>> charlie: welcome to our program. tonight we go to the theatre. first the house of blue with hits star ben stiller, the playwright john guare and the director david cromer. >> these are people living in queens in 1965 who feel they need to be recognized by the world to mean something and they're not. it's about that desperation, i think. that's one of the things. >> you need help. it's throughout -- you walk from the train station, it was raining, so it was muddy.

there was a tree with blue leaves, am i right? i walked into the tree and the leaves blew away. sshh. it was birds. >> charlie: and we continue by going to see arcadia with actors billy crudup and raul esparza. >> they can't help but keep coming because the play is so heavily constructed there's enough to go around for months.

>> what? >> me. no, no. >> oh. nothing against it. >> yes, you have. you should let yourself go. you might have written a better book. >> like going around the -- and one of them always said -- >> well yes. >> i'm fine -- like some furniture. >> charlie: a night on broadway with ben stiller, john guare, david cromer, billy

crudup and raul esparza when we continue. >> every story needs a hero we can all root for, who beats the every time a storefront opens. or the midnight oil is burned. or when someone chases a dream, not just a dollar. they are small business owners. so if you wanna root for a real hero, support small business. shop small. additional funding provided by these funders: captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.

>> charlie: john guare finished writing the house of blue won four tony awards. the play tells a story of arty sean see. he is a sue keeper and inspiring song writer who lives in queens in 1965. the house of blue leads is now back on broadway with ben stiller, and jennifer jason leigh. here is a look at the play on broadway. >> we look into it. >> it's still there. i don't know, i mean i know they're there. let's get out of here. you guys need a week in -- >> i'm all right. i was just thinking how lucky we all are, you going off to california and me going off to the loony bin.

>> the best place. >> huh -- >> we can go to florida and california. >> insane blue birds that got committed. >> let me dance with the telephone pole. >> hello john the baptist. that's who you are, john the baptist. you called billy and you prepared the way, the way for yourself. it will be fun -- >> billy, come here. i've got all my music. >> ringing out how i feel. >> i ring, i roll. i'll sing, i'm cool. >> people, help me. >> charlie: joining me now is ben stiller who plays arty. also joining me is the

playwright john guare and the director david cromer. i am pleased to have them here at this table. how do i begin this. tell me what this play's about. >> the first thing that comes to mind is dreams, dreams of being something you're not aspiration to be something, to be recognized, to be people. these are people who are living in queens in 1965 who feel that they need to be recognized by the world to mean something. and they're not. and it's about that desperation, that need. that's one of the things. >> charlie: once a director always a director. what was it about? >> what was it about? it's about the fact that i wrote it, the fact that i was in my 20's, yale drama school, i knew

how to write a play with nothing to write about out of the reserves, i had nothing to write about. i had to go out into the world to find my subject. this will be a serious subject out there waiting for me to come about. john guare with cairo, i used that as my address. when i finally, i was hitchhiking for months and months. when i was in rome in october, i looked in the front page and there was the pope. there was queen's boulevard and the pope on queen's boulevard. the one day i come to rome. he's there in queens. i got to cairo weeks, weeks lot. there was a letter from my father and father who never wrote. i never had letters from them. we would talk on the phone or i was home. they were furious at me, what was i doing with my life.

they said you may be going out to find the world but the world, that's what new york is. the world comes to us and we saw the pope today. this is what you missed. and they sent me all these clippings. and what they wrote to me about how much it meant to them, that i realized, i saw a side i never seen before and i started writing the play that day in cairo. >> charlie: it just came right out of you. >> it came out of me like i knew how to write. i suddenly knew how to write it. i knew what it should be. my father worked down at the new york stock exchange and he hated it. and he says never get a job johnny, never get a job like me johnny in the cage. he worked in the cage on the floor of the stock exchange. it's like working in a zoo. he was a zoo keeper and that's

what the play was about, the people that you just take for granted that this touch of divine is in such for the mystical, in such for the dream that is going to transform us. and i had an uncle who is head of casting at mgm from 1934 to 1956. he dominated people. it didn't matter what you did, one day you would be discovered. my parents were waiting to be discovered. >> charlie: this play's about your parents. >> the play's about myself, me and my parents. it's about, it's about the 26 years i had spent being alive when i wrote it. >> what's the difference in 71 and 86 and 2011?

