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I'm Alicia Anstead. This is the Cali Crossley Show. White working class Boston has become a big screen hotspot thanks to Ben Affleck and Dennis Lehane. Now playwright David Lindsay Abair takes it to Broadway. He got his start writing absurdist plays was the wordsmith for Shrek the Musical and want to Pulitzer Prize for his stage play rabbit hole. Now he's mining the golden grit of his hometown South Boston in the Broadway premiere of his newest play good people drawing the divide between white collar and working class Boston. Lindsay ponders the fates of those who break out and those who get stuck. A south a native he's become one of our quirkiest and most successful playwrights up next. DAVID LINDSAY of bear and south of hit Broadway. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi Singh. Another government report reaffirms that people are still paying more for food and gas and that's pushing up prices.

The Labor Department says the Consumer Price Index increased four tenths of a percent in April. Takeout food and energy which fluctuate wildly and prices are up two tenths of a percent. The trustees of Social Security and Medicare are giving updates on the state of those programs. NPR's John Burnett reports the recession and job losses are expected to have taken until the troubled Social Security Medicare face will likely be reflected in the dates showing when the trust funds will be exhausted. Last year the trustees said Medicare would run out of money by 2029 and Social Security by 2037 the annual reports are expected to show both programs still face financial challenges presented by aging baby boomers and a slow economy. But Medicare is expected to be in worse shape. It's also being hit by rising health care costs. Social Security appears to be off the table but changes to Medicare for future retirees could end up being part of an agreement to increase the government's debt ceiling trial Snyder NPR News Washington. More than 22000 people who think they have won a visa lottery to come

to the United States. Are in for some bad news. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports the State Department says it has to redraw because of a computer glitch. The State Department expressed regret for the mistake which is sure to disappoint thousands of would be U.S. visa holders. Nearly 15 million people enter the annual visa lottery when the numbers were drawn it turned out that 90 percent of the winners had submitted their applications on the first two days of a 30 day registration period. Officials blamed it on a programming error and said the problem has been fixed and the lottery will be redrawn. The lottery is run each year and gives tens of thousands of people a chance for immigrant visas without the need for sponsors. Michele Kelemen NPR News Washington. To NATO's service members in Afghanistan are dead gunned down today by an Afghan policeman. The military alliance says the attack took place inside a police compound in southern Helmand Province. The troops were serving as mentors for a local national civil order brigade. Their names and nationalities have not been

released. The Pakistani Taliban says their attack today on a paramilitary training center is retaliation for the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Bombers blew themselves up at the front of the facility killing at least 80 people. Authorities say that most of the casualties were recruits. Taking a look at Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling down one hundred twenty four points down nearly one percent of 12000 571 and trading of 3 billion shares. Nasdaq down more than 1 percent at two thousand eight hundred thirty three and the Nasdaq is down nearly 1 percent. S&P 500 down nearly 1 percent at thirteen thirty seven. This is NPR. Republican Congressman Ron Paul is making a third run for president. A lawmaker from Texas making a formal announcement today on ABC. Because time has come around to the point where the people are agreeing with much of what I've been saying for 30 years. So I think the time is

ripe. Ron Paul on ABC Good Morning America. In China dozens of people are being treated for injuries after a bombing at a bank. NPR's Rob Gifford has more from Shanghai. The official CNY news agency reports that a disgruntled ex worker at a rural bank in the town of Jew in northwest Gansu Province threw a bomb into the bank building as staff were holding their morning meeting. The perpetrator is identified by CNY as a former cashier who was fired last month for embezzling bank money. He fled the scene on a police hunt was reported to be on the way. And eyewitness quoted by CNY said he saw some people throw themselves out of a fourth floor window after the blast. About a third of the 200000 residents intend us said to be Tibetan. But the incident is not believed to have any links to many Tibetans ongoing grievances with the majority Han Chinese population. Rob Gifford NPR News Shanghai. Human rights activists are reporting another Syrian military crackdown on anti-government protesters today they say that at least one person was killed when troops opened

fire on a crowd of thousands in the central city of Holmes. Holmes has seen some of the largest demonstrations against President Bashar Assad's rule since the uprising began in Syria two months ago. U.S. stocks falling Dow down 113 to 12000 583 Nasdaq down 31 to twenty thirty two. S&P 500 down 12. This is NPR. Support for NPR comes from CIT for last selling all callers of the Herman Miller air on chair online including sit for a last true black online at CIT for last dot com. Good afternoon. I'm Kelly Crossley. This is the Cali Crossley Show this hour we're replaying a broadcast a conversation with David Lindsey a bear he started out writing abs or does theater. He was the wordsmith behind Shrek the Musical and he went on to receive a Tony nomination and a Pulitzer for his stage play

