Get ready for an engaging journey into the world of theater and puppetry as we sit down with the multifaceted talent, Stephanie D'Abruzzo. Ever wondered what it's like to perform on Broadway in Avenue Q and the impact of the Tony Awards on a production? Stephanie shares her unique insights, drawing on her experiences. She candidly discusses the shift from puppet-focused to actor-focused performances.
Our conversation with Stephanie isn't just confined to Broadway. We also uncover her experiences with voice acting in beloved children's shows like Scooby-Doo Adventures, Sesame Street, and Winnie the Pooh. She even provides a sneak-peek into her recent experience on the second season of Donkey Hodie.
Finally, we dive into the wonderful world of puppeteering, discussing Stephanie's experiences working with renowned puppeteers and the amusing practicalities of puppeteering Wonder Woman's Invisible Jet (LOL). Lighten your day with a lighthearted candy trivia game and join in our lively debate over the supremacy of Heinz Ketchup.
With Stephanie D'Abruzzo as our guest, you're in for a roller-coaster ride of hearty laughs, wisdom, and a whole lot of puppeteer fun. So, sit back, relax, and immerse yourself in the fascinating world of theater and puppetry!
Get ready for an engaging journey into the world of theater and puppetry as we sit down with the multifaceted talent, Stephanie D'Abruzzo. Ever wondered what it's like to perform on Broadway in Avenue Q and the impact of the Tony Awards on a production? Stephanie shares her unique insights, drawing on her experiences. She candidly discusses the shift from puppet-focused to actor-focused performances.
Our conversation with Stephanie isn't just confined to Broadway. We also uncover her experiences with voice acting in beloved children's shows like Scooby-Doo Adventures, Sesame Street, and Winnie the Pooh. She even provides a sneak-peek into her recent experience on the second season of Donkey Hodie.
Finally, we dive into the wonderful world of puppeteering, discussing Stephanie's experiences working with renowned puppeteers and the amusing practicalities of puppeteering Wonder Woman's Invisible Jet (LOL). Lighten your day with a lighthearted candy trivia game and join in our lively debate over the supremacy of Heinz Ketchup.
With Stephanie D'Abruzzo as our guest, you're in for a roller-coaster ride of hearty laughs, wisdom, and a whole lot of puppeteer fun. So, sit back, relax, and immerse yourself in the fascinating world of theater and puppetry!
Yo, what's up everybody? How's it going? Welcome to the Bad Chest podcast. I am your host, Katie215. Well, that means a cutout short. I don't know what happened there.
Speaker 2:Anyway hi.
Speaker 1:This is the second episode of the Bad Chest podcast. Tonight we have one of my favorite people on the planet. She is amazingly talented. I first saw her on Broadway and Avenue Q long before we ever had the opportunity to work together. She just has done amazing things in voiceover work, in puppetry, in acting, I mean everything. Listen, she's got a sizzle reel that she said she did 10 years ago. I think it's hysterical. I'm going to let this do the explaining for you if you don't know who you are, or if you don't know who she is, and we're going to roll in now. This is great.
Speaker 2:I'm so all alone so long, fellas, mary had a little lamb All aboard. The Holiday Train show at the New York Botanical Garden, new Nivea, my Silhouette with Bioslum Complex. Touch and be touched. Have an alfresco lunch and check out the delightful shop. Come for an afternoon in sunny Italy Tonight at 9 pm. 6 pm. It's a pen that erases. The 80s are gonna rock. I'm here with the neighborhood watch. Dr Cox, you gotta help me because I really am distressed, can't you? Find another option, won't you?
Speaker 1:run another test If you want some kind of favor really any kind of favor? Please just get me peace and quiet from this God-forsaken past. Shut your cake hole, mary Beth, or I swear to God I'll shut it soon. Monsters, happy monsters. Monsters, happy monsters, monsters, happy monsters.
Speaker 2:Any thoughts. That scares the f*** out of me.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, stephanie De Bruyne, how are ya?
Speaker 2:Hi Caitlin. Wow yeah, I edited that all by my little self.
Speaker 1:Did ya.
Speaker 2:I did, I did and I am. I'm actually that's. That's my deep, dark side of me. To begin a real about myself losing the Tony. I was very proud of that. You know, I love that song. It was a great way to use the song.
Speaker 1:I just want to preface this for all the viewers. When I asked her to do the podcast, her response was well, I don't want to do podcasts all that much anymore because everyone asks the same questions and I'm taking a break, and so I promised her this so it wouldn't be like any other podcast she's done. So I'm gonna have to ask a question that I don't know if you've been asked this before, but if we go back to 2004, Avenue Q at the Tony's, obviously you lost to Adina Menza we saw that there but Avenue Q won Best Musical that year. Yeah, as the 20 years have gone by since then 19 years, I mean Wicked has was I mean, it's still huge today as it was then. Yeah, do you feel like you robbed the Tony?
Speaker 2:I just want to know you know it's funny, back then when we won, I heard a lot of like there was a lot of David and Goliath comparison, because we were a little show with a smaller budget and a smaller theater and they were this big, fancy show. And there were people who were like, yeah, you know, david beat Goliath and I never thought of it as a competition. I mean, we only stayed open because we had, let's just say, with a lot of people came to Avenue Q who lost the Wicked lottery, so you know who couldn't get into Wicked. So we were grateful. You know, a good, a good Broadway season raises all boats. So there was no animosity, no competition as far as the cast was concerned. But we were hearing a lot of yeah, you beat, you beat the big show. And years later now people freaking hate that we beat Wicked.
Speaker 2:Who's this little, nothing puppet show beating our beloved Wicked? Like I don't have anything to do with it. I never even saw the Tony until I went to see a show at the Vineyard. It's not like the Stanley Cup. I didn't get to hold it, it didn't get to keep it overnight. It doesn't come with a blank check or even a cookie. You know, it's great, but and it was great for us, I suppose because it helped us run a little longer. I don't think Wicked was going to have any problems running. You know, I think sometimes a Tony can help a show run, but I've also seen shows win Tony's and close. A good an award doesn't make good work better, and it does, and lack of it doesn't make good work worse. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:That makes sense.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, there are people who legitimately hate, hate, hate it now and I'm sorry. That's all I can say is I'm sorry so obviously you have a new queue.
