♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: donald trump decision to withdraw from the paris climate agreement has provoked a negative reaction overseas and at home. joining me from washington to talk about the president is the chief correspondent for the "washington post." welcome to our program. tell me why the president felt compelled to do this and let's grant him that perhaps he thought it was in the national interest to do this. perhaps he did not believe the accord was the best that could be had. let's assume that is part of his mindset. but what else? >> charlie, i think you go back

to first principles with president trump. we saw during the campaign and have seen it at important moments during the first months of the administration. there are certain things he believes that have to do with the economic status of the united states and the role of global agreements, whether a trade or environmental agreement. he has had a long-standing view that i think predates his arrival into politics, formed years ago. and i'm not exactly sure how or why they were formed. but the idea that in one way or another, we have been taken advantage of. i think it is fundamental to the way he sees the world and his role as president. he said months ago i was elected to be president of the united states, not to be president to the world. yesterday, he said i was elected to represent the people of pittsburgh, not the people of paris. i think that is deeply ingrained

in him. i think when he hears all of the criticism of the possibility of the damage that could be done by withdrawing from this agreement and what it might mean to the u.s. role as a leader in the world and to the global arrangements built with u.s. leadership over many years, that does not register on him in the way his idea is that these have been bad for the united states, they have been bad for workers, and he is going to try to do something about it. charlie: you mean he can be considered a true economic nationalist as steve bannon is? >> i think that is right. when you look at what he did here, and a lot of people say i believe rightly that this was a victory for stephen bannon. it is also a victory for conservative republicans who have long been opposed to the environmental policies of president obama's administration

and have wanted to do everything they could to reverse those. they have been taking steps to try to do that. this is another step in that regard. but on the economic point, he did not talk much about environmental issues in his statement on thursday. talked more about the economic damage he believed that agreement would do to the united states and the advantage that would give to others. i think that more fundamentally reflects his worldview. charlie: what is the economic damage he believes it will due to the united states? view is thathis this agreement would shackle the united states and cost the united states jobs. you can argue with the facts of this. with it to be freed allowed the united states to chart its own course and not to have the environmental regulations the rest of the

world wants to impose on us or that we voluntarily agree to accept as part of this agreement in one way or another inhibit the way we wanted to run our economy or the way in which energy companies want to to operate, automobile companies wanted to operate, big utilities want to operate. he cited some studies, some of which have been disputed, that said this would have cost a considerable number of jobs over a long time. i think his argument was the advantage in terms of whatever it might do for climate change, whatever it might do for the planet environmentally, it was not worth what he envisioned as the economic loss. as we know, there's a huge push back against that and lots of people that dispute the facts he was offering as his rationale for pulling out. and also the view that this does great damage to the united states internationally because

it is a pullback. it is an america first move on his part and one that could have significant consequences beyond simply the paris accord. charlie: do we believe that the essence when donald trump says america first hemings america -- he means that america is not serviced well by being part of the larger world? that we are better off if america goes its own way and does what it does well? >> i think that is right, charlie. articulated quite straightforwardly in an op-ed and gary cohn wrote for the "wall street journal" earlier in the week which was rejecting the idea we are part of a global community or there is something valuable about that idea of a global community. and that instead, nations compete. they compete for advantage,

military and economic and cultural advantage. and that we are well-positioned in this country to compete effectively in that way, as opposed to enter entering these kinds of arrangements which in the president's view tend to shackle the united states rather than allowing us to express our advantages in a way we can gain the most from them. charlie: yet at the same time, and i am not asking you to defend the president or support the president, but at the same throughd he actually go a rigorous examination of this or was he simply going forward with the principles he already believed in? because as you know, lots of people stepped forward to express the opposition to this because of the american interests as well as the american interest in national security, of which they see global warming as a part. questionot answer the

of how much he delved into the details of all of this. i think we do know, and my colleagues had a very good piece in the friday "post" about the lobbying going on back-and-forth. it was intense and fierce. he heard from people on all sides. tore were serious efforts up different views to make sure he heard them, including ivanka trump helping to organize c.e.o.'s to weigh in on behalf of staying in the accord. we know he heard a lot. also heard a lot from the likes of steve bannon and scott pruitt, the e.p.a. administrator who came armed with a lot of data and information to support the idea this agreement was bad for the united states. he heard a lot.