how changed how you see? >> well, yes because in 1971 when ben's mother was in it, it had an original tone. it was a comedy but not a comedy. and we spent mel shapiro was the director and produced by warren and betty, harold gould. we were trying to find the tone of the play. something odd happened -- david should be talking. this is extraordinary, people would say in 1971, they would say oh, boy ronnie wants to kill, blew up the pope. i mean he could become famous. how would he get these ideas from. we would start in 1981, and it was something out of a drama, with a zipper going around the

time's building pope shot. naturally my first thought was what about my play, how does this affect my play. i never go see productions of my play but i knew it was playing in the berkshires festival. people would say what a cookie play, how do you think of these ideas, it's whacky. but it was in the play and it's as if a very slender glass membrane shattered and the stage and the audience, we're all on the same side and the laughs were completely different. it was just the impossible has happened. and it just changed the tenor, it just changed the quality of the response of the play. when they did it in lincoln center in 1986.

>> charlie: you played in it in 86. >> i played ryan in 86. >> charlie: your mother played bunny. >> i have a home movie in 1971, ben stiller age five in a little overcoat, a little suit, a little bow tie with a copy of the house of blue leaves ripping out pages demanding changes i want this i want this and i'm saying yes, mr. stiller little realizing that was our future. >> charlie: so how did you get involved with this? >> you know, the producer's got -- i was working on -- good lord, good lord, another producer i worked with. good man. the producer's -- i was working on the another project and they called me and asked me to read it and said what do you think bit. it was very simple he just called me. i have a long personal history

with john's play so he said what do you think of the house of the blue leaves. it was very emotional for me because i got to know john a little bit from my shows here in town and we'd have coffee a couple times. but i kind of, john's, john's plays that i was exposed to when i was in college in the 80's were very formative for me. so in terms of what i understood about directing, in terms of leading me to many so success as a director in a small way, in terms of understanding how american plays work and what they're supposed to be and my feelings about being an american, you know, my feelings about my country and a way to think about it that i was the able to get from the classes or political science classes or anything like that. it was a way on thinking about sort of life and art and politics. so i jumped at it. >> charlie: do you think this play is more relevant today than it's ever been? >> i don't know. i'm always sort of dicey on the subject of relevance.

well, i think the things are, the relevance of some thing and the need of people goes back -- watching someone have all we do all day is pick something we want to have happen next, something we're dreaming of, something we want. and that's the center of all, you know, rehearsal. the old joke what's my motivation. the actor, what do you want, what are you doing, what are you trying to get, what am i trying to get from you. trying to get great answers and information from people here all day. and i'm not providing that. we'll see what we can do. so just the desire for and watching anyone, if they are truly, if the actor is immediate in his desire for this thing, the audience doesn't know if they're going to get it. i think that makes something immediately relevant because the audience is stuck in that moment. so you can do almost anything,

you know. i definitely think that, well i would say that some people would look at this and say the desire for fame or the gas -- the desire to matter is higher now. >> charlie: more than anything else. >> you think it's more, just looking at the play. >> charlie: is that relevant today. >> just in terms of the obsession with fame and celebrity and the way john writes about fame and celebrity and the way the characters talk about the famous people being more important than we are. now, you know, in this reality television world that we're living in where people become famous for doing nothing. the goal is to be famous. i mean i think even more than 71 or 86 -- >> there was no people magazine when this came out. it used to be that the stars were the mystical ones that we wanted to touch. now, i mean i'm in line at the supermarket and i look at the magazines and it's snooky and people, i don't know who they

are. they are like like becoming famous and becoming more tantalizing. >> charlie: after getting a bird's eye view from your parents, have you seen most of your aspirations come true? >> i feel -- yes, i mean hugely, i feel hugely fortunate to be able to do what i love to do. to be able -- when i was a kid, i just wanted to make movies. i loved making movies. go out and make some great movies with my friends. i just wanted to be a director, and the acting part of it and all that that happened was something that happened sort of in addition to it which is something i really wanted to, i guess. but i really just wanted to make movies, i loved that. so for me i feel, yes, definitely. >> charlie: i think you must

today have a successful actor who would really rather be directing, you and george. >> oh, okay. i'll take that. no, no, i definitely love directing. >> charlie: do you love it more than acting. >> i tell you, i would say maybe up until we started working on this play, yes. right now -- >> charlie: you've fallen in love with acting. >> doing this play and doing this role in this play which is different than doing the role i did last time i did the may which was one sort of concentrated monologue. this is such a huge role, to face that challenge of doing it, to try to fill it and to be there is really challenging as an actor and enjoyable. for me having the experience i haven't had for a long time as an actor. so but i also loved directing very much and for me it's such a separate thing. to act on stage isn't completely