Speaker 1:It's not even off Broadway anymore, correct?
Speaker 2:I mean it's no, it closed it New World stages. It transferred to New World stages I think at the end of 2009 and it closed in 2019.
Speaker 1:So I saw, obviously, the original cast and then I saw a couple of other times through the years and I mean I think what you guys did that was different.
Speaker 1:And then I swear we're getting off this talk so it's not like any other podcast, but I feel like what was different about the original cast and then all future cast is the original cast were a lot of really skilled puppeteers and you guys were used to working with puppets and you were used to working around people in puppets and you put the puppets out front, right, like you were not trying to shine over the puppets where I feel like in later casts, the like the it was like a competition. Like you were paying less attention to the puppet and more attention to the actors and actresses playing the roles, which I feel like took away from what the show was supposed to be. And you didn't have that with the original and I'm not saying everybody you know there were. There were some great puppeteers that stuck with that show for a long time. Yeah, just the general feel of the show I think changed when they kind of went from that.
Speaker 2:That's interesting that you say that and that you had that perspective. You know that world and maybe you might have been more attuned to it than the average theater goer you might have. I think you have a little more savvy, knowing, knowing the puppeteers and knowing that world. But that's kind of you to say we always, you know, whether it's Avenue Q or Sesame or whatever we do, it's character first and we were just supporting the character. So, and also, to be perfectly honest, just physically having the character a little forward rather than doing this is better. You know, I would, I would tuck in on scenes where I didn't have a lot to do, but you can't perform like this because it's just the ergonomics.
Speaker 2:And I will hear from college students doing the show who you know are expected to do this with two weeks of training, who've never puppeteered before. Three weeks of training, maybe a month, and again they're all they'll want to do this because they think that they have to put their face next to the character. And and I get it, you know, I get it. But it's a culture and I think that the puppeteers who originated the show, we just it wasn't that we were trying to hide ourselves, it's just our culture is character first and you have to believe because you have to work so hard to get people to believe, that this inanimate object on your hand is the character and that me, I am supporting this character. So that's very kind of you to notice that. I don't know that many other people did. But you know, look, I don't think it hurt the run, so I can't. I'm not a good judge of that.
Speaker 1:I mean you are right, I do. I do have a little bit of. I mean, I've been on Sesame Street now, I think, close to 20 years. When did you start on Sesame? How long have you been on Sesame?
Speaker 2:93 93 was my first yeah, so it's 30, 30 years for me. My first day on the, I did a home video in June of 93 and my first day on the set was November 93.
Speaker 1:It was the first year they were a Kaufman was it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The intimidating thing about Sesame Street is I've been on the show. It was. It's less than 20 years, right, because I did not know anybody from Sesame when I went to Avenue Q, and so it's getting close to 20 years, right. But even at 20 years you still feel like you're the new person when you walk in there.
Speaker 2:I still feel like I'm the new person I really do, and it's weird because people, you know, we have all these new puppeteers who've come in and they're looking at me like I'm the elder statesman and I'm not. I don't feel like I'm in that position. I certainly don't, you know. I know that I'm older than Fran Brill was when I met her. I think now I'm older than Frank Oz was when I met him. It's very sobering.
Speaker 1:Frank Oz is an interesting guy. I feel like there are people that you either love him or you hate him. You either have had the best experience in the world with him or you've had the work I the he. Obviously he doesn't. I mean, I don't think he comes to Sesame at all anymore, but in the in the beginning he came around like once a year. I feel like he would do something and he was always the most pleasant man to me. He even signed something from my brother once. He signed a Yoda figure which I everybody said don't, don't do that. I was like, listen, my, my brother is the biggest Star Wars fan in the world and I didn't care enough about the job at that point to where I was like you know what, I'm just going to do it and everyone's like, oh, he doesn't really sign, he was just so pleasant about it.
Speaker 2:Well, the one thing that I learned about Frank and that I learned from Frank was that he'll sign it if it's to someone and if it means something to someone. He has so many autograph hounds who were just asking for his autograph to sell on eBay. And the one thing that I learned from him before I did Avenue Q, just by example is he just said look, I'll, I'll sign something, but I want to sign it to someone. And that's what I started to do. I mean, you know, obviously I'd sign playbills at the door but they're all rumbled up. But I would occasionally get in the mail these really cryptic letters just asking for autographs, not to anyone, or saying, oh, this is for my friend, but I don't know how to spell his name, so just write your name and you just know they're going to sell it. Jokes on them. My autograph doesn't sell, but that's beside the point.
Speaker 2:I knew that our cast, we would sell signed posters for Broadway Cares, equity Fights Aids. So I knew that our signatures were valuable to raise money for really worthy causes, for the Actors Fund or for Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative. And I and I learned like, yeah, I'll, I'll send you a, I'll send you a photo but I'll sign it to someone. And so when people would pull that, oh, sign it to my friend. I don't remember how to spell their name. I would say to Victor's friend, who doesn't remember how your name is spelled sorry, and I learned that from Frank.
Speaker 2:There was a. There was a time my husband, craig Schemin, was doing an interview with Frank for the Museum of the Moving Image and Frank came over to you know sort of assist with the video compilations that Craig was putting together and we have a lot of pop culture stuff in our apartment and he just happened to notice some Star Wars stuff and he just picked up something and just signed it. We had Craig has this old vinyl Yoda got out of Sharpie and signed it and like, okay. So I think it depends on how he's approached. And if he's being approached with the respect and love as you were, you know, in the kindness, in doing something for your brother, who's a true fan, and having it be from a personal place, I think that he understands that. But if someone's just trying to exploit him, and that's a different story. I mean, no one likes to be exploited. Lesson for the day, if you learn one thing today no one likes to be exploited Boom.
Speaker 1:You know, ironically, the guest I had on last week, I jokingly call her Mark Hamill's best friend. So we had a whole conversation about Mark Hamill this week, the second episode. Now we're having a whole conversation about Frank Oz. This is not a Star Wars podcast, but I mean by all accounts Mark Hamill.