i think he probably heard as much on this as he has heard on anything. i have compared this to kind of the health care issue where obviously he was involved in trying to change some people's minds, but we never got the sense he delved deeply into the details of it or fully cared that much about the details of health care. on this, i think he heard a lot. but he stayed where he began. he ended up where he began. he said as a candidate we were going to get out of this. and in the end, that is where he came down. there was some talk you might offer some kind of appeasement to the people who wanted to stay or something to suggest we are mostly pulling out but will try to be good about it. but this was a withdrawal. the only acknowledgment was we can start to renegotiate a new deal. there is no for him to do that. there is no way he will be able to do that.

that was the closest he came to offering anything to the side that lost on this. charlie: some people have been talking about the different sites within the white house. clearly, this was a victory for the economic nationalists, steve bannon, miller, and others. or was it simply the president listening to his own head and you cannot attribute it to anyone other than the president listening to what he believed? >> have to believe it is the latter and not the former. you can make the argument legitimately that this was a victory for steve bannon because he argued vociferously to get out of this. you can argue this is a victory for economic nationalists. but i think in the end, this was donald trump acting as donald trump. i am not sure and this is me projecting a thought, that he came down or you wanted to be where he thought he always was and was willing to hear various

sides but that this reflected core values he has carried with him into the white house and he's going to operate on, not just on this but other matters as well. charlie: it had the additional tot of quality of it seems be what his base want to come to do. >> is no question about that -- there is no question about that. we talked in the inaugural address about the forgotten american's he would represent and the american carnage would end starting on january 20, i think this is a straight line from that to this kind of decision. one of the things we have seen in this administration is there has been no particular effort to try to expand the base of support that got him into the white house. it has been at various turns a reinforcement of that support. and i think this was another example of that. i think on any of the economic

issues, he plays directly to the base. i think as we saw in the campaign, he has a visceral instinct for how the people who helped support him and got him to the white house think and feel about many of these issues. charlie: and those people don't care what the chancellor germany were the president of france say about how they see it as an impact and playing right into the hands of china. >> no, i think they see what happened in their communities. whether it had to do with the paris accord or nafta or any other agreement, they see an america in which its economic muscle has been weakened over many years and that donald trump says he will do something about that. if this is a step to do that, i suspect many of them will applaud him vociferously. charlie: that was the political genius of donald trump in the campaign for the presidency. >> and it is what fool some many people who thought there was no way he could become president. this is one of those moments when he acts against what all

sorts of "smart people" say is in the interest of the united states. but as he says, i am sitting in the oval office and they are not. charlie: he comes home from what many judge as a successful trip in saudi arabia and less so when he went to nato and the g-7. he comes back from that after nine days. and he will get up next week and james comey will be testifying. and he will say, we assume, some of the things he claims the president has said to him. and that is clearly going to be embarrassing to the president if not raise questions of obstruction of justice. >> absolutely. it is interesting. we will go from when he was on the world stage and this week drawing attention to his worldview of how the world ought to be shaped. and next week with economy testimony, we go back deeply into the whole issue of russia and the investigations.

it is kind of this split screen nature of his administration at this point. they are trying to do things. they have an agenda that has largely been stalled on capitol hill. but on the one hand they are trying to do the things they make promises about during the election, and yet they are dogged by the russia investigation and all of the revelations that continue to spill out day by day. next week will be a huge week because of director comey's testimony. we will not have seen a day like this in washington in quite a long time. you can already envision what that day is going to be like with wall-to-wall coverage and breathless reports and everything magnified because of the world in which social media has the ability to take an event and transform it into something viral. he is heading into a potentially very difficult week. obviously, they know that and

will attempt to be prepared. there is some question as to whether he will try to invoke executive privilege to prevent mr. comey from testifying. sean spicer at the briefing today would not give an answer as to whether they have made a decision. they are reviewing it, he said. but i suspect one way or another, we will hear from director comey next week. charlie: we are also looking at a committee that has subpoena power for documents and people to come to different congressional investigation committees. >> in a sense, the investigations which have been ongoing for months seem to be accelerating with the issuing of subpoenas. and all of that will continue to crescendo throughout the summer and probably into the fall. and then there is the special counsel, robert mueller, who has his own investigation about which we do not know much other than it is potentially damaging to some people around trump.

