Every week, culture critics Diep Tran and Jose Solís bring a POC perspective to the performing arts with their Token Theatre Friends podcast and video series. The show can be found on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, and YouTube. You can listen to episodes from the previous version of the podcast here but to get new episodes, you will need to resubscribe to our new podcast feed (look for the all-red logo). The TTF theme song is composed by Sean Mason (with vocals by Angela Ramos). The video animation is created by Brad Ogden, with logos by Jason Simon.
This week, Diep delivers a rant about the Tony Award nominations, and why it all feels anti-climactic.
This week the Friends welcome one of their favorite people: Heidi Schreck. Schreck was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play What the Constitution Means to Me, which ran on Broadway in 2019. Now that play has been filmed and will be released on Amazon Prime Video on Oct. 16. Schreck drops by to talk about the current state of our democracy, becoming a new mom (of twins!), and why it’s so hard to film theater.
Here are links to the things mentioned in this episode:
- Karen Olivo’s reaction to being nominated for a Tony Award.
- What the Constitution Means to Me on Amazon Prime.
- What the Constitution Means to Me script, published by Theatre Communications Group
- This week’s Patreon shoutout: Nicole, who recently created a virtual theatre company called The Masked Collective. They have a new play festival next weekend (October 23rd and 24th at 7PM EST). The play festival will be livestreamed on Facebook and will be available for a week after. Says Nicole: “We’re not charging for admission but encourage people to donate to our Venmo instead @Masked-Collective, as that’s how we’ll be paying the artists involved.”
The episode transcript is below.
Diep:
Hello, everyone, this is Diep Tran your Token Theatre Friend and cohost of this podcast. My cohost Jose Solís could not make it for the recording of this introduction, but you’ll hear him later. In our interview with playwright and actor Heidi Schreck, whose Broadway. Tony nominated Pulitzer finalist play What the Constitution Means to Me is dropping on October 16 on Amazon Prime. We’ll have that interview for you shortly. I am left to my own devices this week to record an intro for all of you. And I happen to be recording this intro after the announcement of the Tony nominations. If you’re a frequent listener on this podcast, you will know of mine and Jose’s very very ambivalent feeling about the fact that there’s going to be a Tony Award this year and it will likely be happening in December, which is six months overdue.
I have to admit that after the official news from the Broadway League that Broadway will not be reopening until May 2021 of next year, my ambivalence about to the Tony Awards has only grown. And let’s be honest here, considering that Dr. Anthony Fauci has specifically said even if a vaccine passes its final testing phase this month, and begins distribution in November and December, the American population at large will not get a vaccine until summer 2021. And theater cannot resume until there is a vaccine. So saying May 2021, just pushing this date back, again, it seems real optimistic and rightly, unrealistic, and setting everyone up to just have more false hope. So on the one hand, I am glad there was a Tony Award this year because that means that the productions that opened from summer 2019 to January 2020, those productions will have recognition.
On the other hand, I still stand by my statement that it is ridiculous, to have nominations, and even moreso it is ridiculous to announce the nominations when there is no set date for the Tony Awards themselves. And here is an example of how ridiculous it all is. This year, there is only one actor that the Tony voters found eligible for Best Leading Actor in a Musical and that’s Aaron Tveit for Moulin Rouge. Even though there were the musicals that open this season that had leading actors, I’m looking at you The Lightning Thief, which was notably snubbed at this year’s Tony nominations, it did not even get Best Original Score. What did get a Best Original Score nominations? A bunch of incidental music from plays, because that background music was just so much better than the music that a bunch of teenagers loved. I cannot surmise to say why The Lightning Thief got snubbed so much. But what I can say is it just highlights the ridiculousness of this entire proceeding, and just highlights the fact that to even have nominations, like what is the point of having them right now? There are no press junkets to do, there are no parties to go to.