Speaker 2:Mark Hamill's the nicest person, and so Mark worked with him briefly on a Disney Channel interstitial and he had lovely experiences with Mark. And then I remember we were working on the Wobblest World of Dr Seuss in 1997 in New York and that was when the special editions were coming out. So a bunch of the crew we got together on a Saturday we were in line at the Ziegfeld Theater. I guess it was for Return of the Jedi, so this would have been 1998. And I don't know if you remember the Saturday Night Live where they did an episode that Mark Hamill appeared in and it was. They were QVC was selling Star Wars merchandise and then they had Mark Hamill for sale. So that was happening later that night.
Speaker 2:This guy passes by the line, right, just passes by the line. We're all wearing, like Jim Henson, company jackets too, by the way. Passes by the line, sees our group looks us. This is the line for Jedi keeps walking. We realize it's Mark Hamill. It was just by that point halfway down the block. No one's going to catch him, and it was just such a cool thing that he could tease the fans in that very cool way.
Speaker 2:You know, you mentioned that you said it as a doll.
Speaker 1:You mentioned. You did the Wobblest World of Dr Seuss. You voiced Velma once in Scooby-Doo with Scooby-Doo Adventures. You did Pooh Sesame Street. I mean, I feel like you've done every legendary child's or. You know what I'm saying. Right? Why can't I talk today? Wow, live really stinks in a podcast.
Speaker 2:It's okay.
Speaker 1:It's a fandom of childhood right Dr Seuss, Sesame Street, Winnie the Pooh.
Speaker 2:There you are, there's plenty I haven't done, but I guess I've. You know it's funny that the Scooby thing was a one-off. We were hoping it was going to be a series and it turned into a straight to DVD movie but we had so much fun on it. It's interesting we shot that 10 years ago and that's somehow that's become canon in the Scooby world and that's fascinating to me that this thing that we all had a really good time doing is taken so seriously by the Scooby fans. I'm very glad that it seems like. I mean, I'm sure that there are people who don't like it, but the people that I've talked to, or the ones who have reached out to me anyway, have enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:Seuss was an interesting adventure, very different from season to season. Book of Pooh I only did the voice of Cassie. I didn't do the puppetry. That's a long story as to why. Yeah, I did a little bit on Bear in the Big Blue House, not much. So yeah, there are. It was fascinating. Is that now a lot of stuff that I did in the late 90s, early 2000s? There are people who are in their early 20s who remember this from when they were little and it just sort of hits you oh, yeah, I know how math works, but yeah, it's hard to deal with.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the room that you were in is. You built it pre-pandemic, you used it for voiceover work and now you use it for a lot of your zooming stuff, which is great. And you mentioned Donkey Hoodie. Yeah, I mean that's. How's that going? Is it still active, right?
Speaker 2:We just wrapped season two of Donkey Hoodie.
Speaker 2:There are five episodes of season two that aired on PBS Kids last month. There will be more episodes in 2024. I'm really happy because season one it was a very long production and we started in late 2019. We were shooting January, february, march of 2020. Obviously, shut down for COVID and then the show.
Speaker 2:You know my characters. I play Duck Duck and Harriet primarily. Those characters aren't in every episode, so there were a bunch of episodes that I wasn't in. Between the travel restrictions that I think have been very quickly forgotten by so many people, I was reminding people remember when you had to quarantine for 14 days If you landed on a plane. You know, if you took a plane and you went to a different city, some places you had to quarantine for two weeks, some seven days.
Speaker 2:Between the travel restrictions and then my health concerns and then helpsters, I wasn't able to get out very much for most of the continuing first season of Donkey. I did a handful of episodes. So season two I was there for every single one. Even if I wasn't in it, I was assisting or doubling a character. So I'm so happy and I get to play a lot of other little surprise characters that are coming up, but Duck Duck is officially my favorite character, my favorite public character that I've ever played of all time. I could play her until I die. I love her, I love the people there. We shoot it in Chicago at WTTW. Just so everybody knows, it's on the public television contract of SAG-GAFTA, which is not affected by the strike, as well as the public television contract on Writers Guild. So again, we were lucky we were not affected by the current strike action. But yeah, I'm really happy working on that show for all the reasons. We have an amazing group of people. Thank you for asking that.
Speaker 1:Well, it's also got to be a cool show too, because you are a native of Pittsburgh and that's a friend of Roger's production.
Speaker 2:You've done your own work, yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, and Mr Rogers is from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. And so when they told me that I would also be playing Harriet Elizabeth Cow, which is a reimagined Harriet Elizabeth Cow, I remember the original Mr Rogers neighborhood Harriet. She was a school marm, she had the little bonnet, she was very soft spoken. She was actually voiced and performed by a man named Bob Trough who also played Bob Dog, and he appeared on it and Bob Trough appeared as himself. And so when they were reimagining this character and she's got this hot pink hair and she's an artist and in preschool television nowadays they don't like to hear dialects on television.
Speaker 2:But I said, look, in honor of Fred, and you got to have some Pittsburgh, because if you listen back to those old shows you can hear a little Pittsburgh in Fred, but you definitely hear it in Chef Brocket. I mean, there's a whole episode every time. They're baking and we're making donuts today, fred. Today we're making snow pudding, fred. So I wanted to give Harriet a bit of what we call a yinzer accent. So Harriet's talking like this and go over there and going to teach an art class, and they let me do it, which is great, because I love bringing some Pittsburgh into her and into the show.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the yinzer dialect. Pittsburgh is interesting because it definitely has its own language that is so far removed from everything else in Pennsylvania, even weird words like when you go to a store and you're pushing your little shopping cart. What do you call it in Pittsburgh?
Speaker 2:Well, some people call it a trolley. I don't.
Speaker 2:But some people call it, we call it a shopping cart, but I don't know. Yeah, but it depends. I had a music teacher who would say Warsh instead of Wash. I didn't grow up saying Warsh. There is some. It's interesting, it's very variable. Some people are thicker than others, but some people you know the little nozzle to turn on the hose in the backyard, calling it a spigot, which is different from your faucet. Some people would call the indoor sink faucet a spigot. Not all. Some would. It's, you know there's not all Pittsburghers have the same yinzer.
Speaker 1:How do you feel about permane brothers?