his son-in-law has now been drawn in, jared kushner, with questions about meetings with the russians. there is so much swirling on that front that they cannot get out from under it. i think they are continuing to try to figure out how to manage it. somebody from a prior administration said the smartest thing they could do is figure out what they do not know, that there was so much they did not know. but to try to take their own inventory and do their own internal investigation. they obviously did not do that. and so they are left in a sense to react to every new revelation that comes out. as i said, they continue to come out on such a regular basis that they are playing catch-up every day, every week. charlie: more people are stepping forward. not just columnists and pundits paid to do that, but a range of people from corporate america

and other institutions in america seem to be a rising sense of concern and fear. >> i agree with that. i think people recognize we are in a most unusual period in this country's history. we have not seen something like this. we have not seen an early stage of presidency that resembles this. in addition to the deep partisan polarization, there is a sense the country is in overdrive in a way that is breaking everything apart. i think there is concern about that. there is concern about what the investigations will lead to. there is obviously concern on the part of people who support president trump that there is a witch hunt, that there is a determination on the part of whoever to bring him down. and that is pitching people against one another.

raisedyou say, it has the collective level of concern in the country and this notion of how we continue like this and for how long and the way out of it. we don't have an answer to that. nobody can answer it. but i think we all recognize the gravity of the situation that exists at this point. charlie: the interesting thing is this president had a domestic agenda. he clearly wanted to do something in terms of health care. he wanted to do something in terms of tax reform. he wanted to do something in terms of infrastructure. and he wanted to do something stopped in the courts about immigration. things in thecept court process are on hold. >> i would say on immigration, the travel ban has been held up in the courts. charlie: go ahead. >> in other ways, he has moved

on immigration. i think people who elected him in part because of the immigration issue feel as though he is keeping that promise. in the hispanice community hispanic community, it has created a sentence --a sense of alarm and fear. i think on that front, he is making progress. and it does show elections do matter. on issues like health care and tax reform, i think one of the things that has happened is the republicans have run into the reality of the difficulty of governing. during the obama administration, it was pretty easy to be against what president obama was in favor of. but to come up with the alternatives to that has proved to be very difficult. we saw the difficulty the house went through to try to get any kind of health care bill. the senate is struggling with it. the administration planners believed long ago that issue would be done and signed. and there is no quick solution

on that. there is a hope among republicans that they can finish health care in the senate by the august recess. but we will see whether they are able to do that. the president said when he was talking about the paris accords that the tax bill is moving along swiftly. there is no real evidence of that. we don't know the outlines of that yet or whether there can be any consensus in the house or senate on that. those two big-ticket items are at this point in limbo. in a funny way, this seems nutty because we are still in the first six months of a four-year term, the window closes relatively quickly on some of those. there is a sense they need to get those things done or moving well before the august recess or in the fall. but they have to deal with the debt ceiling at some point when come back from the august recess, they have to fund the

government. that will be another battle. these things pile up. the agenda he had gets backed up farther and farther. you mentioned infrastructure. i think there are still people who wonder why he did not try to do infrastructure early and make an outreach to the democrats. i have always kind of thought that was not likely because the republicans have full power at this point. they own the house, senate, and white house. and they have an agenda that has been building up for some years and wanted to move that first. infrastructure was a donald trump initiative but not necessarily a conservative republican initiative. he has run into these kinds of complications. and allhe russia matter at forcessues around th a focus on that to the exclusion of some of the issues they would like to get done. it makes it very difficult.

