan Muraoka]
That's exactly right I will always offer a selfie opportunity for both child and for parents because of that
[Ryan Paul]
I did tell Alan on the way in that my daughter Marina She's a huge fanboy of his and the show and I was like she's down for a little bit and I should have brought her in Next time Next time, so let's get to our third and final break and this is a song which you have chosen called Helplessly Hoping and this is by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
[Alan Muraoka]
What do you have to say about this? When I was in high school I was in a folk rock group and my best friends, we called ourselves the fearsome foursome, we were all in this folk rock group together and so we sang a lot of tight harmonied stuff and the people that we always veered back to was Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and I did a little research about this song and I didn't realize that it was written for I believe it was Judy Collins and it was about Stephen Sills and the breakup with Judy Collins and the aftermath of that and so when you listen to this song, and it didn't really hit me until I found out this information there is, there's both, you feel the longing and you there are lyrics that are like wow, wow that feels so, it's so it feels like a breakup song and yet it feels beautiful at the same time and again there's hope in it but there is melancholy within the tight harmonies of it that just really, really touched me in a very profound way.
[Ryan Paul]
Okay this is Helplessly Hoping by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
[Lauren Bird]
Helpless is a gentle true spirit he runs wishing he could fly only to trip at the sound of goodbye wordlessly watching he waits by the window and wonders at the empty place inside heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams he worries did he hear a goodbye back or even hello they are one person they are two alone they are three together they are four of each other stand by the stairway you'll see something certain to tell you confusion has its cause love isn't lying, it's loose in a lady who lingers saying she is lost and choking on hello one person they are two alone they are three together they are four of each other That was Helplessly Hoping by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.
You're listening to the Apex Radio Hour Utah Shakespeare Festival Edition. I'll turn it back to you, Ryan.
[Ryan Paul]
Thank you, Lauren. We are here in the studio with Alan Marocca. He's the director of Something Rotten in this season's Shakespeare season, and also an Emmy award-winning actor, director, and of course, Alan on Sesame Street.
What did you play in your folk group?
[Alan Muraoka]
What did I play? I didn't play an instrument. This was all singing, so that is also why it's ingrained in me, because we did a lot of Jim Croce, Carole King, Beautiful is probably my favorite album of all time, just because every song on that is kind of a hit.
And they created a Broadway musical out of it, so I wasn't the only one. But yeah, so that is sort of my love of folk music sort of came from our folk rock group.
[Ryan Paul]
Very, very cool. Well, thank you for having our conversation with us today. As those of you who have listened to us before know that one of the questions we always ask at the end is, what's bringing us joy?
So I'll start with you, Alan Marocca. What are you currently watching, reading, listening to, or playing that is bringing you joy?
[Alan Muraoka]
Like I said, Shrinking is probably one of my favorite shows. What I love about it is that it is a comedy, and very much like my approach to Something Rotten, that has so much heart that you end up crying within the half hour that you're watching this comedy. So you're laughing at one minute and then you're crying in the next.
And that's kind of stuff that really I just love. And the other things that I'm loving right now is that because I'm in Cedar City and because I'm so concentrated on the show that I'm not really watching a lot of television, so I'm going back to reading books. And I got a Cedar City library card and so one of the things that I just finished reading was, it's a novel that I've have at home that I've tried to start twice and then have put it down.
I finally finished it. It's called A Gentleman in Moscow. And it was a beautiful book.
So I'm mostly glad I finished it finally. And then the other book that I really love is Will in the World. Just learning more about Shakespeare and his journey.
And how really like, even though it kind of is a biography, nobody really knows. Like there are so many question marks because there's so many holes within, you know, there's so many holes within the story because of when, you know, like there had to be documentation and sometimes there wasn't documentation. So people just have theories rather than actual facts about it.
So...
[Ryan Paul]
Is Gentleman in Moscow the one where he's in like the department store or he's like in a hotel?
[Alan Muraoka]
He lives in a hotel because that's where he has been sequestered to. And so yes. And he starts as a guest and ends up working there.
I'm not going to give up too much away.
[Ryan Paul]
I think there's a miniseries.
[Alan Muraoka]
There's a miniseries with Kenneth Branagh that was just, I think, two or three years ago about the book. So yeah. Very cool.
So, okay. Add that to your list, Lauren.
[Ryan Paul]
Will do.
[Alan Muraoka]
Yeah.
[Ryan Paul]
Alright. Lauren Bird, what are you currently watching, reading, listening to, or playing that is bringing you joy?
[Lauren Bird]
So since it's a family favorite and I read that, Alan, you were in it, we rewatched last night my mom's favorite movie, It Could Happen to You. And it's just such a cute movie. I love it every time.