Maybe a rare upside to having nominations this year is that people won’t be able to campaign and try to get a Tony Award via being incredibly visible in the media. That might be a positive thing that happens. For me what these nominations, or in certain cases, lack of enough nominees to fill a category is it just shows us how truncated the season is. And it also just shows us how little it really own means in the end. When you haven’t been working in half a year, and your rent is about to come due. And you don’t know if you’re going to make your rent, or you’ll know if you’re going to be able to stay in your house, and you don’t know if you’re going to be able to continue to work in the industry and you’re going to lose your health insurance soon. Because Actors’ Equity’s Health Fund, which is partially funded by Broadway producers, and its fate is partially decided by Broadway producers, those same producers decided that actors now need to work more in order to qualify for health insurance, even though it’s a pandemic and they cannot work. And so considering the state of the world, as it is, what is the point of all this? What is the point of nominations? Why can’t you just give the people who deserve awards awards and stop pretending like this is normal. And by you, I mean, Broadway League, producers, people who care about the Tony Awards, who cover the Tony Awards—thinks these things matter. 215,000 people are dead, nothing matters except staying alive and making sure that there is an a city and an industry for all these out of work artists and artisans to go back to.
Whooo! And I know the Emmys recently happened and the American Music Awards and other things like that. And so you’re probably wondering, Diep, why are the Tony so offensive to you but all these other award shows are not? And I will tell you why. It is because for those other industries, they’re already starting to creep back up a little bit. Yes, is not 100%. But musicians can make music at home. They have been making music at home. TV writers have been able to write scripts, TV actors are starting to go back to work. They have to take a test at least two times a week but they are still able to work. Want to know who is not working? Theater people. And to think that theater people right now care about a shiny gold statue, it’s just shows how out of touch the people facilitating these awards are, and just shows how out of touch those who occupy the top echelon of the theater and Broadway industry are. To close my rant, which I did not realize was going to be that long of a rant—and I will be writing more about this on TokenTheatreFriends.com, don’t you worry, I have feelings about this, which have only intensified ever since the Broadway League announced that it was pushing back the date of Broadway’s reopening until May 2021. When we all know may 2021 is a very now a very optimistic projection. Because Dr. Anthony Fauci told us it was an optimistic projection. I would just like to close my rant by quoting Karen Olivo who is the Lead Actress in a Musical nominee where she said, “I hope that the spotlight on the Tony Awards will illuminate the fact that arts workers everywhere, not just on Broadway are struggling. By all means, let’s celebrate the work of all these artisans. But let us also seek the government-mandated financial assistance that will ensure we exist beyond this global pandemic.” If the Tony Award can do anything right now, it is not to give out shiny gold statues, it is to raise awareness that these artists are out of work, they need money, otherwise they will not survive. Otherwise, they will leave the industry. Otherwise, this industry, the theatre industry, will not survive. And so I hope when, and probably, if the Tonys happen, I hope that we all talk less about what people are wearing and what they look like. And more about what their lives are actually like right now, Let’s peel away all of the glitz and the illusion. And let’s really just be real with each other. I was struck in our last episode by Eva Noblezada, who’s a two time Tony nominee. And she was very candid when she talked about how one reason she missed performing was because she missed getting a paycheck every week, and how she’s been doing all she can to get money out of rich white people. And I didn’t get a chance to ask her about those comments. But I do think that for a sizable amount of artists, showing up and smiling and receiving gold statue is not on top of their list of priorities. I think a lot of people are just trying to survive, especially if their name is Danny Burstein. And they got COVID-19 from acting in Moulin Rouge.