Speaker 2:You know it's funny because I grew up in the suburbs and we didn't really drive downtown a whole lot, so I didn't get to experience permane brothers the way other people did. I mean driving parking in the strip district. My mother was not going to drive to the strip district just to get a sandwich with french fries on it. So the fact that it's now a chain and well known for it, I don't know. That's not what I go back to Pittsburgh for. There's a family owned candy company called Saris Candies in Cannonsburg PA. We sold their candy bars and thespians and you've probably I don't know if you've been there when I've brought in the chocolate covered pretzels from there at Sesame. I'm not sure. No.
Speaker 1:I don't think so. You might not have.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I'll put them on the craft service table or have them in the Muppet Room. It is the best milk chocolate you will ever have. In fact, they will not ship it if it's over 72 degrees because there is no wax in it, there are no preservatives. It's this family candy company and if you go to the place in Cannes and they sell it everywhere in, if you go to the Pittsburgh airport, like, they have this great big kiosk but they'll also sell it at the grocery stores and the drug stores. So it's pretty ubiquitous, but it's very family, very old school Pittsburgh, and so I love sharing that with people and bringing in candy from my hometown or going back and like the cookie tables. I was a big thing growing up in an Italian family and having the cookie tables at a wedding. Or there's something called Lady Locks. It's a cookie called Lady, lady Lock and it's like a cream horn of varying sizes. I can't really describe it any other way. It does not exist in New York as far as I know. It's a very Pittsburgh thing.
Speaker 1:Pittsburgh is an interesting city too, because it really is a hotbed of television that nobody realizes. So Fred Rogers is from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2:I have a living dad there.
Speaker 1:NEP, which is the largest live events and broadcast services company in the world, is based in. Well, actually it's actually in Harmer, but its mailing address is Pittsburgh. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's based in. It owns so many buildings. It builds all of its trucks at the University of Pittsburgh Applied Research Center.
Speaker 2:I had no idea. I should have known that. Take away my Pittsburgh card. I mean again, I only spent the first 17 years of my life there. I don't get back there as often as I'd like to yeah, only the first 17 years.
Speaker 1:It's nothing.
Speaker 2:Well, at least I was there during the heyday, I was there during the City of Champions, I was there when it was named Most Livable City. I got a couple of Pittsburgh someplace, special shirts that I like to wear on the set of Donkey. I like to show that little Pittsburgh pride. But the other nice thing about shooting it in Chicago I went to Northwestern in Chicago and so I we stay, you know, not far from campus when I'm in town, and so that's a big part of my life too. So these major parts of my life glommed together on this show is I don't know, it's just it's a really nice thing to have it be so personal. For me, chicago's a great town too.
Speaker 1:We've never talked about this show before, but you have a passion in your eyes, as you're talking about this show, that I've never seen as we, and we've talked about a lot of your work. I really I love your stuff. I think you are immensely talented. When I came up with the idea of doing the podcast, you were one of the people that I really wanted to have on, just because, I mean, really, as I said, my first experience of you was definitely Avenue Q, and I will always remember you have a song at Avenue Q that I have to believe has made more people cry than any other song in modern Broadway.
Speaker 2:And it just was the-. Sorry, I made you cry.
Speaker 1:No, it was just. It happened to me twice in my life with that song. Yeah, it's just, and you know what's interesting about that song. Not that I want to go like other podcast-y with you, is it? I mean that ends kind of act two of that play, if I recall correctly, right, so I mean it ends act one.
Speaker 1:It ends act one, yeah, yeah, act one which, sorry, and that it's not an ensemble song at all and it's kind of like a downer which you don't typically get in a musical Right, and it was, you know, kind of a bold choice and you carried it so well and it is. It is a I can't be the only person that's ever said that that song really hits hard sometimes. Well, and that's always.
Speaker 2:I'm very honored to hear that I didn't write it.
Speaker 2:I can't take full responsibility for that, bobby, and Jeff deserve the credit for that, and Jason and Jeff would he deserve the credit for how they placed it. You know that that we had the songs, a lot of the songs, before the shape of the show really gelled. The show went through so many iterations in its development and so songs were placed all over the place, and so the fact that Fine Fine Line wound up ending act one. We didn't know that was going to be the case. So that you know I had nothing to do with that. I I was really lucky to get to perform it at all, let alone originate it, and I know my version is not everybody's favorite version. I I recognize that Certainly I've heard it tangentially it's my favorite. But well, thank you.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that, and you know I've sung it out of character, not as Kate in other venues, and I feel I feel that it's a little different for me. I enjoy doing it out of character. I enjoy doing it in character. It's a. It's one of the things that I've been doing for a long time. It's wonderful when you're asked to sing a song that you genuinely enjoy performing. It's a tricky song but it's. I love it.
Speaker 1:Is that your favorite song from from?
Speaker 2:Avenue Q To sing. Oh, my favorite song from Avenue Q I really like I wish I could go. I think the song I wish I could go back to college is the song that always hits me. That's the truest to me. Fine Fine Line is my favorite for other reasons, but if you were to look at the whole show and what I really identified with more than anything else at the time I was singing it, I thought of my college friends. Every night I sang. I wish I could go back to college.
Speaker 2:Where I came from and the yeah.
Speaker 1:For me, the song that that strikes me the most is the internet's for porn.
Speaker 2:but Ha, that is a lot of people's favorite. That is the favorite of a lot of people.
Speaker 1:I didn't say that was my favorite. I just said, that's the song I can relate to the most. The internet's for porn, and you are not alone.
Speaker 2:No, no, you are not alone, and you? Are not the first person to say that.
Speaker 1:Wasn't. Isn't that the point of the song?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's okay, but that's what's wonderful about the show. Is, you know, that personal connection that people have?
Speaker 1:They say, historically speaking, porn is what pushes mediums right, Like Sure Printing presses got bigger with porn, you know film Cable, yeah, like cable TV Like the internet. You know it's an interesting.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Ha ha, ha ha, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Not that I wanted to talk to you. Ha ha ha. How do we go from Don Quixote to?
Speaker 2:Well, Avenue Q is the, you know, tangent to all inappropriate conversations can all just spin out from that.