charlie: has he gotten a fair press? >> he has gotten a very tough press. i don't think there is any question about that. i think he has gotten a tough press because he has brought a lot of it on himself. when he engages in falsehoods, when he says he would have won the popular vote were it not for 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants who voted, he is dealing with facts that do not exist. and the press calls him on that. the other thing we know is this is a white house fighting among themselves and linking to the reporters the cover the white house. i continue to get emails from people who oppose pronk -- trump who believe the press enabled donald trump and helped to elect him and defeat hillary clinton.

there is another view of this from the other side. among trump supporters and certainly from the president himself there is a feeling the press coverage has been mightily unfair. and then you had hillary clinton stepping out this week in another interview talking about how this information was weaponize in the united states, this hacking d tormation was weaponize help defeat her as a candidate. >> it was quite an interesting cleariew she did it was from watching her in that interview that she has spent hours and hours poring through data and information and analysis to try to understand why she lost. i thought one of the more telling statement she had, and i think i am paraphrasing, was something to the effect of i

take responsibility for every decision i made but that is not why i lost. she has found a variety of reasons other than her own skills as a candidate, the way she ran the campaign, for her campaign's performance to conclude these are the reasons she lost, not any of those. she is rightly concerned, as everyone is, about the role of the russians and what happened in the election and whether the russians will try to do that in future elections and the degree to which the sanctity of the vote or the way we operate a democracy is at risk because of what now can be done through social media and hacking and all sorts of nefarious ways. she is quite fluent on that. she has drawn clear conclusions about the role of the trump campaign in that, that have not yet been proven by any of the investigations. there are obviously a lot of dots.

she connected those dots. she walked up to the line of saying donald trump himself was colluding. she did not say that but certainly she believes the campaign of trump was involved cooperatively or actively in her and doing. -- undoing. she also said things even many democrats were surprised about. she went after the democratic national committee. i talked to people who felt that was a bridge too far, that it had little to nothing to do with why she was ultimately defeated. but she is looking for reasons to explain what was unthinkable to her on the night before the election and the night of the election until she began to lose all those states they thought they were going to win. charlie: dan, it is a pleasure to have you.

it makes so much sense. i am honored it came on the program. we will be right back. stay with us. ♪

the dogs has part two is nominated for eight tony awards, including best actor. here is a look. >> also, here is another thing.

you do not get angry. i am angry. >> i do not think so. i think you are outside of it, looking at it. you don't act. [laughter] >> constipated. "a doll's house, part 2 " is currently running at the theater. i am pleased to have all of them here at the table. welcome, welcome, welcome. me begin withet you. did you long think about what was going to happen here and over the aftermath of what happened to the character? >> yeah, i have always loved the

play, and had seen in many productions. the first thing that came to me was the title. i thought that was an audacious title, "a doll's house, part 2," and it was not until i started writing that i had to get past the joke of the title and really consider, what does it mean to revisit this story? charlie: what do you think it's ibsen intended? for people to speculate about it for all the years after? >> i think he wanted the door to slam and us to consider the leaving, butra over 100 years later, i think it is time for us to revisit that story and think about what it would mean to return and what would bring her back? charlie: is there much debate over how she turned out, rather than how she might have turned out? >> i love the fact that lucas,

when he had the idea of what nora's outcome would be, he asked his friends if it would be positive or negative play she had such limited options, and with no skills and no education, the stigma of being a divorced 1879, people thought her options would be negative, so lucas wanted to go in the opposite direction. i mean in a positive way, i mean successful. she is a success. charlie: people believe ibsen intended it as a feminist argument? kept coming ibsen back to in all of his plays is how are we not free, and how could we be more free? and is that truly possible? he was a writer who seemed to europe for people to be more constricted bys

social norms, social judgment, 's house isdoll one of his considerations of it. roles menabout the and women are forced to play. nora's action is to break out of a certain expectation. charlie: but she comes back for legal reasons? she has to come back? laura: she has to. thats a clever measure brings her back. what is fun for the audience is to find out what made her come back after 15 years of silence, education at all, and also what she has been doing in those 15 years. charlie: the audience wants to elseout how everyone reacts to her coming back after all this time? in the questions they have for her? laura: and she gets shown, you know, face-to-face. she has to come face-to-face with the aftermath of what she did.