rabbit hole which he adapted to the big screen. He has now come home to use the stuff of his South Boston upbringing in the Broadway premiere of his new play. Good people our arts and culture contributor Alicia ANSTEAD interviewed David Lindsay a bear in April. Let's start right in those roots David. Let's talk about growing up in South Boston. Give us a snapshot of the young David bear and we'll talk a little later about your hyphenated name. Boy were you were you go in were you on the streets. What was going on when you were just a little boy. Yeah I was going on the streets you know when I was six. I joined the Boys and Girls Club although when I first start I think it was only the boys club. And so to keep me off the streets well not a lot parents do is they send the kids up to the Boys Club and so at a very early age I was you know making arts and crafts and swimming in the pool and playing basketball and doing all the good things you want inner city kids to be doing. David can you tell us a little bit about your family life about your mother and father and your the rest of your

family. Sure yeah. My dad was a fruit peddler so he sold fruit at the back of a truck for most of my life most of his life he went on to. Working Chelsea fruit market when I got a little bit older and my mother worked factory jobs for most of her life she worked making circuit boards and I actually worked at that same factory throughout high school over the summers and so I became very intimate with that factory in particular. I have an older brother and a younger sister and you know as far as it was pretty an ideal little life. I mean granted we were very working class and didn't have a lot of money but it was relatively happy family. And were you a reader or were there I mean you say you were into the arts what kind of arts were you into as a boy. I mean early on in the Boys Club it was really you know doing more visual arts you know painting and paper Mashaei and building all sorts of things you know in the new place. Good people. One of the characters makes these rabbits out of flower pots and Styrofoam heads. And so we want to see the place like oh that's just

like you used to do at the Boys Club and it was until someone said that to me. However many years later I thought Oh right I started doing that when I was seven years old at the Boys Club. And then you know doing writing still you know at a very young age writing poetry and stories not knowing that I was going to be a writer but it started very early. When did you when did you find out that you were going to be a writer. Well I was in denial for a long time I have to say the very first play that I wrote was in fourth grade and it was you know for a Christmas pageant every every kid in fourth grade wrote this little Christmas play and mine was a play that was chosen to be produced and it was you know I took bits and pieces of stuff that I knew it was really about Snow White the Seven Dwarves somehow landing in the North Pole and became a Christmas story. But then they sing those fantasy stories up ever since haven't you. I know there's a lot of Shrek that was already in there early on and then I read a lot of plays in high school later. So I was writing plays from a very early age. Again not knowing that I was going to be a playwright so fairly early on in your life you want to

scholarship usually given to athletes but in your case given to an arts kid I know you did sports too to go to Milton Academy and you definitely crossing over to the other side of the tracks there. Were you unhappy or unchallenged in your Southie grade school. No night neither of those things I mean even when I was going to public school I always did very well and you know starting in fourth grade fifth grade sixth grade I was always in the advanced work classes which were you know really terrific academically. But the Boston Public School system wasn't you know didn't have a lot of money for the arts and nor sports and so when I did go to Milton It was a marked difference I mean there was so much money being spent on extra curricular stuff in particular the arts but also sports and I didn't know how happy I was in the public Boston public school system until I went and I thought Good lord why doesn't everybody have this it seems a bit unfair. Did you fit in right away or was there or was there an adjustment for you. There was certainly an adjustment nobody picked on me I mean I got you know a couple jobs like all kids do.

But what I had on my side was from very early on a sense of humor and that helped me maneuver through comfortable situations and made friends in various cliques so I had an uncommon ability to traverse cliques so I wasn't just with the nerdy kids although those seem to be my best friends. But I was accepted by the jocks as well as the more popular kids. Was it the first time David that you were aware of class differences or had you been growing up in South Boston had you been aware that there were immense class differences in your own city. No it really wasn't until I went to Milton I mean everybody in Southie was sort of we were on the same boat so we didn't know what other people had except you know watching television being you know watching reruns of The Brady Bunch. Oh my lord they have such a beautiful house they must be rich. Of course now we know they weren't actually all that rich they were very middle class but to someone growing up in working class neighborhood like I did it seemed like wow I would love to have the kind of house you know it wasn't until I went to Milton that I saw oh there's this whole other world that I don't know

anything about and you know obviously the clothes the people wore and the things that they talk about the fact that everybody came to play tennis and ski and during vacations everybody would come back with tans and talk about exotic locations whereas I had spent you know the two weeks watching television in Southie. It was there that I became much more acutely aware of it. And did you feel left out at all. Yeah I mean I don't know that I pine for that kind of life it just seemed like it just seemed a matter of fact that this was my life and this was their life and somehow I got to shuttle between these two very different worlds. What you ended up going to Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers traditionally a women school that went coed in the 1960s and then the American playwrights program at Juilliard so aspirational e Something must've happened that made you want to reach. Yeah no you know question I mean a couple things happened one of course I found my identity. I mean I didn't know it at the time but I excelled at theater I

excelled at playwriting and I was embraced and I was told that I did it well. But I think more significantly than that I was empowered in a way everybody that goes to Milton is just told in no uncertain terms that you will be going to college. And it's a very odd thing to be told that of course we should all be told that we're going to college but growing up in Southie. Few people are told that those that are you know even dare to wish for it. It comes with caveats. If you have enough money or if you get a scholarship or you know if all the stars aligned then that might be able to happen. Whereas at Milton It was just a given that it was going to happen and whether it was my own drive which I I think I had to drive but also the engines were just there behind me as part of the school. Everybody who was there to make sure that that happened for you and every other student that was there. So David I'm aware that that often the outward and visible sign of advantage isn't always the inward and propelling sign of advantage