all encompassing experience and it's really very is aing. >> charlie: a film is not a satisfying and all encompassing experience. >> it can be when you're working with somebody who has an aesthetic idea in that world and it can also be a disjointed experience and you can be, you know, it can be hard to have this connection too. you're always looking for it but you're relying on the director, i think and the vision of the writer and the director and as we know movies are not always purely artistic endeavor. there's that combination of commerce and art and sometimes that balance is not perfect. so doing something like this, though, is very very enjoyable and fascinating and challenging and everything else. >> charlie: what's the most challenging part of it? getting into the head of arty

shaunessy. >> it's there for the characters because john's written this crazy journey that's filled with -- and as david has direct -- it's filled with highs and lows and everything that's fully invested. this is david. there are a lot of things happening to these characters that they talked about are for a look time. it's life and death for these people. to be there daily for every performance and to try to find it, find the reality and be there and try not to over -- i think the challenge is you work in rehearsal for weeks and weeks and you start to do the performance and it takes on a life of it's own which is great. you become more settled into the process of being in the play, the reality of the play takes over which is the really wonderful thing. and it starts to work for you, but to get to that place, you go through, you hit a lot of walls and places where you are, this doesn't feel right. then there's the audience and

every night you're, the audience is a huge part of this play because the characters talk to the audience and look to the audience for really approval. every character in the play is trying to get the audience on your side so the audience affects us and if there's a responsive audience, you can ride on that. but david is also interested in finding the, he's not just interested in finding the lasting place he's finding the un comfortable moments and the main and contradictions going on there so every night it's a very different experience. >> charlie: so bring to full speed here the characters, buddy and bananas. >> well bananas has been married for 18 years and they have an 18 year old son. and she is, has not left the house left the apartment in a really long time. the stage direction says she's

been in her bath robe for six months, to paraphrase something like that. and she sales to be -- she's heavily medicated. she's cripplingly depressed and ill. so she is arty's living in this apartment with this sick woman. and he has met and fallen in love with bunny or budget who has been searching for hundreds of different jobs and she's a fighter and wants to charge through the world. she says this dream but arty is stuck, she says arty is anchored in taking care of this sick woman. she's trying to pull arty out of there. army feels an all gawtion here so they are on either side of this man pulling in different directions. >> charlie: do you understand

these characters differently each time a new actor especially these actors take the stage? >> well it's when the director's telling you the story. that's why i was really thrilled working with david on this. my favorite time working on the play is additions. because actors will come in and say -- >> that's my least favorite. the. [laughter] >> to me that's when you learn about the story the director wants to tell in your play. and there would be actors who would come in who would be wonderful, hey, they're fine but they're not there to tell the story that we're telling. and that's what was wonderful is watching the director. david is one of the, and i would say this not just because he's hear, this is one of the strongest gifts a director can have. it's very very strong narrative sense. a lot of directors work moment to moment to moment and he knows the actor needs to tell that

story for the long haul that he's telling. so that's what's been thinking about this. it is not a museum piece of 197 1 or more important 1986. literally looking -- telling a new story with these people. >> charlie: because. >> it's just david. >> charlie: david's there. >> that's right. >> i think also david never saw any previous productions of the play which i think was very like freeing. >> i just went in. >> charlie: you were there -- >> i was five and-a-half, six so i remember, i don't think i ever saw the actual -- >> but he hasn't been burdened by anything other than his idea of what he thinks it could be. >> i was going to say, i am burdened by it and i sort of like being burdened by it

because you have to he can brace whatever the experience is and the experience is there's legacy all the way from the beginning even rehearsal with you and your mom. usually i'm off by myself. i'm not involved in any previous production, i didn't see it. often it's in new york, i was working in chicago. i was always sort of free of that. and this was here and i really weeks ago just decided to kind of embrace it and love it that there's, that there is a legacy to it but it's been around for a long time but they have these productions. it's scary but it's also part of i can just channel it and do something about the play. that's an expectation of the world that you have to meet. you already have to go out into the world with your song and actual me be great. you have to sell it to someone, have all these great songs to, to compare them to, all these great authors and stuff. i kind of love the fact there's history tight. we wanted to create production

that had respect for history and then we can't dismiss those productions. >> when i saw david's production of our town, which he did recently, i was just, i was really moved by it because he found this life and reality in this classic play that it's performed in high schools all the time and he feels it's sort of like everything. >> he just asked different questions. >> he literally looked at the play, i mean you felt when you were watching our town that david was looking at this text of our town as a brand new play that nobody had ever seen before and was listening to it for the first time and saying what story is it telling me. >> there was an emotional reality, if i can make up a term. emotionality to it. that was just very real and it was moving. >> charlie: you saw that in our town. >> yes. and i felt, i was really moved by the production. it was great.