I will say a category that I was really happy with this year, that I am usually not that happy with, was the category for Best Play, which featured five plays. And a majority of them are written by women and people of color. One of the plays is Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris, which at 12 Tony nominations is the most nominations ever for a new play. If there’s any plus with this truncated season, it’s that Slave Play got the recognition that it so rightly deserved, and that the category was diverse, which is very rare for Tony nominations in general. And if Jeremy O. Harris wins the Tony for best play, he will be only the second Black playwright to have won a best play Tony. Sit with that for a second. And yes, the other black playwright is August Wilson. So I will be watching the Tonys this year because it will give me something to tweet about. And I really hope the Tony Awards will see this as an opportunity to advocate for government funding, a bailout for the arts. If they can bail, bail out airlines, they can bail out the performing arts. All right. Well, that is my top of show rant. I miss Jose already. I think it would have been better if he was able to be here to make this rant with me. And now for our guest who is Heidi Shrek the playwright and actor in What the Constitution Means to Me. A really moving, wonderful show which examines the Constitution as a living document and how it has continually failed generations of women and people of color. And it’s also really funny and moving and I cried multiple times when I’ve watched it multiple times. And I am so happy that those of you who did not get to see it on Broadway will now get to see it via Amazon Prime. Also just a note before you listen to this episode. Heidi Schreck starred in the show with Mike Iveson, Thursday Williams and Rosdely Ciprian who we all mentioned by first names in the course of his interview, so that’s who they are, FYI. And now let’s go to the interview. And I hope you enjoy.
Jose:
Finally welcome to Token Theatre Friends, Heidi Schreck. We’re so excited to have you. I think we mentioned Constitution every episode basically. Right?
Diep:
I don’t think it’s every episode, but it feels like we talk about pretty frequently because of reasons.
Jose:
Yeah, yeah. I’m so excited that this is gonna drop on Amazon Prime Video. And I was really curious, because I want to hear you talk a little bit about you know, you wrote the show, you starred in the show. But now you’ve had two different directors kind of like take care of material and do something with it. And obviously, Oliver Butler’s work on Broadway and Off Broadway was amazing. But I want to hear you talk about, did you discover any, did you have any insight about your own show that you yourself wrote? Based on Oliver’s and now Marielle Heller’s vision for the Prime Video version? Was there anything that you were like, oh, wow, I wrote that.
Heidi Schreck:
First of all, they’re both brilliant directors. So I feel incredibly lucky. And Mari, you know, really sort of respected everything. You know that Oliver and I had spent many years creating the show together. So she really sort of respected and listened to what we have made together. And I think tried to translate that to film but in a, in some ways, a very simple way so that you could have the experience of what it was like to sit in the audience, but in like a really good seat. I think you and I were talking about this, maybe a seat that flies around, so you could see the balcony sometimes, and you’d be really close. It was so interesting. She made many choices, which I love, but the biggest thing was she lit the audience while I performed, which was horrifying while I was performing, because I was not used to seeing people’s faces. And of course, all I could see from my vantage point was people hating, like the one old man who was so pissed off that his wife brought him. And that’s who I zeroed in on. And I just became more and more self-conscious and angry as the show went on. I was so grateful in retrospect that she had done that, because when we were in editing, and I started, you know, I watched two versions of the show, a matinee and evening performances, and I just watched the audience the whole time, and it was really moving. Like I could feel how people responded when I was on stage. And I could certainly feel, depending on what was going on in the news, and some nights were more emotional than others, but to actually have close ups of people listening and connecting with the stories and going through their own—well, what it felt like is watching people sort of go through their own history and their own stories. That was very moving. I feel like the most experimental version of this film would just be to play the audience for the whole two hours!
Diep:
Was it intentional to have most of the audience reaction shots be of women and younger women. It was a lot of crying, which I really appreciate cuz I was also crying, at home.
Heidi Schreck:
I gave a lot of notes to pull back on the crying. I was like, it’s too much crying, it’s too much crying. But I think it was intentional also. The truth is, I mean, look, in many ways, it was a typical Broadway audience, and that it was often older, very white. But it did get, especially as the play went on, more and more young people started coming to the show, more and more women. So I think that the audience shots reflects that. And then also, yeah, those are the people who were the most exciting to watch, because you could watch them connecting with the show, processing, thinking about it. So I think they were just the most interesting people to watch probably, as opposed to like, you know, the occasional man who’d be like. [folds arms, disgruntled]
Jose:
I feel that in many ways, the film adaptation, the capture—what’s the official, what are we calling it? What do we call these?