yes, her children are grown. charlie: and how does torvald see her? changeds a completely person. he does not recognize her. surprised? is lucas: he is dumbfounded. charlie: he thought she would drift off into nothingness? >> he is convinced that she is still living, but her outcome, what has happened to her, i am sure he has no idea. charlie: why does she leave? >> nora leaves because she has gotten into a spot where she is not sure what she wants, and she has a strong suspicion that the way that she is walking through is without any understanding of who she is as a person, so she thinks she needs to go find out who she is.

charlie: personal identity? lucas: yeah. she certainly does not think she can find that person if she stays in this house because she will just keep falling into patterns of behavior, so she needs, literally a change of scenery. charlie: it is an ageless question, "who am i?" lucas: yeah, and the way the that therelates is is a voice inside of your head that are you and there are other voices colliding in on it, voices of your parents and your husband, of the people in your community, telling you what you should be doing, so she has to stop hearing those voices of "if i people, and hear, am left to myself, what do i want for myself?" charlie: part of the play is not only how they react to her, but how she reacts to them.

>> it is an amazing surprise. since then, we have been wondering what happens to nora. it is a fun exercise, so for this play, you have all this aboutp and excitement, what is going to happen when she comes back, what are people -- are people going to flip out? sam: welcome her back with open arms? what is she here for? you get a series of, you know, between her and the important people in my life where you get the supplies of finding out how they treat her and how she treats them. charlie: some have said that you have, in a sense, preferred a minimalism in design in the theater production you are involved in? sam: i like to focus on the actors. i like the words and performers to do all the work, and with this, i really thought about it. when i read lucas's play, i

thought it was a boxing match, it has got a lot of rhetoric. a lot of argument in it. it just felt like making a production where it there could be great actors kind of sparring . that was the basic idea. rankie: where would you ibsen? where would you rank this play? sam: it is one of the most important plays in dramatic literature. one, because it was extremely shocking when it was written, to give a woman, the things you were talking to lucas about, about her inner voice, to give a decision, to leave her family, and to leave at the end of the play with the door slamming, that was important in cultural history, in theater history, and it is a great role that actors have played forever, and you get to watch a great actor play. it is one of the great roles for

and after. even after in 1997. , liket was a great part janet did in 1997. you get to see someone play nora, but also get to see a completely new play. it borrows from the old play, thatlso, it is is on play gets to use some of the context of ibsen, but it is really lucas. woman,: what manner of who had the strength to do this? what manner of woman? what manner of human being to walk out at a time in which nobody ever left the family? laura: i know, it is a wonderful character. fascinating. and even though i have not done the original boss house -- doll's house, and i haven't.

she has reinvented herself in the 15 years she has been away. i felt like i had a free pass to reinvent the character myself, because it is the nora we see that everything that was bottled up in her in the original has come out, exploded, and she has a confidence and sense of humor, and aggressiveness about her, and she is on a mission, and she is focused, and it is thrilling to be able to play a character who is still very flawed in lucas's production, but you t for her because she is so passionate about her feelings. charlie: how is she flawed? laura: selfish, petulant, petty, and she can be impatient, but i find, like, within a character that still has the passion, i negative attributes

sort of endearing. [laughter] laura: it is fun to play. changedis also what has torvald. i think, having had nora leave -- we use the word -- vald is constipated. through these 15 years and this shock that he has taken, he has he was left to raise three children with the help of annemarie, the housekeeper, has made. -- house maid. his life is so narrow. it is the bank and home. bank and home. he has no social life. concerned,fied, very about what society thinks of

him, and her leaving, i think, has just turned his world inside out. charlie: but he never filed for divorce? >> he never did, because that so manyve opened up problems. so many problems. in this case, by keeping quiet, and people inquiring "well, where is nora?" trip."she is on a as time passes, they assume she must have gotten ill, now in an institution. down the road, they think, maybe she passed away. torvald does not keep that story alive, what might have happened, alive. charlie: except that she needed would give her was