when i heard that that idea that scott brought up that idea of david directing it i thought that's really interesting because there's no way we can recreate what was done in 86. that was its own thing. >> charlie: were you looking to go to they are -- to theatr. >> i had a great time doing it and i have been wanting to do something and never had thought about playing arty ever and never thought about going back into it. >> charlie: so it was scott's idea and scott's idea to hire the director and scott's idea to get within. >> this is a scott production -- >> charlie: so did you tell him what you wanted arty to be. >> yes. >> no. we had a great series of early

conversations because scott did say why don't you guys go to lunch and we went to lunch. the smart thing you did which i copy constantly is that we had two meetings, we had three meetings. with a he met, we talked a little bit and we talked again and we talked again. i just changed the way i meet people based on that. you make a decision based on one meeting. you said two things that lined up with the way i thought about and you said, my mother's famy is from this neighborhood. >> my mom was born in brooklyn and great neck. >> we had a lot of relatives from this area. >> you just wanted to work on the dialect and you wanted that to be very authentic and that to me was oh it's going to be very specific, it's not going to be shaped to ben, ben is going to be shaped to it which is the way i like to work 1k3-9 -- and the

way you like to work i find. one little thing starts the ball rolling. it's going to be very specific and out there and it's going to be focused on one neighborhood. and once you focus on one neighborhood, that means it's one neighborhood compared to the world. it's a small community looking at a big community, looking at new york, looking at hollywood. so it became a little person looking at big things. little things like that. there was an idea in something like that. >> charlie: do you remember these conversations? what did you come out of that. >> well david kept on saying -- i kept on asking him questions and he kept on saying i don't know. i don't know. i'll have to think about that. which i really respected because i knew he was really talented, and i think any time you ask a director something and they don't know the answer, wn they say i don't know i'm impressed because -- and he says that's going to be what we have to

figure out. i remember when we sat that theatre one day and we were talking about it because i was trying to figure out how i connected with it. and only once we got into rehearsal process i connected personally and started to get into reading the play over and over again and see the connection i had. for me i already connected with ronnie. the son. and his, and that's what it is when you do a play. it's a journey to say it's a journey sounds a little bit cheated but it is from the first day of rehearsal when you do the first read through to now, that's when the discovery it all happens. and that's what i was impressed with david that he trusted that it was going to happen between the first day of rehearsal and when we, that's when the discovery. and it's a discovery process of finding it. this is what it is.

>> charlie: so the discovery that you have come to about arty, his character who is a zookeeper who wants to be a song writer. >> right. >> and who has this relationship with a wife and a mistress who wants him to pursue his dream like she wishes to pursue her dream. what do you want us to understand about him? >> well, i think there's, i think like i said at the beginning, this sort of need, this need to be recognized, you know, to mean something. he's a guy who i think is looking for some greatness in his life. he's a caretaker of a sick person who he's lived with for 18 years, his wife who has become a shadow. this is a day-to-day reality of having to take care of someone who you loved at one point and now they're not even there and the pain, having to deal with

that. and this persons comes into his life, this woman who says you can be something else and this connection he has with this one famous person he knows from childhood. this famous director. and this idea that he can be something. now i think she sparks it in him, hollywood never happened, the play never would have happened if bunny doesn't walk in and start the play and have these ideas. i think people, if you have an idea you should be something but maybe deep down you don't quite know if that's who you really are, if you have it. and somebody's telling him you should be that and the world is telling him this is who is important, the famous people are important and he's a zookeeper who is living with a sick wife and living this kind of miserable existence. so i think the connection with his desire for that which is i think a human thing that people

can connect coy. >> charlie: and he's -- >> it's painful because there's a love there. it's something we talked about, the connection between these two people that they have a history together and all of a sudden a new person comes in he's known for two months who is a bright ray of sunshine but still the history and the life and what he had with bananas is, that struggle and what it leads him to. he's a very narcissistic guy. he's childish in a lot of ways but deep down he just wants everything to be okay, you know. more than being famous or what bonnie's telling him. i think deep down he wants bananas to be okay, he wants everybody to be happy and he wants it all to work it out. and that's not really where it's headed. >> >> in america you talk about a dream, i have a dream.