and we could very easily say well David Lyndsay a bear got outta Southie because he got into Milton and that changed the world or are you kind of call them hick ups in your new play good people. Those moments that really shift was Millman your advantage. Or was there something else that you were born into a family life. Your intelligence what really can you can you narrow in on that. I don't think it's narrow bill. Frankly I think it's I think it's all of those things that you listed you know. My family is my family and they're incredibly supportive and we're very proud of the fact that I went to Milton but my sister didn't go to college and my brother didn't go to college so it wasn't just my family. I mean I will say that you know I was labeled early on in my school and in my family as the smart one so I don't know if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I embraced that. I think maybe being called smart. Did that make me want to be smarter and fulfill this role I don't know. But the other thing was all of those lucky breaks you know I talk about the scholarship that I got from the

Boys and Girls Club that scholarship only came up once every six years so I had to be the exact right age at the exact right year year and addition to that as you've mentioned. And I didn't know this until you know several weeks ago it was mostly an athletic scholarship but I had you know some women at the boy's club who were on staff there that said you know what can we please push David Baer into the scholarship and other people saying no no it's an athletic scholarship he's not really an athlete might sway him but he's certainly not one of our athletes. And then recognizing something else in me and saying No no he needs this more than other people do or there's some potential here. And it was because I had people on my side which I didn't even know it. You know I had my family I knew that and I knew the people behind me but I didn't know to what extent people were pushing me forward. And then you know a number of countless other breaks that just happened that got me to the place. Where I am now and so I talk about hick ups and I can't point at one just one because I think there are just so many of them along the way that if any one of them didn't line up the way they did I could be somewhere else doing something else.

Do you feel that your work in college at Sarah Lawrence and at Juilliard was important for you as a writer I mean can you be a writer without that type of guidance from Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman both of whom you studied with I believe. Do you need the mentors in your writing to get to the next step. You do. Yeah. I mean you also need. An innate worldview that makes you the writer that you are I mean there are of course countless writers with different perspectives but you have to have whatever that is that makes your voice singular and unique. On top of that yes of course you need craft and you people to support you and say it's this it's not that you need an inciting incident you need an arc Where's the climax. But all that stuff can be learned from mentors or from books. But the thing that makes you the specific writer that you are that you're born with it or it's part of how you've been shaped as a person I mean I look at my work now and know. Whatever I write about

whether it's a you know a goofy musical or an absurdist comedy or a more straightforward conventional drama I don't know why this happens but it always seems to about people in search of clarity people to find themselves in an upside down world that are trying to figure their place in it. And so you know in 14 years which is the best comedy it's about a woman that wakes up with amnesia every day and rabbit hole it's about a woman whose world is turned upside down because her child suddenly dies. And in Shrek it's about you know an ogre who doesn't feel like he is the person that everybody is telling him that he has all of those things are completely different in terms of the style and content but the magically they're all connected and I look back at who I was when I was 11 years old going to that Tony prep school out in the suburbs and seems like oh there's a kid that finds himself in a very strange overwhelming world that needs to figure out his place in it. Well well David when we come back I want to talk to you about those themes and

also about the idea of right. What scares you. We're going to take a break but I'm speaking with playwright David Lindsay Abair He's a local boy raised in South Boston a part of town in a way of life that's essential to his latest play. Good people. We'll be back after this break. Stay with us. Good. Support for WGBH comes from you. And from the Joan in James Vernon Cancer Center at Newton Wellesley hospital. Probably supporting NPR's All Things Considered heard weekdays from 4:00 to 6:00 pm here on eighty nine point seven. WGBH. And from Boston Private Bank and Trust Company.

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Hi I'm Aaron Schachter from PR eyes of the world. Join my colleagues from frontline and Al-Jazeera at the WGBH studios on Thursday night May 26 to explore the media's impact on the Arab Spring of 2011. Join the WGBH News Club with the gift of one hundred twenty dollars and eighty nine point seven will send you two complimentary tickets. Details at WGBH dot org. If it would be the hoss's loans to the world he has he didn't just get in front he's wrong instantly I mean he does get by lot coming up at 3 o'clock on eighty nine point seven. WGBH. Good afternoon I'm Cally Crossley. This is the Calla Crossley Show. If you're just tuning in we're replaying an interview with local boy Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay Abair the Broadway premiere of his newest play good people. It's set in Lindsay a bear's hometown south Boston. Our arts and culture

contributor Alicia ANSTEAD interviewed him in April. Here Alicia is asking Lindsey a bear about his family life. You have two children David. I have a 10 year old and a 3 year old yes. And you're married to Christine Lindsey who's also an actor. Yeah. Well Christine Lindsey a bear now we get to catch on you tell us about the last name hyphen. Well you know I went to Sarah Lawrence and so we were very forward thinking and feminist at that. That's cool so it only seemed fair that we took each other's names and Lindsay has a nice sound to it it sounds like a middle name. But you know when we applied for a marriage license in Boston I put down Lindsay a baron the woman behind the counter said what are you doing here. And I said oh we're taking each other's names and she said you don't have to take our name and then she yelled back and says he thinks he has to take her name. So clearly in the marriage a marriage certificate office in Braintree Massachusetts they had never seen such a thing. You're breaking ground up here for us to do that.