Speaker 1:Is. You know, I don't think you could do it today, I don't think Avenue Q could be done today.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Or a premiere today. I mean, you could do it today, obviously, because it was written 20 years ago, but I don't think you could premiere it today. It didn't age well.
Speaker 2:It just didn't age. Well, it's a better way to say it. Do you know what I mean? I think that there are representations and that there like, for example, we did Seth Rudetsky's Stars in the House a few weeks ago to raise money in the wake of the Maui wildfires so sorry, maui wildfires, I can speak and we did a sing-through, and every time someone starts talking about everyone's a little bit racist.
Speaker 2:Now, especially in the last five years or so, my feeling is that if that song were to be written today, the intention behind it is really more everyone's a little implicitly biased, rather than the words racist. Because you have you know, I've heard people say you have a black character. You know being accused of being racist. That brings up a lot of sensitivity issues with you know what is racism. And now I have also said in the past what's interesting about that song is that nowhere is it written in the pantheon of musical theater that all characters need to be perfect and that all characters constantly need to set the fine example. So the fact that these characters are flawed and probably a little obtuse and maybe singing something, that's a little, I mean, we was inappropriate at the time. It's more inappropriate now. The hope is that you don't laugh because it's inappropriate. The hope is that it makes you.
Speaker 2:If it's something that makes you think, if it's a song that makes you think, well, why are these characters singing that? Why are they so obtuse? That's something to take with you after the show and hopefully that doesn't stop you cold, or maybe it does, I don't know. But certainly theater is supposed to make you think. And when old musicals get sort of revamped along the way when they did my Fair Lady and they changed some things, when they did Carousel, they changed some things Musicals are really a representation of their time, for better, for worse, for right or wrong. And it's one of the reasons why when TCM shows a Warner Brothers film that has blackface in it, they have a really excellent featurette that talks about the history of blackface in cinema, the history of blackface in vaudeville, the stain and shame of that choice to show it.
Speaker 2:But they choose to not cut it. They're showing it in context because if you cut it you don't want to forget that it existed and we cannot fix the future unless we learn from the mistakes of our past. So when other people do productions of Avenue Q and they say, oh well, we should cut this or we should trim this. Well, avenue Q is a period piece. Now it just is. It's 20 years old. It's representing a time before there was awareness that maybe we should have had. So that's my two cents about it. I know that other people will disagree with many things. I'm not saying I'm 100% right. I'm not saying I'm 100% wrong. It's a conversation, and if theater can't start conversations, then why are we doing theater?
Speaker 1:And you're not wrong. There are lots of musicals that are period pieces. Anything goes, I feel like, is a great period piece, and I think there's a lot in that musical that would be questionable today but when you look at it through the lens of With all the misogyny and yeah.
Speaker 1:But through the lens of something that was written. You know what? I believe they started writing that 10 years before it came out, so I mean it was written a hundred years ago at this point and it's a great musical. It's one of my top five favorite musicals. Anything goes, I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think you, if you take a show in context, if you take a show in the spirit in which it was written and think, okay, well, yeah, yikes, that's wrong, but you can't whitewash that stuff, you can't just sponge it away. It was part of it. Now, something that's going to be extremely harmful or evoke violence is an entirely different story. Something that's going to romanticize that. But again, everything is going to be subjective and really theaters have a choice with what they decide to put on. And if you like some of the songs from anything goes, but feel like the book is troublesome, hey, do a review. I don't know, I don't know. It's an interesting conversation and I think that it'll be. I would be more interested in seeing if anybody wanted to revisit the Avenue Q characters to see what would be happening with them now, rather than doing a revival. That's just me, but who the hell cares what? I think it's not my decision. I have no power over it.
Speaker 1:I would also like to point out that my favorite, my other favorite song from Avenue Q is one that wasn't in the United States, it was with the Time, which was Nikki and the Fanthorpe.
Speaker 2:I was not fan of that song. No, I love that song.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to throw that out there.
Speaker 2:They wanted to know. Well, they tried to put that in when we were developing the show off Broadway and really. Yeah, and I think they tried to put it in Vegas. I'm trying to remember whether they successfully put it in Vegas or whether they didn't put it in Vegas. I just wasn't a fan of it, but that's just me.
Speaker 1:Wait, you don't, you don't, you don't like banter humor.
Speaker 2:You don't like banter humor? It wasn't that. It was that it was unnecessary.
Speaker 1:Fair. So, look, one of the things that we like to do on this show is open up to Chaff for some questions. I've also had some questions submitted before and I've explained to you the rules beforehand, but I'm going to explain them to all of the viewers and listeners. We have on the screen A D20. It is a 20-sided die. We can roll it at random and you can see numbers pop up. We are going to set the magic number today at 11, for no reason at all. If, when you ask the question, we will roll the dice. If it is an 11 or higher, it is for a knowledge check. Stephanie can answer the question. She knows the answer. If it is under an 11, she does not know the answer to a question and has to then make it up because she still wants to answer your question. She doesn't want to leave you hanging. She wants to answer this.
Speaker 2:So making a lot of assumptions that I know answers to questions, so I'm a little nervous about this.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't even know what the questions are going to be, because it's chat, so we're going to go. There is a question that somebody submitted to me on direct message for some reason, which I thought was hysterical, and I need to ask this question, talking about Avenue Q If a puppet only has four fingers, how, in fact, do they give somebody the middle finger? And we're going to roll the D20 and see if you can answer. And it is a one, it is a natural one. You don't know how they can give the middle finger, but go ahead.
Speaker 2:So you're saying how can they give a middle finger if they only have four fingers? So what they do is they take half of one finger and half of another finger and they sort of peel the non-halfs off and to create the illusion of a middle finger. Or they take the two middle fingers and put them together to create the illusion of one middle finger when in actuality it's two very close together.
Speaker 1:It's almost believable. It's almost believable, you know, jackson Got a little too yucky with the splitting the middle finger.
Speaker 1:No, it's fine. Look, it's great. Jackson wants to know if it's fun of being an actress. Jackson, do you mean on stage or on TV? We wanna let's qualify this a little bit. We're gonna roll the dice anyway and see if she can actually answer. Oh, and you can. You can give an honest answer. Just go ahead and answer both, and which do you prefer? Do you prefer acting on stage, do you prefer puppeteering or do you prefer voiceover work, like? Which are they fun doing them all, and which do you prefer?