one of the things in the play is about suppose my dream is -- why is your dream more important than my dream. this is about the wreckage that one man's dream can cause the lives around him. >> charlie: also a part of this is real life is important. in some sense that a whole range of important things but the culture we've grown up to pay a certain homage to the dreamers. >> well to the -- >> charlie: athletes, entertainers. >> what would make him happy. >> charlie: do you think the director, playwright, actor that all of us have part of the reason we're there is because we found something to do that we had position for.

it's the passion of doing the thing which would still be there if all the requisite was there. >> i just did something for the website. i really feel you have to do, if you want to do this or anything that's, you know that is hard to do and have success, you can't be thinking about that, you just have to be thinking about doing it because you love doing it. >> it sounds like a cliche but really all the rest of that you're controlling. if you're ion joying the doing of it. >> it's more fun than anything. >> charlie: would you want it to be what. >> a playwright. >> charlie: that's what i thought. so you went traveling around looking for -- >> my play. >> charlie: your play. you were looking for that play so that's what led you to write the play. looking for your play. what were you yearning for? >> this is it, this is what i started out as an actor and i realize that's sort of a mistake

and a weigh station to becoming a director. i was wanting to do that from the time i was very very little. >> charlie: you did too. >> yes, all the games i played as a child, almost anything i did would point to it, points to it. but you know, honestly i feel like i got, you know, i got very lucky and i got to keep doing it. and you know, i kept sort of, in this play, what if the answer is no, you know. i mean and then what do you do. the idea that you do it because you love it. >> charlie: at thesome time, there are a lot of people that we ought to pay more respect to, great teachers and a lot of other things who are not in the public eye but who do well with the fact that they are creating something for them. they are changing their mind or building a family or doing a whole range of thing. >> the letter my parents wrote

in cairo was about that, about what life could be. what life was about when the pope drove by them that closely, what they saw. the some inexplicable power came in that would change them. when we talked earlier about relevance of the play, you wrote it in 65 and everyone was talking about elizabeth taylor or sandra dee, the worse thing that happened to sandra dee she the could be find her hair rollers, a tragedy, it was awful. they have thrown themselves to someone sort of half famous for some reason. it's in us and perhaps more rabid now and there's more media but the info is there and it's real there. >> it's getting out of your own life. that's why people watch television in general to get away from your own. >> charlie: they're obsessed

by celebrity. >> there are greek plays, they're looking at poor -- the chorus is all the towns people gossipping, what is she going to do. we are all caught, we are in the role of being chorused to the title roles of our lives. >> charlie: all right. let me ask you. we can't talk about how this play ends, can we. >> that would give it away. >> charlie: it wouldn't be good, would it. >> come see it. >> charlie: all right. what good advice from the playwright. thank you. great to see you. >> thank you. >> charlie: thank you, john. nice to see you. i like those glasses. from rome. >> they can be yours. >> charlie: thank you. pleasure to have you here. >> charlie: arcadia is a complex plays. first produced in 1983, it's seven themes contemplating

topics ranging from chaos theory to quantum mechanics to rice pudding. he's called it a thriller and a romantic tragedy with jokes. here's what was said to me in 1995 about the idea of the play. >> it takes place in one room in what we call in a stately home. almost a castle. and it's about what happens inside and also what happens outside in the garden. it's about romans and mathematics and landscape gardening, how's that. >> charlie: all right. how did it come to you this idea of this play. >> i'm fascinated by the process of how it comes and makes it way into the mouths of actors. this is a double event, it's a happening. quite often, the origins of the play, they come from two different places accordingly.

i liked the idea of the play in which the action switched a hundred years, 200 years but the room stayed exactly the same. that's sort of mechanistic idea, a theatrical idea. romance divide people. as you know in the history of our culture in the gardens, in paintings in all kinds of areas, there's something classical and romantic about the picture. >> charlie: right. >> and that's all i had to start with, as abstract as it sounds.