not within the legal framework. what she had wanted to come back anyway? would she have been so curious about what happened to them? and secondly, want them to see what has happened to me? laura: that is absolutely true. it is never stated explicitly in the text, but you can read between the lines that there is a curiosity and desire to see her daughter, but a resistance to it because she is worried it could open up some wound and it is better to let wounds heal. we also talk about the moment she walks into the door, there is a little bit of a vibe of -- you know, the person who had just been off to college and learned all these new things and wants to go home and show mom what they learned. and that is sort of the fun of it, too. charlie: this reminds me a little bit -- although it is more dramatic and rich. whoever went away to the big city and did really well, wants to come back to the hometown reunion just to say "here i am.

praise me for what i have done." >> there is a flavor of just, ex coming back. because it is a play about divorce, even enjoy any feelings you want to have about breakups in general. so if nora was slamming the door in a big way -- slamming the door was a breakup in a big way, do you fall back into your old patterns and think about how different they looked than they did when you broke up, i think lucas hits at a core emotional truth about couples. sam: and even couples that are not together, they are still connected to each other forever. ♪

charlie: does the audience choose sides between torvald and nora? is that they choose sides and then flip a lot during the course of the evening, which is why i used the sports metaphor. hopefully, you feel every side of the argument over the course of the show. it is one of the things lucas did really well and makes the show really fun. charlie: what is the engagement with her daughter? i did not mean -- what i had to do for myself?

laura: it is so funny that we are dealing with marriage and divorce, and then along comes the scene, and the three-year-old daughter who does not even remember her mother, they are now having a scene together and they have very different takes on marriage, which is surprising, but also has a lot to do with abandonment . comes across as someone who has felt with it well, but you see how she has been affected by it. is she concerned about nora's desire to live a more conventional life? laura: she wants her daughter to have options. thesees in her daughter same things that she fantasized about what a marriage would be at her daughter's age. charlie: isn't it about options? laura: to have options, yes.

that is the best thing she can do to give to her daughter as she explains, as she is having a second epiphany, and heading out the door to do more work towards that end. charlie: what is interesting to me is this idea -- this play -- i mean, if this play had been released today, it would be a very relevant play. all these questions are contemporary questions about who we are, what our obligations are, what is our responsibility, all that? >> this production takes place in the 1890's and they are wearing the taurine close. the writing style is extremely -- wearing victorian clothes. the writing style is extremely contemporary. you can ask her self "what about our world is exactly like victorian norway?" and you get to bounce around the two. charlie: how do you add that

contemporary sense, necessity to that play? >> it was always necessary to have contemporary american performances. the voice was not to feel at all period, not to feel at all norwegian, or some stodgy ibsen production, but to feel like a contemporary american vernacular , and let the victorian context happen in the subject. and then, you know, some beautiful victorian clothes helps. >> a very contemporary sound and very contemporary touches like something as simple as a kleenex box. charlie: exactly. the point is to make it contemporary. the wanted to see contemporary world and think backwards and not the other way around. charlie: did you want to sort of say as he started writing this

"forgive me, mr. ibsen, but --" [laughter] >> i did not feel apologetic with him. charlie: did you want to say, look, at long last, you will have someone answering the questions you raised? >>. like i was having a conversation with him. he is a playwriting mentor of mine, and let me do a little bit of the amash to you -- the ho mage to you. i started writing the play -- i found a bad translation online and cut and pasted it to a new document and went through line y line and wrote the translation in my onwards. once i have gone through that and on to the end, i was ready to just keep going. charlie: can you think of any other play ever written that you would like to do part two? [laughter] lucas: the problem with the dramatic canon is that in most place, people all die at the