Yeah but you know I would say that that is not necessarily breaking ground but making really good ground in your work for amazing female roles and actors you've worked with Tyne Daly Sarah Jessica Parker Cynthia Nixon who want a Tony for your stage play rabbit hole and now Frances McDormand Estelle Parsons Becky Baker Renee Elise golds Barry. You've got some great women in the lineup of your work. I've been very lucky. Yeah. Well tell us about the roles for these women I mean you're very you've been aware from the very beginning I mean Freddie Mears has an incredible woman who she is at the forefront of the story. Is that a conscious choice or are you more interested in what I'm saying here. Yeah what's that well for first about several things One you know most plays that are written the bulk of them are for men. And so a part of me is you know I know so many great talented actresses I just want to put a few more roles on the other side of the scales frankly to create some good parts for these women that I know

and respect. So that's the main reason I mean the other part if I had a therapist I'm sure he or she would tell me that was about my mom. You know my mother was and is the center of pretty much every family event she's an amazing storyteller in so so very funny. And you know not consciously but I can now look at my old plays and some of the new ones too and say oh there's a bit of my mother and there's a bit of my mother so. So that makes sense another part is just as a writer by making the protagonist a female it allows me a little bit of distance to be a little more objective about my protagonist that I can still put myself in it but it's course not be because it's a woman and you know of course yes it is me but it just allows me a little bit of distance to write more the way I want to write your plays are characterized by an incredible sense of humor. They're often very funny but also very serious you write about domestic abuse about a woman who leaves her husband.

You write about suicide about a couple who's lost their four year old son. Tell us a little bit about this blending of comedy and tragedy. Yeah I guess it goes back to what I was saying earlier about having a very specific worldview for me. Tragedy and comedy always went hand in hand and I think a lot of that actually is just because of my upbringing in Southie and the humor that is so part of the fabric of that neighborhood that pretty much everybody I knew use humor as a coping mechanism that there was this sort of laughter in the face of adversity that I think just helped you get through. And just a really inappropriate sense of humor that was certainly present in my family but among my neighbors as well. And yet still connected to often very dark disturbing events.

They were inseparable inseparable for me. So you know my absurdist comedies are I hope funny but also grounded in usually very dark damaged places. And the more straightforward plays the Morse what people call serious plays like rabbit hole and now good people. There's serious but there's a comedy that runs through them I think in particular people are very surprised by how funny rabbit hole was. But it just to me I'm just telling the truth I'm not trying to be serious or be funny I'm just trying to create human characters. And for me humanity is about marrying those two sides of the same coin. It's interesting because Renee Elise Goldberry who's in good people said she didn't know that it was funny and when she read it that it wasn't until she had an audience. In front of her laughing that she realized it was it was a funny play. And she hasn't missed a laugh since about those last few never let go of them. What interests me is the complex sense at the end though that there's no total loss of hope. You know you edge right up to it in your

plays and you make us even want to jump into hopelessness and you bring us back. Yeah well I don't I don't think I would want to see a play without hope by it. I'm just not interested in that as a person nor as a writer I just think you know especially in the lives of people who have so little Sometimes hope is the only thing that you have and I think that's certainly true and good people that if you don't have it then it's over then there's nothing there's nothing else left for you. And I like to think of my characters as moving on and pushing past whatever circumstances they might find themselves at the ends of these plays. Well you've also in addition to exploring comedy and tragedy sometimes always within the same play you haven't really been all that easy to characterize as a writer. I guess we could call you a multitasker. Because you've written for stage and for screen and for musicals I think you drive the critics nuts. One of my most favorite comments about

you in a recent story was that you like nothing more than to radically shift gears from one play to the next. How could you do that David. I know during some of your head you've got to keep writing the same play over and over again. Well you know it really I'm just I keep trying to please them that's all and it's not true. Not true. No really I do you know it's about I don't know I don't get bored doing the same thing over and over again and I don't like being characterized by one of the main thing reasons why I wrote rabbit hole is I notice that my name had been creeping up in other people's reviews sort of as an adjective which is very flattering but also incredibly limiting as a writer and and also people would respond to the absurdist plays in a very specific way that sometimes the people and I've been very lucky critically so let me say that but the people that didn't like it really dismissed the work out of hand as just being nonsense and so a very spiteful cynical part of me also said I could write one of those naturalistic straightforward family dramas if I wanted to. And so that was one of the seeds for a rabbit hole but then of course I had to come up with something that I actually care deeply about and