>> charlie: a new production is current me running at broadway's ethyl bureau more's theatre. two of the stars is actor billy crudup and raul esparza. i'm happy to have them at this table to talk about this fascinating play. you were in the original production here. >> i was. i was at lincoln center, yes. >> charlie: it was like a break through role. >> i was six months out of school, it was a total thrill. you know, it was such a whirlwind at the time, the experience of being on broadway having lived in new york as a theatre student was in and of itself a magical experience. but to be doing that part in this play, just seemed unfair, frankly, all of my other acting companions. >> charlie: how did you get that role. >> actually the first time i additioned for it, i knew that daniel sweet who was the casting director at lincoln center at

the time. he was giving me some adjustments that i just couldn't make in that moment. and i knew i was the making them properly and i left. as soon as i walked out of the door i said oh that's what he means. oh man, i wonder if i can get back in because i bet i could do that. so i called my agent who was sort of my new agent and i'm sure an agent must hear that 50 times a day, get me back in, i think i know what to do now. if a now that the addition's over and i've lashed a little. he said do you know what i'll call daniel but don't worry bit, that's a feeling you'll have a lot or whatever. so i was so excited that i had made that adjustment that i kept working on it myself with this friend of line. lo and behold after two or three weeks they couldn't find anybody for that part so daniel said well do you think you'd like to come back in. and i had been working on it. i came back in and next day i saw trevor and i got it. >> charlie: trevor made the decision. >> he did. >> charlie: you played the

same character. >> in a theatre in detroit i was living in chicago. i had an experience where i addition for the goodman theatre in chicago. i remember seeing it in new york and seeing billy and seeing that whole show and thinking in the intermission i was in the presence of a great masterpiece. you just sort of know. not often you go to the theatre and you walk out thinking this might be a masterpiece. >> charlie: why did you think that? what did it have? >> it's the way that he used his, both, you know travels between centuries and the way he used the two centuries to play against each other. the way i feel the play felt like i was expanding my conception of what it was to be on this earth. >> i thought the same thing about six degrees of separation. that's what it means to be in new york. this is what it means to be a human being. it's bigger than you can imagine and that just sort of really shook me up and i remember vividly thinking that this playwright has somehow made this

connection over the centuries, they are so much a part. >> charlie: you're both back in different roles. did you, as you began this, think i know this, man, i've got this. i know this play now. >> you know, i -- >> you know, there's something so familiar about it and the truth is after you've done it, the way that people respond to you for being in it is such that the experience grows and grows for you. so after a while like people come to you with the experience that raul just described and endow you with the same things they found in the play. so you start to think you knew it a lot better than you actually did. i was hanging on by the skin of my -- but so that was a big mistake i made at least for the first three weeks of rehearsal is thinking i understood it because i heard victor do it so

well so long. it took me some time. i feel now two months into it i'm just starting -- >> charlie: he played the role you play now. >> yes, exactly. >> charlie: do you think about his performance? >> it is the, it is how i understood the part before, you know. consciously and unconsciously. it went beyond even thinking of his performance is how i thought of the part. so it takes a while to have ownership. do you have that experience. >> partly also i remember robert sean leonard and the production. there was so much of his energy in it and one of my closest friends who played it when we did it and i kept hearing the line readings. the thing is down time is so removed where bernard is talking about the that sort of world. but this is, it's so completely different the subjects that you're covering. all i heard were references to what i heard before and this

entire process was a complete discovery process for me. plurs we had lea in the middle of it. they had not come to the play before so she was every day sort of surprised and going oh my god. the play had such an expansive quality also for actors because it continued to change. even last night when we were finding things. billy did something two nights ago where i said what was that. >> yes. do you know what it was. lea came up to me and she had been working. she's a real spectacular actor. we've got a great company, a fantastic director who have has set a template i think for us allowing us to build on these understandings which can't help but keep coming for months and months with this play. because the play is so incredibly constructed that you know, there's enough for you to root around in for months. lea came up to me and said how is this maxine an evolution of, from the scene before. and she said it in such a way it

was as though we hadn't asked that question before. having a new kind of ownership and authority over the parts and the roles, having dub it for a couple months gives you an upon to seize upon that new idea. and so we both sort of took it to a new place. the problem was we had been with each other for four days. we hadn't really been including at that time. >> and how present was -- >> he was around quite a bit. >> charlie: there was a point where he said he would explain the science to the viewers. >> he did actual me. >> he did. >> he sat there the first week -- >> charlie: what the mechanics was about. >> do you remember where he said, he started to talk about joy. >> the second law of thermodynamics is what he said. >> i mean he speaks in those