Speaker 2:There's a lot there. So as far as whether I prefer stage or TV, it depends on if I'm sick or not, because it is much easier to perform sick when you're doing TV because you can always loop it and you don't have to project your voice and the stress of live theater. Staying healthy is the hardest part of doing live theater. That is the hardest part and I was not always successful at staying healthy. As far as whether I prefer puppetry, face acting or voiceover look, I'm just a giant can ham.
Speaker 2:I love performing in any way, shape or form and sometimes the nice thing about being able to do all of those things is you get the best of all worlds.
Speaker 2:As a puppet character, I get to explore a really wide range of characters. When you're doing those wide range of characters as a voiceover artist, it's much easier on your back and knees and arms and shoulders because you don't have to be in those awkward positions to puppeteer. When we were doing helpsters, you know you're Sesame Street, you're performing, but especially on helpsters because we were on location a lot. As a puppeteer you are literally in the mud on the ground with the ants crawling all over you, but when it's cold you get to be in your coat and your hat and your scarf, and the actor on camera is wearing something very skimpy and is usually uncomfortable and has to keep their makeup all nice. So there are times when it's good to be one the other or the other. There are pros and cons to all of, but hey, that's the show business. You know what I've I love, you know yeah.
Speaker 1:What I find fascinating about Sesame Street and when you have guests on Sesame Street, have you noticed that the and I mean seasoned actors and actresses and politicians and musicians none of them interact with the puppeteer. They make eye contact with the puppets and they are having full-on conversations with the puppets, completely forgetting that you have a hand in a doll and are talking to them. They don't even know you exist in those moments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that means we're doing our job right. It's just, that's the gig, man, that's the gig.
Speaker 1:And I've been guilty of it too. You know, leslie puts Abby on, and I have literally had a conversation with Abby Kidavi and I'm like, yeah, that's not even real.
Speaker 2:That's so when I was exploring the notion of wanting to be a muppet performer, when I was in college and I built my crappy little I'm not a builder I built crappy looking puppets just so I could learn how to do it and I would take the puppets into this. You know, we had sweets in our, you had your room and then you had a common area right which we called sweets and you take it out and you start playing around with the character to these, you know, jaded college students, right Especially. This is early 90s height of ironic. You know, I don't care and they would look at the puppet. And that's when I knew I was doing something right, that they were no longer looking at me.
Speaker 2:These friends of mine, these people I knew, believed in the puppet. In fact, one of the first puppets that I made well, not the one of the first, but an early one that was popular was a duck named Norman. His name was Norm, he was a duck, he talked like this he was, you know, he had one wing and friends of mine asked to use Norm in their student films like that puppet Me. They weren't puppet shows. One was like a Love Connection game show where he was one of the contestants. The other was again a love thing, where he was breaking up with a human woman. That was the biggest compliment in the world that people were asking for this character in their projects. That had nothing to do with puppets at all, but they thought the character was that strong, which again.
Speaker 2:I was just starting out.
Speaker 1:We have another question about who your favorite puppeteer to work with is. And Ken? Do you have an answer to? Oh, it's a natural 20, you definitely know that answer.
Speaker 2:That's hard see, because here's the thing you need to know about me. I don't have a single favorite, anything I'm not.
Speaker 1:I'm not your favorite. Wait a second Ice cream flavor.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no. Like food, ice cream, flavor, show, book, movie. There's no such thing as a okay, yes. And when I said Duck Duck is my all time favorite, there's like a bunch clustered at the top. She is at the top of that list, but someone says chocolate or vanilla, I'm like, why not both?
Speaker 2:So, such as it is, with the people that the puppeteers that I work with, I have a different relationship with every single puppeteer that I work with, and that's the beauty of it is that every performer brings out a different side of me, cause they they just evoke a different color. And there are people that I've worked with for a really long time, like Matt Vogel and Eric Jacobson. We came up around the same time. We all graduated in high school in 1989. I came in 93, or it came in 94, matt came in 95. So I know I have a special relationship with them just because I, you know, I came up with them.
Speaker 2:But I think about all the people on on helpsters I think about. I think about people like you know, I didn't get to work with him much, but I think about people like Jerry Nelson, right, and when I work with Jerry he brought out a side of me. He made me feel confident to be able to work with him or with. I was working with Carol. Sometimes I'd forget that it was Carol, because I was working with my heroes, big Bird and Oscar. Do you know what I mean? When I work with people like Jen Barnhart, she brings out a side of me. That's very different. When I work with Marty Robinson, he brings out. And when I assist them too, it's very different too, because sometimes I'm working opposite them and sometimes I'm doing their right hand or doing their feet, and you have a shorthand. When I work with Ryan Dylan, we have a very specific way of working with each other.
Speaker 1:Can I interrupt?
Speaker 2:you for one second.
Speaker 1:I just want to explain something to people watching or listening that you may not really realize as you watch a lot of these puppets on TV. In a lot of situations there are two people working the puppets. So when she mentioned that sometimes she's a right hand. The puppeteers literally are practically laying on top of each other working a puppet together, watching Sesame Street, watching them shoot Sesame Street, for example, if there is a scene where there's three or four puppets in the scene at the same time, it is a gaggle of puppeteers on the floor just huddled around each other. And it's amazing that you all have the spatial awareness to work that closely with each other and not interfere with what each other are doing not just the puppets overhead, but just your bodies themselves on that floor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but also just the personalities. Tim LaGasse and I have worked together for so long. We did Ubi together, we did Seuss together and when we were doing Helpsters together, it's just like he's my brother and we sort of share a silly brain sometimes and the things that we would bring out in each other. We would just be in sync with each other. We didn't. I was never in a, but then there was this awful pilot that I did that I will not mention the name of where I was doing both of his hands and, again, just in total sync with each other. I knew exactly what he wanted me to do and he knew he trusted me enough to know that I would know what he wanted me to do.