felt a real connection to Otherwise it wouldn't have been a very good play. So part of that is my responding to other people's responses and part of it is just me trying to diversify my portfolio frankly. What I've noticed to this this little niggling criticism that comes up about your plays especially now since you've written this very successful screenplay a rabbit hole is that your work is being too influenced by Hollywood. You know that you've written these three screenplays and now you're suddenly poisoned for stage and you know there's this kind of soap opera commie ness to your work. And I'm conflicted about that because I feel that there are a couple of other playwrights in New York right now whose work makes me think about this to John Kerry Jani an anti-big peculiar is that my sense is that people want to like these plays but they're worried that it's not that they're not diabolical enough. I don't know what the criticism means frankly. You know what I you know I do know

what you mean yes I don't know what they mean. I feel like really what it means is they've read my bio and seen a couple movie credits and they feel like oh oh I know what this is now because he's a film writer. I'm just telling stories I don't know what it means to write cinematically versus you know theatrically I'm just telling a story. Granted you know the past two plays in particular more conventional. They're more realistic they're not as heightened or quote unquote the trickle like my absurdist plays but I don't know if that's actually what they mean. I sometimes feel like whatever I could go crazy trying to decipher what they mean. But I think they mean it's too accessible as if that's an insult to people like it therefore it must be bad. Of course is the very defensive writer talking I suspect if you ask them that's not at all what they mean but if I if I spent a lot of trying time trying to decipher it then I would really end up in an asylum I think so I just I just mostly spend my time trying to write stories that gauge people well.

I also think so if your influence or any writer is influenced by Hollywood and it comes out in their theater work. I'm not sure that you can start to shut down all your influences as an artist when you begin to work on something. What would be so bad if one media medium informed the other. I'm just not sure where that criticism can live effectively. I don't I don't either. Because your influences are your influences you can't you can't shut them off. So yeah I don't I don't know what it means. I mean less it's a narrative right we're talking about a more conventional narrative with. This is the end of the first act and this is the midpoint and this is the third act climax you know right if that's what they mean but there are billions and billions of plays I mean that every single one of them by Neil Simon you know well translate Let's go back to the Greeks did not invent that structure. It goes way back I mean that's a that's a very standard structure that started in theater. You know if a conflict arises a hero is sent on a journey to either

succeed or fail at achieving that and then they return home either a hero or a failure that that's not Hollywood that's Greek. Well David you do do something very filmic in the theatrical production of good people which is now on Broadway and that is you use that Iris out effect with the lighting between scene changes and that. That's right that's the darkness going to a pinhole right. What do you know I didn't do that. You didn't do that. No that's the director of the set designer this is not in the script. Well what's the make of the translations anyway. I quite like it I mean you know the play has several locations and I like transitions to happen as seamlessly and as quick as possible. And so the Irish to the iris does have a bit of a cinematic quality to it and allows you to close in and focus on the very final moment of the scene in the final person in that scene. And then when it opens up we're in a completely different place. So I like the fluidity of

it. That said it will never be any other production of this play I'm sure it's very specific to this director and this designer it's not. That's how they chose to do the transitions. Right. Tell us a little bit about working on a play. David if you could give us a window on your writing process where does it begin for you. And why don't we start with just good people. I mean where did that play begin and you said that you needed to mature into writing that it's the first time you took on your hometown. What kind of maturity are you talking about there. I think a point of view a very clear point of view I was waiting to become waiting for with her perspective I had to crystallize about the neighborhood and I'm not sure that it's entirely crystal clear yet but you know every play that I write is different and so some of them happened very quickly some of them just start with a seat of dialogue sometimes or an idea for a character or theme I want to write about.

And most of them kick around in my head for a long time before I actually sit down at the computer and start writing it sometimes it's ideas smashing up together for good people. It was a couple things one I've been wanting to write about the neighborhood for a very long time. At the same time these were these were people that I cared about deeply and felt a huge responsibility to more than anyone I think because it's my family it's my neighbors it's the people that I grew up with and I want to make sure that I could and would write respectfully about them and truthfully about them. And so I just you know as I said I've wanted to mature as a writer both in terms of craft in addition to having a specific perspective but also I want to be up to the job of doing it. Talk on that for just a second when you say we are maturing with your craft. How do you know you mature David do you see it in the work is that how you write a sentence is it your word choice. What is it that makes you more mature. I don't know that I know except it's more of a gut feeling. I feel like and still I

don't feel that I've matured as a writer every time I start a new play. I genuinely feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. That said it becomes a bit easier. And if you're writing a more conventional play you know every play is different but if you're writing a conventional good people is relatively structurally conventional and I knew the ideas that I want to talk about in the kind of characters that I wanted I wanted in it to reveal those characters and eliminate those themes. And so a lot of it is just about building a house. And I feel like you know when I was fresh out of Juilliard I wrote more instinctively and didn't care so much about structure or arc and those plays have a real you know wonderful I hope mayhem about them that it was a it was a young writer that didn't really know what he was doing but had good instincts and a good sense of humor and a heart. These new these new plays I think are. More well-made if that means anything. I guess that's what I mean about

maturing that if you're going to write about something deeper the magically something that you care about. You better make sure that you know how to build the house that's going to contain those ideas. That's what I mean by it. And where do you do that craft and you have an office that you go to Do You Work At Home. Where does it take place Where does your inspirational moment take place. Well the inspiration happens everywhere can happen on the subway walking down the street you know in the middle of somebody else's play. But the actual day to day writing happens in my office. You know I have had various apartments and offices through the years. We've just moved to a lovely Victorian house in Prospect Park South which is a part of Brooklyn that very few people know about where they have these landmark Victorian homes and it's got its there in a smart isn't it. It's part of it must park yes it has Park has several neighbors in it irises Prospect Park South. But my office is open a tar if you can believe that parts have not been the same for me ever since.