Heidi Schreck:
It’s a great thing, right? I feel like it’s an important question now because hopefully there’ll be more and more of it, right? Since we can’t gather in theaters right now. I think we’re calling it a film. And sometimes we call it a live capture.
Jose:
Okay, so I’ll go with film. Because it sounds very pretty.
Heidi Schreck:
More high-brow.
Jose:
I felt like it wasn’t until it was a film that I was like, “Oh, wow. This is like marrying Marielle Heller’s Diary of a Teenage Girl and Mr. Rogers [A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood]. And thinking about Mr. Rogers made me realize that I’ve always wanted to know, how you ended up deciding on the costume before the show, which I feel has become, in many ways, so iconic. I was trying to find something to like, match my button. And I was like, well, this shirt has yellow. It’s from the Woodstock Film Festival also. So it’s like, I’ll go with that. But I was like, how did you decide on it? What’s the official color? Also the jacket, and how do you decide on that? And then the white shirt underneath?
Heidi Schreck:
That’s such a good question. So Michael Krass is our costume designer, and his amazing associate Zoë Allen. And the first thing we tried was to dress me up like I was from the ’80s, you know, to wear like the electric blue power suit with the big shoulder pads that I wore, and like do the hair. But it was so extreme. You know what I mean? That it felt like, I don’t know, I just wanted it to be simpler. It felt like a different show. Somehow it didn’t set you up for what the show was going to become. So I was like, is there a way to like sort of nod to it? Maybe in the blazer, but then I can just wear the jeans and like combat boots I wear every day? Also, I felt like it was nice to wear combat boots. It felt like it connected me to the men on the stage. Also, I’ve been reading this book, which I’ve read many times now called Trauma and Recovery—sort of talking about the connection between the PTSD that military personnel deal with and the PTSD that victims of gender and sexual violence experienced, connecting those two things and talking about those as symptoms of an inherently violent culture. So it felt, something felt good about wearing the combat boots. So Michael Krass went to the Buffalo Exchange in the East Village. And he brought back a bunch of blazers and there was this J. Crew yellow blazer that was too short in the arms. And he was like, I think this color looks good on you. And I was like, Okay, I look a little silly. But that seems okay. I looked silly when I was doing the debates. And he decided he liked the color on me, but also the fact that it’s a traditional, like an activist color. Like if you look at AOC’s posters and things, it has a long history in activism. I think probably…I want to say like, starting with Farmworkers Movements, but I’m not exactly sure. And I should know. But anyway, it felt like the right color for the spirit of what we were doing. And now sometimes I’m like, I can’t believe I had to wear that freaking blazer for three years! I’m so tired of that blazer!
Diep:
Oh my god. So if we want to dress up as Heidi Schreck, we just need to go J.Crew.
Heidi Schreck:
Eventually that fell apart, because it was from Buffalo Exchange.
Diep:
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Heidi Schreck:
I went to Broadway and they made me a special Broadway blazer, which is exciting.
Diep:
Multiple versions of it. You don’t get multiple versions of a thing off Broadway. Okay, since you were the executive producer on the Constitution film. And we’re all having these conversations about, how do we stream theater? Why can’t we stream theater? Is it because it’s too expensive? Is it because no one wants to finance it? Oh, what are the answers? Heidi, do you have the answers?