end. that eliminates a sequel. no, i cannot. i have stood on subway platforms wondering this question many times, and i think this is my only sequel. laura: we could have a sequel to this sequel? >> we could projected 15 years into the future -- we could project it 15 years into the future. charlie: i mean, the other interesting thing to me is what has happened to her along the road, which is part of the retelling. in other words, once she left, everybody wants to know what happened to her, and she wants to explain what has happened to her or not. she does not want to hide anything, does she? , you know, i think she definitely emphasizes the parts that went great. in the first scene, she tells

the story of what happened, and it is all the highlights. it takes a little bit longer to bit more about what was particularly difficult. charlie: the incessant child,ning of the husband, maid? >> she really does not want to tell this story of "i love my family and i was punished for it. i suffered because i left my family." she wants to deemphasize that, i think, but -- charlie: go ahead. lucas: but as she moves through the play and interact with the allr characters, they demand to know what it cost her. say "no,mpelled to seriously, this was difficult. i struggled. this is hard work. " is also someone who would never want someone to

feel bad for her. charlie: but she thinks any is making a mistake -- but at the same time, she thinks emmy has made a mistake even as she has chosen for herself? lucas: she is really worried about seeing her daughter just she does not want her daughter to struggle like she did. who she has gravitated to and she struggles to find out that her own daughter is not seeing the world like she does. charlie: have you gone out and talked with scott rubin, feminist academics? lucas: it was something we had been talking about, and we sent it to a number of scholars. charlie: asking what question? lucas: first, to just read the play and respond. of theseay is all

arguments and it was important to have balance in the play and feel like offsides, you can get the audience to feel like every side was right. in order to find the balance, we needed help from people who knew a lot more about things like victorian divorce law and the history of feminism and things that would help balance those arguments from perspectives i think we did not have enough info on when we first started working. charlie: what was the reaction when the play was released in 1879? >> shocking. charlie: shocking? >> yet, people tried to censor it. in fact, he rewrote the ending of the play for a famous production because it would be like doing something illegal, you know? charlie: and was it seen by some, social critics at the time, as a threat to marriage?

>> absolutely, to marriage and women's place in the society. they saw it as being incredibly threatening. another wrote a story about a woman who saw a production of "a house" and was misled by the play. said that youiew have not written a feminist play or antifeminist play. "he has written and endlessly open debate which never feels like a debate such as the immediate see of the crime, sensitive production. the unexpectedly rich sequel reminds us that houses tremble and fall when doors slam and other people living within may be wounded or lost." that is pretty good. that is all you can say? >> i'll take it. charlie: take it when it comes, and when it does not come, don't

worry. >> i agree. these points of view of each valid,ual onstage is so so valid, that an audience member who is of a certain belief has to listen to the argument. and he will hear his side, and he will hear a whole other side, and he may hear a second, third, and fourth side. and i think it is phenomenal, amazing, that the house is quiet, and i am surprised that there is not more outspokenness from the house. you know what i mean? >> they are outspoken, and there

are these big, thunderous sections of laughter, and there are the big gasps and stuff, and it is suddenly on a dime gets really quite. laura: and when a character makes -- drives home a point, a sportinght at event, they applaud when certain points are landed. and every character gets a few. charlie: what are you doing after this? not after this conversation, but after the play? [laughter] laura: the roseanne show. charlie: oh! when does that start, in september? laura: in the new year. charlie: chris? another movie, another play? chris: i will be looking for work down the road. charlie: it will be coming. sam: i am in rehearsals for hamlet right now, take on the

big classics. [laughter] sam: after nora, not to do hamlet. charlie: of course -- after nora, got to do hamlet. charlie: of course. it was to be or not to be and nora was to be. [laughter] sam: she was to be for sure. yourie: oscar isaac is hamlet? laura: >> i am finishing up a play about my mother. it is a play in the form of a documentary about an incident where my mother, about 20 or so years ago, was actually kidnapped, so it is based on interviews with her. and it is a really strange story. it is kind of a thriller. it is a documentary play. it is a whole mix of things. charlie: how is it to interview your mother. ? lucas: i did not interview here. i had someone else to view here

because i was interested in how she tells the story to someone who is not me, because it is all stuff we have talked about plenty. ♪

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