Working on Shrek but maybe that's what attracted me to the house the fact that this princess like Target. So you climb up there every day into your target. Climb up like there's this fire. Don't force me to see a madwoman in the attic. Yeah the med is in our field I'm sure there are many with you there today. Yes a mother of Miss Havisham. Yeah I climb up to that third floor every day and work from the tar and is it for hours at a time what happens when you get stuck. It is it's a workday it's you know generally nine thirty to six o'clock every day. And you know the day is usually dictated by what my deadlines are I am juggling several projects at once and so I wish it was just going up there and I'm going to write a play today and let's work on the play but more often than not it's you know of a couple Hollywood executives breathing down my neck saying when are we going to get that new second back to the film. And. And that stuff can be I love writing you know screenplays it can be very rewarding and helps pay the mortgage on that home and allows me to have the career in theater that

I have frankly it's very difficult to make a living in the theater. Well David when we come back we'll talk more about your new play good people. My guest is Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay Abair a Southie native whose Broadway premiere of his new play good people is happening right now in New York City. We're going to talk about this play after the break. Keep your dial on eighty nine point seven. Support for WGBH comes from you. And from the Massachusetts Freemasons who believe a man's greatness can be measured. Not by his wealth or fame but by his deeds his character and his love for his fellow creatures. You can learn more at Ask a Freemason

dot org. And from Cambridge Arts Council presenting Cambridge Open Studios where you can discover a variety of locally made art. This Saturday and Sunday in central square and Inman Square. More information at Cambridge Arts Council dot org. Next time on the world market music producer like spaghetti westerns I saw The Good The Bad The Ugly and heard the music. It was like nothing I'd ever heard before. He finds Italian composer with movie chops. We discussed how evocative wordless melodies and we tried to do that on our own as well. They cast singers Norah Jones and Jack White and make an imaginary movie next time on the world. Coming up at 3 here on eighty nine point seven WGBH. It's the forty sixth annual WGBH spring auction. Now you can support public broadcasting and get some great deals while you're at it. And right now you can place your bet on a six day five night trip to Greece generously donated by the Greek National Tourism Organization. Yeah this group of historic hotels a

bridge. All the items up for bid at auction dock WGBH dot org. Brian O'Donovan Come join me every Saturday at 3:00 for the good old fashioned session on a Celtic So you're not on any 9.7 WGBH. Good afternoon I'm Kalee Crossley This is the Cali Crossley Show. If you're just joining us we are rebroadcasting a conversation with playwright David Lindsay a bear we talk to him about how his hometown south Boston shaped and influence the Broadway premiere of his newest play. Good people last month are arts and culture contributor Alicia and Stead interviewed Lindsay Abair about his latest work. David before we go I want to talk about good people. I want to ask you about another play that you wrote a short play called How We talk in South Boston do you remember that.

Yeah. Thank you. I just want to for our readers I just want to read the cast list on. OK. So here goes. Father strong Boston accent mother. Strong Boston accent son strong Boston accent. Daughter strong Boston accent. This play is written almost entirely in phonetics. It's about a blue collar Irish Catholic family and their insane Boston accents. Let's talk about Boston accents for just a second because you know I'm from the play. You don't have to I'm not going to read from the play because I don't I would I would probably go into a southern accent. But I don't know how to say God bless you I just. Let's talk about Boston accents are your actors in this production hitting the right note with those Boston accents. They they do as well as they possibly can and yes they do. They work very well the accents they work very hard on them and they sound terrific. Patrick Carroll who plays the store manager is actually from Boston so his accent is impeccable in the style Parsons grew up in Marblehead

so she was already in the vicinity and everybody else has worked very hard except for Rene who doesn't have to have one. And what happened. And I do actually. I was about to say whenever I talk to my family it comes back it's like it doesn't even fly it's like a switch. It's like being bilingual Can you give us an example David. Well sure if I call my mother and say we're my music oh your father's outside he's working on a column a column bugs that come on every second day he's on the phone. That was me mostly imitating my mom. But yeah well here's the thing I want to you know that private school in the suburbs and very quickly they kick that accent out of me and doing all the theater that I did while at Melton and a lot of speech team competitions as well it helps if you have a more mid-Atlantic accent. Right. Little American at least. Exactly when I moved to New England from what I call the south but no southerner would call the South Washington D.C. I had such a deep southern accent and was teased so mercilessly that I made it disappear. But it is you know when I

talk to my family it slides. Let's hear those accents I want to play a clip from good people and in this scene Margaret who's played by Frances McDormand and who is the protagonist of this play is visiting her old flame Mike who's played by Tate Donovan and his wife Kate in their in their upscale Chestnut Hill home where Frances McDormand has come to talk to them among about many things including finding work. But let's listen to this clip. They're drinking and eating cheese. You know a lot of cheese. Sure I do. What's this one. That's Humboldt fog which is a goat cheese. OK. And this one. Of course which is a French cow's milk it's very good. Well if you want something a little nutty you got anything mild here. Here do this one. That's when's Lee Dale. Remember the day he says because you can't remember doesn't mean she can't remember the name but you know it's a given. Let me give you my talk here.