Heidi Schreck:
Yes. Those are the answers. It’s very expensive to film. It was um, I mean, I think there’s no reason I can’t be upfront. It cost us almost $2 million to film, we filmed two performances and then did some pickup shots, we shot some footage that we didn’t end up using. So that was part of the reason. You know, it’s just expensive to shoot in a Broadway house, because of union rules, which I 100% support. And then, of course, the camera equipment, the huge number of people you need to pull off the shoot—it all adds up really quickly. We made it with Big Beach Films—I was one of the producers, the Broadway producers, and then Big Beach, and we made it on spec. We didn’t sell it beforehand. I mean, we suspected that someone would want to buy it, we were very happy when Hamilton sold, we knew it wasn’t going to sell for many millions of dollars. But we thought at least maybe now it will sell. And so we took it out and a couple places were interested. Several places said we don’t do filmed theater, our audience doesn’t like that, doesn’t want to watch it, which is fair enough. And then we ended up, Amazon ended up coming to us with the best offer. But the truth is, and this might be different if you had a big star in the play, I guess these kinds of things, as far as I can tell, sell for what a variety show or a comedy special would sell for, which isn’t a lot of money. So it’s hard, it costs a lot of money to make and it doesn’t necessarily sell for a lot of money. Obviously, I think there are ways to hopefully change that, I think you could find ways to make it more cheaply, perhaps while still paying everyone a good amount. And then maybe if it becomes more popular, I mean, Hamilton certainly certainly demonstrated that people want to watch this, hopefully my show will, American Utopia. Maybe as the streaming services see that people do care about this material, maybe they’ll be willing to pay a little more for it. We just were hoping to break even and we did break even with a small profit.
Diep:
Do you get more money if more of us watch it?
Heidi Schreck:
No. But I do think more if more of us watch it, they’ll be more interested in putting more theater on the service. So I do think that’s the incentive for watching it. I mean, aside from, I’d love for you to watch it.
Jose:
I think of it almost like there’s like this really great Brené Brown special that’s like streaming somewhere. And also it’s like that, meets A Few Good Men. One really good women. You’ve spoken before about how you wish that someday your play will be a relic. I’m always very happy to see you, we’re always very happy to talk to you. Like I’m so happy to see Constitution all the time. But it’s like we keep meeting every time the country and democracy are on the brink of collapse, and I kind of feel like you’re like Captain Planet, and people are like, let’s summon Heidi Schreck, and then you show up.
Heidi Schreck:
I’m definitely not an icon of democracy. I mean, it’s so interesting, because the last time we talked, we did a live talk back at New York Theatre Workshop, and that was right around the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. So here we are, again, as we install yet another…. Well, I think actually, Mayor Pete [Buttigieg], put it really beautifully, another judicial activist on the court. I think they’re the ones putting judicial activists on the court. People, you know, who are going to rule in a way that actually doesn’t reflect what the majority of this country wants or feels is right. I’m sure like both of you, like, I find it really challenging to get up and keep going every day and also sometimes I feel paralyzed, like what do I do as a citizen to try? Like what are my obligations? How can I try to move this country forward with the rest of the people who want to move it forward in a humane and better way. I’m being lit right now by my sad lamp, that really helps, I do a half hour of my sad lamp every day. And then just sort of try to keep going, but I guess the thing I find most, I mean, look, we’re in a terrifying moment. One thing that I gained a little grain of hope from is I do feel like the statistics show that what the majority of the country wants is not what this conservative minority wants, like most people support marriage equality, most people do not want Roe v. Wade overturned. Most people think that police violence is a problem and that Black lives matter. Most people are not anti-immigrant, if you look at the actual statistics. So I think the real problem is actually a structural problem. And I think that the the Republicans have taken advantage of these structural flaws in our system to assert the will of a minority that doesn’t want what the people want. And of course, in my opinion and yours, doesn’t want what’s best for the country. I don’t know how that gets solved. I mean, obviously, there are a lot of people who have been working on this for a long time, a lot of activists, in terms of protecting voting rights, and, you know, reforming the prison system and thinking about the court. Do we need a different process for, for how the court works? Like the Constitution doesn’t say anything about how many people need to be on it. You don’t even have to be a lawyer. Do we need to reform this court so that it reflects the will of the people?
Diep:
We’ll find that out in three to six months. I was telling someone about how, he was also tired and just want fast forward to November 3. And I’m just like, this is not book, we can’t just flip through the end. Like we just need to power through this. But speaking of powering through, can I ask you about the babies?