Speaker 2:I love being in situations like that. I was in a situation with David Rudman where I was doing this silly little pig and he was doing Cookie Monster and we were just doing this little bit where we had to hold up something that was heavy and we sort of were kind of coming up with this very fast who's on first? Like you got it, I got it. No, you got it, I got it, I don't got it. You got it, I don't got it. You know, I don't remember exactly how it went Just cracking each other up and figuring out how to make that work.
Speaker 2:We do this all the time and with every single puppeteer it's a different. They all bring out something, a different wonderful side of me. So I know that it seems like a cop out to say I don't have a favorite, but there are definitely. Every single person who I've crossed paths with, who have been lucky to cross paths with, brings out something always surprising. Oh my gosh. And the people on Donkey, that's a whole different. Franky Cordero and Haley, and just it's just. I'm a very, very lucky person to work with so many talented people. That's all I can say.
Speaker 1:What is the hardest puppet? That you work and hold on. We got to roll. Oh, you don't know the answer to this. You rolled a six for the knowledge.
Speaker 2:Check the hardest puppet I ever worked. That would be the time that I puppeteered Wonder Woman's Invisible Jet. Now I know that it seems like that would be an easy puppet to perform, because what's there? You'd be surprised how heavy something invisible can be. That's all I have to say about that.
Speaker 1:So before you came on, I asked you if you had any nerd fandoms, because we do a little trivia on this show too, where we give a prize to somebody in chat. We randomly pick somebody. Right now we got C-canic-canicol. Okay, it's going to win a prize based on your answers to trivia. Okay and Sorry, canicol, I was scared. You said you were good with 80s music. You said you were good with some game shows, maybe some Star Trek. But you also said you could talk candy all day long. Yes, and I said how many guests are we going to have? That's going to say, I want to do candy trivia. So I have made this trivia myself. This is my own personally made trivia of candy.
Speaker 2:I want candy.
Speaker 1:And you can see it on your screen right? I just want to make sure you can see the trivia in the book. Okay, here we go. Here comes the first question. In 1995, M&M's replaced what color? With blue Tan. It is tan Ganbanopragan.
Speaker 2:Dude, I remember tan. What temperature does chocolate melt?
Speaker 1:I can give you a slight hint, if you want.
Speaker 2:You know it's funny, just based on the Saras thing, I'm guessing 72 degrees Fahrenheit, but I could be wrong.
Speaker 1:You know you're off, you're off. I would like to point I was going to my. The hint I was going to give you with thinking of M&M's was they say you know, the chocolate melts in your mouth, not your hand Right. It is, it is really close to the human temperature really close.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so you want to venture another guess. No so 95.
Speaker 1:92. 92 degrees.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Now I actually knew that in advance. I've done some candy making in my day and you know if you, if you heat chocolate too much, it burns. So you got to pay attention to it.
Speaker 2:I do know that, or it seizes and yeah.
Speaker 1:What was the occupation of the inventor of cotton candy?
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, I'm guessing probably some sort of I want to say like a toy maker maybe.
Speaker 1:Dentist.
Speaker 2:It was called candy floss.
Speaker 1:It was called candy floss. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:That makes total sense. I wasn't even thinking that if I could, I can't make the trivia easy.
Speaker 1:If I make the trivia easy.
Speaker 2:I know, I just feel bad for our poor contestant.
Speaker 1:True or false? White chocolate is not actually chocolate.
Speaker 2:True, it is not actually chocolate.
Speaker 1:It contains no cocoa.
Speaker 2:No cocoa, so that's right.
Speaker 1:What's the chocolate? Butter was advertised for its power to give wartime volunteers an endurance capacity of two hours during World War Two. There was a brand, but also a specific classification, so I'll take either one. I was trying to think what I mean.
Speaker 2:they were given Hershey bars to the, to the soldiers.
Speaker 1:So it wouldn't have been a Hershey Was it, would it have been a Hershey bar Chocolate crisp bars like Kit Kat oh, kit Kat was the brand they claimed would give you a two hour endurance boost.
Speaker 2:Wow. I wonder if that was wow and that was for the American soldiers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay, maybe I don't know my candy Shoot.
Speaker 1:The symphony bar was first introduced in 1998 by Witch Candy.
Speaker 2:Company Hershey.
Speaker 1:Hershey, hershey. See, some of them are easy.
Speaker 2:What do the M's and?
Speaker 1:M&M's stand for.
Speaker 2:Mars and um oh shoot. I thought I knew this Is Mars one of them.
Speaker 1:Mars is one of them. Mars is the first M, yeah.
Speaker 2:Mars and oh I suck, I should know this. I probably know this deep down. I'm so sorry. I give up.
Speaker 1:Mars and Murray Murray. Is it Murray Murray, shoot, shoot. Finish the brand slogan. There is no wrong way to eat a.
Speaker 2:Cadbury.
Speaker 1:Reese's.
Speaker 2:Reese's concerted. I thought it was Cadbury.
Speaker 1:Which candy first seen in a movie became a bona fide brand.
Speaker 2:Which candy first seen in a movie? First seen in a movie.
Speaker 1:First seen in a movie.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't it have been Reese's pieces, would it?
Speaker 1:It would not be Reese's pieces.
Speaker 2:What candy first seen in a movie.
Speaker 1:If you don't get the answer, you are going to kick yourself really hard when the answer is.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I am. I'm sure I am Because I'm sure it's something that's really really obvious.
Speaker 1:Very obvious.
Speaker 2:Oh, first seen in a movie. Became a bona fide brand. Became a bona fide candy brand. Or became a brand. Oh, this is going to kill me. Wouldn't have been three musketeers, it would have been oh shoot, I give up. I'm sorry, I'm just not thinking.
Speaker 1:I'm not even going to say the answer, as I put it on screen.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh.
Speaker 1:The Wonka brand.
Speaker 2:That was the first.
Speaker 1:Yep, there were no Wonka candies until the movie and now nerds and stoppers and Wonka bars.
Speaker 2:Right, right. But okay, I guess I was confused by the question, the way the question was phrased.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, yes.
Speaker 2:I remember when Toys R Us used to sell the Wonka bars with the Grand Packer.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I haven't seen them in years.
Speaker 1:Wonka bars were actually a good candy bar. You know, was it chocolate bar with the Grand Packer bits?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was a good chocolate too.