[Alan Muraoka]
Oh my goodness. Yes, I had one line that they overdubbed. So if you watch it too carefully, my mouth doesn't match what I'm saying.
[Lauren Bird]
Yeah, but we just always love rewatching it.
[Alan Muraoka]
I love that.
[Lauren Bird]
What about you, Ryan? What are you currently watching, reading, listening to, or playing that's bringing you joy?
[Ryan Paul]
So I am going to do my host prerogative. None of those things, but what I am watching, many things are bringing me joy. But I was up in Salt Lake yesterday at the, one of the previews for the new Museum of Utah.
So Utah is one of the few states, there's a handful, that don't have a dedicated history museum. And so many, about a decade ago or so, they started moving it forward with different ideas. The legislature had funded it, and so now it is in the north senate building.
They've had the whole bottom floor there. There's four giant galleries. It'll be dedicated next week, officially opened, but this was a preview for educators and those kinds of things.
So I drove up to see it, and it's really an incredible story. And it's one of those things that I tell my students when I teach Utah history, is that Utah, surprisingly, is a much more diverse state than one thinks that it has ever has been. We have this idea of what Utah is, and what you think Utah is, is not what it is.
And this really is a great way to tell that story. So if you get a chance, starting at the end of June, it's free. And they have an amazing gift shop.
But that's what was bringing me joy. And I will tell you also this, because it reminded me, because I was talking with Alan earlier, one of the things I listened to in one of my drives up and down to Salt Lake over the last little bit is a new podcast, I don't know, last year, on the Edmund Fitzgerald, called Edmund Fitzgerald, 50 Fathoms Below, which is produced by the Duluth newspaper. And it's about seven, eight episodes with the new scholarship.
And it's just a fascinating, fascinating listen. Amazing. Well, thank you, Alan Rocha, for being here.
I should say that this season, the Utah Shakespeare Festival is producing three plays in the Ingolstadt, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and Twelfth Night, three in the Randall Jones Theater, Something Rotten, She Loves Me, and See How They Run, as well. In the next couple weeks, starting in July, they'll premiere two in the Aines, which are The Book Club Play and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. If you want more information about that, casting for Something Rotten, study guides, those kinds of things, those can be found at BARD.org.
If you're interested in listening to more of our Apex Radio podcast, they can be found on the Apex Radio Hour, anywhere you get your podcasts. So we're going to go out with the final song that you chose for us, which is Castle on the Hill by Ed Sheeran. Yes.
Why did you choose this one?
[Alan Muraoka]
Well, I like a story song, you know, hence the record of Edmund Fitzgerald. I love Piano Man, anything that tells a story. And so this is about Ed Sheeran's upbringing in, I think it's called Farmlingham or something like that in Sussex.
And it talks about his relationship with the people that he grew up with, this tight-knit group of friends, that now that they're grown up, things have changed, things have evolved, people have come in and out of his lives. And it really kind of, it harkened me back to my fearsome foursome group that we sang Happily Hoping with. We don't see each other a lot, they're all still in L.A. We see each other every few years, but when we come back together it's like no time has passed. And so it really brings my heart joy when I hear it. And for whatever reason, when he starts talking about his friends and where they are now, I start to cry. And I think it's because of my age as well.
I'm getting very introspective in my old age. And this is just a song that just has so much heart in it.
[Ryan Paul]
Okay, thank you Alan, thank you Lauren. We're going to go out with A Castle on the Hill by Ed Sheeran, and in the words of the great American poet Bill Withers, I wish you well.
[Lauren Bird]
Take me back to when I found my heart, broke it here, made friends and lost them through the years And I've not seen the boring fields in so long, I know I've grown, but I can't wait to go home I'm on my way Driving at ninety down north country lane Singing to Tiny Dancer, and I miss the way you make me feel It's real when we watch the sunset over the castle on the hill Fifteen years old, smoking and road cigarettes Running from the law through the back fields and getting drunk with my friends Had my first kiss on a Friday night, I don't reckon that I did it right, but I was younger then Take me back to when we found weekend jobs when we got paid, we'd buy cheap spirits and drink them straight, me and my friends have not thrown up in so long, oh how we've grown but I can't wait to go home I'm on my way Driving at ninety down north country lane Singing to Tiny Dancer, and I miss the way you make me feel It's real when we watch the sunset over the castle on the hill One friend left to sell clothes, one works down by the coast, one had two kids but lives alone One's brother overdosed One's already on his second wife One's just barely getting by but these people raised me and I can't wait to go home I'm on my way I still remember these old country lanes when we did not know the answers and I miss the way you make me feel It's real when we watch the sunset over the castle on the hill oh over the castle on the hill oh over the castle on the hill