lines. i said i think i know what you main but okay. i sort of wandered over. and he said -- >> i think he said something like i'm sure i know what i've forgotten. >> charlie: because then in a review it was said describing this plot is a doomed undertaking. you can't explain it. >> i -- i -- it's sort of useless in a way because raul explained the plot. it's like the profundary of the human experience. >> charlie: it was a quest too. >> i was surprised when i heard that. it began in the 19th century and it began with a line there's a tutor sitting with a little girl who turns out to be a math genius. the tutor says to her do you know these things we've been doing they don't make any sense. and the dpurl says -- he says to

her something about newton's laws and mathematics. she's a precocious little kid. she says you know if god was armed with equations god could only make a cabinet. and he says to her well god has mastery of equations which we cannot follow. and she says what a faint heart that must workoutwards from the middle of the maze. i heard that line and i said oh, i'm looking for god, for the reason man existed. something through the universe. they are doing that and in the 20th century when we come around we see how the future gets passed around. how the same themes recur over and over again. one of the things tom said in rehearsals which i thought is so beautiful is theatre is the impossible. you can do it more than film sometimes because in art we can time travel. in art we can go back. >> charlie: so we have two centuries. >> we have two centuries. in art two things can coexist. the table is a table in another

room, the most beautiful halls. this is all on stage. this table becomes a physical manifestation of all the science and all the love and all the themes he's talking about. at the end of the play he says time will eventually run out and everything will move to this order and you're left with a table covered with all the props of centuries of searching in front of an audience. so he's found a way to physical empty out and represent that beautiful thing that is always trying to be human beings. hannah kills me every night when she says it's all trivial what we're looking for it doesn't matter it's wanting to ma that makes us matter. that's really what the play is about in the end which i find very sexy and very known and very moving. >> charlie: let me take a look. i want to look at some clips here. this is you expounding on the mystery of life played by lea williams. here it is. >> where are you -- give up any moments and drawing themselves. it's a way of making pictures

out of nature this early. >> here it is, pictures -- it's my way of drawing annal fant for god's sake. >> you can't make a picture of -- >> yes, i could do that. >> well. >> -- paid 10,000 times. each time would an adult somewhere on the screen. graduay you would start to see the shape. because every god will be inside the shape of this leaf. it will be a mathematical object. the unpredictable and predetermined unfolds together almost every single way. this is to create itself on every stage. a smooth plate on a stone. it makes him so happy. >> charlie: you think you

were the actor there. >> it's hard to watch yourself. >> charlie: even people say it's much more difficult to watch yourself in a video of a theatre piece. >> it is. we filmed for pbs and we were doing it for -- and i was never able to watch the whole thing. it's performed in stages. >> charlie: is the text so constructed so that almost like inflections and the pauses are inside of it. >> i don't think so the play takes care of itself. >> exactly. >> it's like working on shakespeare in that sense. something that tom said and all the great writers have said pinter and -- that sounds arrogant i'm not being arrogant. our goal particularly with this

play is to find the expression of what they worked to put down. that means we have to go through 50 variations of emotional life to fill it but we needn't tip the hand but the play can take care of itself. in a speech like that, i have found that i keep my hands in my pockets and i stand still and i try to say the words clearly and i can hear the audience gasping which is a wonder over the science and the math. g i'm doing my job. that's the job. so it's about clarity, i think. >> charlie: here's a clip where you caution the other house guest not to confuse --

>> you're allowed. >> oh. it's as always, finally. a need. we were very happy with alcohol problems. i preferred it. 55. it was not my idea of a universe. i can't think of everything than the speed -- why. [laughter] why are people -- why are you repeating yourself. [laughter] >> speaking of getting out of the way. like the words didn't work. >> i missed that conversation. >> charlie: you didn't hear that. >> no not until now. i went the other direction. >> charlie: bringing that down. >> yes.

>> charlie: okay. >> sometimes, you know, it takes a while to calibrate how to get -- >> charlie: cal -- calibrate what we're looking for. >> it's a big theatre, you see. there's people in the back row. you might not see -- of course not. the power of the words certainly alone would not have done it in that case would they. >> his conviction is so extreme, his energy towards, his absolute arrogance toward his fidelity to his mistakes, do you know what i mean. that's what's so great about it. >> charlie: it's great to see you. measure to have you here. >> thank you. >> charlie: you're going out to do the show. >> good to see you. >> thank you for having us. >> charlie: thank you for joining us. see you next time.