Speaker 1:I don't know who made it for them, it was good. Which candy is said to have defined an American generation, an.
Speaker 2:American generation Sour Patch Kids.
Speaker 1:Hershey's.
Speaker 2:Oh, who said it?
Speaker 1:You know, I don't know, that was literally in five of the candy trivia's that I looked up and I didn't look up where that answer came from.
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 1:But okay, listen, we are going to give you an opportunity, a second chance. Trivia you said you know commercials of the 80s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1:Don't leave home without it.
Speaker 2:American Express.
Speaker 1:It is American Express.
Speaker 2:American Express. Where's the beef? Wendy's.
Speaker 1:I say this one all the time the choice of a new generation, pepsi, is the choice of a new generation. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.
Speaker 2:That would be Imperial Margarine. No, no, Wait, wait, wait. Oh chiffon it was Margarine.
Speaker 1:It's okay, hey, mikey, he likes it. Life cereal how do you spell?
Speaker 2:relief. R-o-l-a-i-d-s Rolies, you're soaking in it. Palm olive.
Speaker 1:Palm olive.
Speaker 2:The San Francisco treat Rice ding, ding.
Speaker 1:oh, rony, I'm falling and I can't get up.
Speaker 2:Oh, the life alert bracelets.
Speaker 1:It is life alert. I don't want to grow up.
Speaker 2:I'm a Toys R Us kid.
Speaker 1:There's a million toys at Toys R Us that I can play with, so same. We had a fun second chance. I knew you would get those. Yes, good.
Speaker 2:Phew. Yeah, you know, it's some of those little tricky things about the candy history that I get stuck on. I get stuck on because you know.
Speaker 1:I thought most of the questions were pretty easy Once you thought about it, once you saw the answer. The Kit Kat one and I think the Hershey's one were the two hard ones.
Speaker 2:But man, the candy floss. I should have realized, of course.
Speaker 1:Candy floss. I feel like I've disappointed you, Caitlin. No, how disappointed me. How could you possibly disappoint me? You came on the show. You know how many people are here you are, the second guest, which is just great to me.
Speaker 2:Well, that's nice, but I just feel like, uh hope I haven't ruined it for everyone.
Speaker 1:No, listen. The next week's guest is somebody else I'm really excited about. It is the first guest that I have no personal connection to at all. Her name is Sarah Priebus. She was the host of something called and I don't know if you remember this or not HQ Trivia. Do you remember HQ Trivia?
Speaker 2:Vaguely.
Speaker 1:I know my husband knows it, it was an app on the phone that, for like a two year period, was. There were just a bunch of documentaries made. I think HBO did a documentary about HQ Trivia. She was the host of HQ Trivia and then went on to do an infomercial for the shiny heiny, which was a brush that cleans your butthole. And I know you're saying how do you go from HQ to that? That shiny heiny infomercial is so legendary that Alan dedicated an entire month of her show to the shiny heiny and then her on the show kind of posed.
Speaker 2:I missed the shiny heiny entirely.
Speaker 1:It's one of those things that, when the show is over, go YouTube shiny heiny and you will not be disappointed.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I won't.
Speaker 1:But look, I really appreciate you coming on. What's that?
Speaker 2:I want to get, to get shiny, heiny lady.
Speaker 1:It's more of the HQ stuff, more than the shiny heiny. For that period of time they had a million dollar games where everybody at home could play and the winners split a million dollar prize. It was for a few years it was everywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right, it was everywhere.
Speaker 1:What happened. Well, the documentary said that, but she was. There were two hosts, I think one host was Scott Rogowski and she was the female host of the show and she got left out of the documentary. What? Which is crazy, because I remember more often than not, when I remember playing the game, she had hosted it and when they did the documentary she got left out, and I am very interested to talk to her about that Because she was a very integral part of that show. But anyway, really I appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 2:Thank, you Do, you want to hit us?
Speaker 1:with any yinzer yinzer snis with before we go.
Speaker 2:I don't know. You could just talk all the dang damn time. I ain't paying no $10 for no Coca Cola at the baseball stadium Watching the stillers play. I can't go down through rivers. First of all, got to pay for parking. Got to pay through the nose for parking. I'm going to do that. I'm just going to watch it on K to K or something like that.
Speaker 1:Then we're going to go pick up some meat and pork. I have one more question that I'm not going to roll the dice, for. This is a personal question. Since you're from Pittsburgh, how do you feel about Hunt's Ketchup?
Speaker 2:No Heinz, only Heinz, Only Heinz.
Speaker 1:Only.
Speaker 2:Heinz, why, why, why, why have anything else? There's just no reason. There's no reason.
Speaker 1:Why do Pittsburgh people get so bent out of shape over ketchup?
Speaker 2:I don't know that it's just Pittsburgh people, but I think that we have hometown pride in Heinz, but Heinz truly is a superior product. Just ask Don Draper.
Speaker 1:Right there.
Speaker 2:A whole Mad Men episode. I mean, come on the Heinz campaign. It is a quality, it is a high quality ketchup product.
Speaker 1:Is Heinz ketchup your favorite Heinz product?
Speaker 2:Probably. Yeah, yeah, I can't see. Yeah, yeah, I've not big into the 57 sauce, although you know, to be perfectly honest, I can't think of the last time I actually tried it. No, it's definitely my favorite. Well, sure.
Speaker 1:I don't want to take any more of your time. I promised you an hour. We went an hour and six we went an hour and six Ending on ketchup. Well, I mean, we were going to end before ketchup, but you brought out the Yinsers and I was immediately reminded of all the Pittsburgh people I know and their obsessions with Heinz ketchup and I was just like I had to bring it up.
Speaker 2:But I don't know. I feel like even if I didn't grow up in Pittsburgh, I can appreciate the thickness and the flavor and the delightfulness of Heinz. Ketchup and Hunz is just to me watery, thin, not as flavorful.
Speaker 1:I forgot to tell you this podcast, brought to you by Hunz Ketchup it's America's finest ketchup.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that many fine people work hard to make.
Speaker 1:Hunz ketchup.
Speaker 2:However, this is just personal preference. As I said before, what the hell do I know and who the hell cares what I think?
Speaker 1:Thanks so much, then.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Oh boy.