That's creamy dripping. That's smells like ammonia. That's body this is what he does. That's close to each other but it's good that one. Moldy basement kisses her orders at the cheese shop. There's your body what you will be basically saying I don't think that's how you treat me. I personally think that usually the way they love me bad. I don't think. That was a clip from good people David Lindsay a bear's new play on Broadway David you've said that this play is about the myth in America that anyone can accomplish anything if they just work hard enough. Tell us the thumbnail plotline of your play. Sure it's a working class woman who has worked a minimum wage jobs for most of her life that's a Frances McDormand character. And in the first scene she's fired from her job at the Dollar Store

and she quickly finds herself in very dire straits and a friend of hers suggests that she hit up an old high school buddy of theirs for a job and that's the Tate Donovan character he's become he's left the neighborhood went off to college and it's become a very successful doctor. And recently moved back to the Boston area. And so she insinuates herself into his life and his lovely home in Chestnut Hill. And then the sparks fly and he claims not to be rich but comfortable. To which the incisively would be Marya retorts Well I guess that makes me uncomfortable. There's a real class struggle going on here but there's another struggle that I want to talk about and that's the struggle of a person's true story. Mike's wife asks Margot to tell her a true story about Mike. How do you get to a true story. And as your true story the one you are born into the one you craft for yourself or the one you put on a stage.

Well gosh that's one of the very central questions of the play actually I think it's all of those things. One of the biggest struggles at the heart of the play is whose story is true. And you know people's stories can be have different truths for different people you know particular these characters I think all define themselves as good people in the play also asks What is a good person and what makes a good person. And in the course of the play I think everyone re-evaluate themselves and their past and what they've done to get where they are. And I think all realize that they may not be as quote unquote good as they thought they were before the play starts. Well maybe it's like being a screenwriter and being a stage writer that you can actually be a good person in a not so good person at the same time. Right. Well isn't that. That's humanity and you know none of us are are without flaws or faults. Was it hard for you to get to the truths that you wanted to get to in this play David because it meant so much to you and took from so much of your

personal life. It was hard. I guess the hardest part was was letting it be complicated. You know I wanted to make these characters as human as possible and so there is a character who I you know the friends McDermott character I wanted the audience to care deeply about her but also not I didn't want to let her off the hook about the choices that she had made and she meant it or she didn't actually have choices. But I think the more I let the characters be complicated and let them be unlikeable at times the more human and relatable they actually became. And I didn't even realize to what extent until the play was in front of an audience where I really felt a visceral. Shifting of alliances among the characters and even an audible reaction to the characters in a way like oh my gosh I've actually written a potboiler and I didn't even know oh people that love the Frances McDormand character turn on her at a point in the second act and people

who I think are really empathizing with and relating to the doctor character. He says some really horrible hateful things when you feel them being amply implicated for having liked him up until that point. And so it's exciting as a dramatist to hear that from the audience but I hope it's I hope it's truthful. Well there's been some suggestion too on TALKBACK that I heard after seeing the production that you and a couple of the cast members were in that even for the cast members it's not clear every single night what the truths are right. Right well I mean that's the joy of life theater as opposed to film or performances captured forever and is always the same. You can just you know put a little hint of something new into a line. As an actor and then the other actor has to respond in turn to keep it alive and audience can inform whatever those moments are. And so Fran Francis can play a moment more

empathetically or more angrily or more sadly and that's going to shift the play in a funny way and sometimes the audience's loyalties and that's you know one of the great things about seeing a live performance. Do you ever find yourself in the position where you think to yourself. I didn't realize that was there to be mined in the words that I put on the page. Oh gosh all the time all the time. Yeah I mean a lot of that stuff I find in rehearsal. But still in front of performances the actors are still finding things and you know I'm not always happy with the things that they fall into because you can swing too far in the wrong direction. But that hasn't happened for this play but I have seen it happen or it's like you know if you're that mean to her then the audience will think you're a jerk too early in the play. So you have to be careful about how that stuff is calibrated when you wrote good people. Was there a moment that you knew was going to be central for you as the writer and for us as the audience that. What was a

starting point for you not necessarily at the beginning of the play not necessarily the end of the play but a turning point of some sort that you really wanted to make sure we all went on at the same time. I don't know that there is one there are so many turning points in the play. There was one in particular that I struggled with for a long time I'll say that where the wife of the doctor towards the end near the end of the second act confronts Frances McDormand character and asks really straightforward sensical questions that I think the character has never been confronted with and I think they may be questions that the audience also has about her character that cracks open both the play and that character in a way that we haven't seen up until that point. I'm talking in generalities because there are some spoilers in there so I don't want to ruin the plot. But I knew when I finally discovered those questions that the wife asks I found several things including the reason that the wife is in the