Heidi Schreck:
Sure. Yes. I’d love for you to ask me about the babies. So the babies mean I haven’t slept in a long time, they also give me a tremendous energy I have to say. I mean, first of all, they’re totally delightful. They’re almost six months. They’re little girls, they have very distinct personalities. They’re talking all the time, not in words, but babbling all the time. And they’re really fat. They’re very fun to squeeze. [laughs] I really like holding their thighs. And kissing them and smelling them is as good as my sad lamb. So they give me a lot of energy to keep going. I gave birth to them in a harrowing moment.
Diep:
But Kip [Fagan, Heidi’s husband] was there, right? Like, oh, you weren’t alone.
Heidi Schreck:
Yeah, definitely. Kip did so much. In fact, I was also working right up until I gave birth. So he was like, he got all their clothes, he figured out all the the stuff we needed, the breast pump, all of that kind of like he, he sort of learned everything about how to take care of babies. If it hadn’t been for him, I would have had no idea what to do. And then they were in, they had to be in the NICU for a little while. And so he and I stayed in this little hospital room, he couldn’t leave because he wouldn’t be able to come back because of COVID. And he just really took care of all of us. So I’m really thankful. Good male energy.
Jose:
And speaking of babies, I was so moved the other day when I saw a picture of baby Rosdely. She wasn’t a baby but it looked like baby Rosdely. And when you were doing the show at the Wild Project, and, you know, apologies for this, like metaphysical kind of question, but you’ve been granted, you know—as a theater maker, you’ve been granted an opportunity that so many filmmakers have. You can see almost the passage of time, because now you have this captured version of your show. Can you talk a little bit about that? Is it surreal to be like, oh, wow, they were babies and now they’re in college?
Heidi Schreck:
Yeah, that part is one of the best things about this whole experience. I think, we’ve all become such a family. And, you know, I didn’t have kids when I started doing it. And Rosdely was 12 when I met her, and really, she and her mom sort of took me into their family. So I felt like I got to have a niece or a kind of surrogate daughter, and spend so much time watching her grow up. We’re part of each other’s families. And that’s really beautiful. We also have some footage, we did shoot some footage in February when I was pregnant, and she was 15. And she looks like a grown woman.
I hope maybe someday we’ll post that debate because you can really feel the passage of time. I’m hugely pregnant, and she looks like a grown woman. And it’s pretty thrilling. And then Thursday is, you know, in college now, sorry, in her second year of college. And that’s great, too. And we’re working together, like I’m doing some research for a book I’m writing. And so I hired her to do some research with me, and we’re writing an article together for Medium. So it’s fun to get to, like, grow up with these amazing young women, or watch and participate in them growing up.
Diep:
And just to expand on Jose’s question. Actually, you weren’t a mom before, when you wrote the show, and now you’re a mom, and you get to actually watch yourself do it, which is not something that a lot of people get. And so did that open up new aspects of it for you? And if you did it again, would would it be like even deeper this time around?
Heidi Schreck:
Hmm, I guess I answer is yes. And no, I do. I mean, it’s funny because I do, and because I had a chance to do some of it while pregnant, there were certain things that felt more emotional to me. But that may have just been horrible hormones. Although certainly thinking of like, you know, my great-great grandmother, and then my own children, like thinking of the lineage of that, and it kind of like, igniting a feeling in me of like, wanting to do whatever I can to, to make their life better than mine. The way my mom made sure, my life was better than hers, and so on. That feeling comes up a lot, and sometimes a little bit of rage, like honestly, sometimes rage that they’re actually being born into this moment when it feels like the pull backwards is so ferocious. That pisses me off. But the truth is, I also felt all those things, just spending time with Rosdely and Thursday, you know, I felt that thing just being in the presence of these young people. So there’s certainly a different texture to the feeling because it’s my children that I’m raising. But I felt those feelings for them, too. I felt rage for them. And I felt like I wanted to fight for them. Honestly, that was one of the reasons I sort of decided against using any of the pregnant footage in the film, like there was a version where we’re going to weave things together. And I kind of felt like, you know, this isn’t—part of the thing the play does is open up into a bigger story. And I think that’s really important. So I think if it becomes about me wanting to fight for my own, you know, the beings that came out of my body, it’s a great story. But it’s not large enough. Whereas I feel like, like young people who aren’t related to me, are just as important as my own children. I want to feel like the show is addressing that. And not just my own story.
Jose:
In the show, you say that the Constitution is a living document, right? And in many ways, so it’s a play, I would thing. So I’m curious, like, when did you know that Constitution was ready? Or do you plan to add extra like amendments to the Constitution as the years go by?
Heidi Schreck:
I mean, I never feel like it’s ready. And I’m constantly, there’s a book version coming out, and I’m constantly revising. It was one of the most terrible things about making the movie was that I had to freeze it in time, which I hate doing. Certainly, if I ever perform it again, I will keep you know, updating the debate, obviously. But you know, there’s also little places, as you probably know now in the play, where I can kind of bring in whatever’s happening that day, and I would absolutely continue to do that. I also discovered, which I guess I should have known but because the play is going on to such a wider audience, I discovered that there are thousands of people on Facebook furious at me for calling the Constitution a living document.
The trailer went up. The trailer which is pretty, like it’s much more harmless than the show itself. Yet all of these conservatives came calling me like an idiot and stupid and a moron and a Communist and evil, just from the part where I called the Constitution a living document. I told my husband like, what are they going to do when they find out I had an abortion? Calling it a living document is enough to attract this sort of hatred. And he was like, “Oh, they’re not gonna watch your movie.” [laughs] Me laughing aside I am bracing myself for that aspect of it. The theater attracts largely an audience who thinks the way I do. And it’s going to be really interesting when the play’s out there for so many people who disagree with me, especially in this moment, and I’m just trying to get ready a little bit.
Jose:
Maybe they’ll learn a lesson. And maybe you’ll change hearts and minds. Heidi, thank you so much for joining us, would you like to invite our viewers and our listeners to watch What the Constitution Means to Me on Prime Video and to buy the book when it comes on and everything you want them to do? And tell them to vote? Because they are going to listen to you.
Heidi Schreck:
Yes, absolutely. Please, please watch What the Constitution Means to Me. It is available this Friday on Amazon Prime, I believe you can either watch it for free by getting a temporary membership. Or you can buy it, I think for a few dollars, which is better than a theater. I’m going to make sure that’s true. But I think you can. And the script should be coming out shortly through TCG. So please, if you’re interested that will be available. And it’s also a great way to support TCG right now, Theatre Communications Group. And please, please, vote. I will see you there. I’m going on the first day, and I don’t wait in mind. I’ll see you at the voting booth.
Diep:
That’s right. You heard Heidi, go vote. And if you have voted, make sure to persuade the people in your life to vote. If we all want a coherent, cohesive and effective federal response to the pandemic, that actually helps all of us, no matter where we live, then we need to vote in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and we need to flip the Senate so that it is a majority Democrat, who actually believes in wearing masks and who won’t put other people in danger because of their pride. Sorry, not sorry that I am so partisan. And now is the time of the episode where Jose would be talking about why you all should should support this show on Patreon. But today, I’m also doing that. Token Theatre Friends is a podcast and video series and web publication, we create content across those three platforms. And right now, it is just me and Jose creating the show and writing and we would love some help so that we can do this more instead of in between all of our freelance gigs. And so for as little as $1 a month you can support token theater friends on Patreon, and DMS whenever you want. And as a Patreon supporter, we will also give you a shout out in every episode, and this week’s Patreon shout out goes to Nicole who recently created a virtual theatre company called the Masked Collective. They have a new play festival next weekend, October 23 and 24th. And the play festival will be livestreamed on Facebook and will be available for a week after. Nicole says, “We’re not charging for admission but encouraged people to donate to our Venmo instead @Masked-Collective, as that’s how we’ll be paying the artists involved. So check it out. Break a leg Nicole, and you can find links to the Masked Collective play festival on our website, as well as links to the things that we talked about. Thank you all for listening and we’ll see you next week.