play which is you know you need to have that if you have a character then they have to be there for a reason. But also I I found a depth in the Frances McDormand character and the reflection of her character that I needed I needed for her to look at herself in a way that she hadn't so that something very there's a change in her in the end of the play that wasn't obviously there in the beginning of the play and I think that there's some sense in that scene too. We as the audience dancing a little bit around those very questions that the wife asks. Right. And she helps us get to that moment. You know I was thinking too that you know I remember feeling in that moment oh my god she's going to say that. And also remembering how important class was for you in terms of writing this play and you've talked a lot about we don't really write about class in American theater that are a big issue in American you know letters. Is race. Is race Yeah but you're confronting that with

this play too. Well I yeah absolutely I would feel I would be irresponsible if I didn't if you're going to write about South Boston then you have to have some acknowledgement of the history of that neighborhood and clearly what role race played in it. And so race is incredibly present in the fabric of that neighborhood and in the fabric of my characters. Ultimately the play's not about race but it informs these characters in such a significant way and race is used against the characters and for the characters and tells us a lot about the characters and makes the characters. More interesting and textured and complicated. Right I think it also points to how language informs both class and race but let's stick with class for just a second I can tell you I live in Cambridge or in Georgetown and it's a signifier you know just as South right is a signifier. And you know I wonder what you are trying to say about both the failure

excuse me the failure and the metaphor of language. I mean you say nice house I say lace curtain. Right. So I don't know the names. I don't know what I'm saying because I think everybody. I want to dictate what people take from the play what I will say is significant is in terms of language the subtext of the play and the passive aggressive behavior that is so important to the character. Frances McDormand character. And in terms of the truth of the play. And so she says many many things and she only means half of them and it's up to the audience or sometimes the characters in the play to sort out does she mean what she say. Is she saying what I think she's saying. She's saying she's not saying that. But do I believe her or not believe her. Oh no she is saying that oh my god. Well you know she's so I think that whole conflict adds to the tension in the play and.

Adds to the drama of it frankly because we don't know from moment to moment who is telling the truth in the play. And anyway I think language plays an important part of that and the way that characters maneuver around that language is often defined by their class. Mike the doctor character because he has a foot planted in both of those worlds sees through some of her passive aggressive behavior and calls her out and says I know what you're doing I know what lace curtain means I know what these little digs are about. I grew up in that neighborhood too. Whereas the wife I think has some guilt about being of money and so gives Margaret the benefit of the doubt and says no that's not at all what she's saying you're misinterpreting that you're being too sensitive. And then by the end of the play comes to a place where she says Oh my gosh I've been duped by this woman or she had an agenda that I didn't recognize. Now I'm feeling stupid for being the guilt ridden rich lady. I think it's more complicated by the

fact that she happens to be black. And so the person that comes from the most money the most privilege being a person of color complicates things in a really funny way both for the audience and for the characters in the play. Do you think that we can have a real understanding across classes. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know I can only speak from my own experience and the people that I feel most connected to the people that I feel understand me the most are people that come from a working class neighborhood and in a funny way I have a lot of those people have us have left that working class neighborhood and find themselves in a different environment. And so there is a language that and an understanding of the world that I share with these common minded people. That's not to say that people they grew up with money don't understand the play they have a different way in the play and I think they can empathize with the characters and understand it. But unless

you've lived it I don't know if you truly truly get it and I don't know I don't know is the answer but that's my gut feeling. So I'm sitting in the theater watching this play and I'm thinking to myself. I wonder how many people in this place have come the route of Mardi Frances McDormand character and how many people who have come that route who never get to see this play. Who is the story for David. Oh gosh I hope it's for everybody. I hope it's for everybody and I hope that one of the most gratifying thing is a lot of things a lot of people from Southie have been coming down to see the play. And it's been great. A lot of people I know some of them I don't know some of them introduced themselves to me after the play saying you know I met a couple you know last week who said oh this is my husband's birthday gift he wanted. You know he grew up in the Old Colony housing projects and this was his birthday present he wanted to come down and see this plant like Lord how did these people end up here this is the most wonderful thing. And of course I want to open the eyes of people that don't know this world

and I hope I treat it respectfully and I hope. That they can see something new but I think there are often judgments too. But that's another issue. Well David it's been great to talk with you I know that you're working on a new story that has to do with the Wizard of Oz. You've also mentioned you're working on a new play set in Boston or at least thinking about one in an absurdist comedy we look forward to all three. I've been speaking with Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay a bear. He's mined the golden grit of his hometown South Boston in the Broadway premiere of his newest play good people. It runs through May 29 at the Samuel J Freedman Theater in New York City. To learn more visit our website or log onto Manhattan Theatre Club dot com. DAVID LINDSAY Adair thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you for having me.