How Oscar Winner John Patrick Shanley Went From Nothing To Everything And Won His Life

Ready to fulfill upon your true potential? Are you curious about how to create a life that you love? Join host Robyn Cohen on The Daily Joyride Podcast for an in-depth and passionate conversation with the legendary John Patrick Shanley, the Academy Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer behind 'Moonstruck' and 'Doubt.' Discover Shanley's creative philosophies, his commitment to truth in art, and his unique perspectives on morality, human complexity, and the power of storytelling. This episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at the man who has reshaped our understanding of narrative, providing invaluable insights for creatives and dreamers alike. Listen in and find the inspiration to create a life filled with passion and purpose.

Connect with John on IG: @johnp.shanley

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Time Stamps:
00:00 Welcome and Introduction to John Patrick Shanley

01:43 Upcoming Acting Classes Announcement

02:52 John Patrick Shanley's Career Highlights

03:34 Exploring John's Upbringing and Creative Influences

09:25 The Nature of Creativity and Human Existence

18:18 The Complexity of Good, Bad, and Evil

22:45 The Role of Shame and Authenticity in Art

43:01 The Power of Declaring Yourself

01:03:35 The Brick Wall Metaphor

01:04:44 The Writing Process

01:05:42 Struggles and Epiphanies

01:07:42 Myths and Truths of Happiness

01:12:57 Finding Hope and Purpose

01:16:53 Embracing Eccentricity

01:24:16 The Power of Storytelling

01:36:22 Q&A with John

01:50:04 Closing Thoughts and Announcements

Transcript

Robyn Cohen: 0:40

Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Daily Joyride. I am so excited for today's conversation with the magnificent, the incomparable, John Patrick Shanley. He won the Academy Award for his iconic and beloved film, Moonstruck. He won the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for his incredible Broadway play,"Doubt," and he's really reshaped our understanding of what storytelling even is, and what it can be. John's mastery in depicting the human soul, in dissecting the human spirit, and our hopes and dreams and passions and ethical dilemmas It really invites us to ponder the deeper questions of"What is life? What is art? And what is happening in this human existence? And how do we get at the aliveness of life while we're here?" So as we unpack John's creative approach, his philosophy on life and art and craft, let's draw inspiration for our own creative journeys. Toward that end, I'm so excited to invite you to our next round of acting classes. They're going to begin January 28th, and it's going to be a six week workshop, both online and in person, whatever works for you, where we are going to explore and explode what you can do as actors, as artists and as human beings in the hands of the great writers like John Patrick Shanley. So don't let another year pass without pushing the creative boundaries of your magnificent potential. Just email me at Robyn@cohenactingstudio.com or find out more about the classes at www. cohenactingstudio.com. And let's transform all of our artistic visions into absolute reality. Join me in making 2025 the most dynamic, beautiful, enthralling, and explosive adventure ride ever. So here we go into this conversation and let's just soak in the juice of all of this inspiration with John Patrick Shanley. Here we go. Hello, hello, everyone. and welcome back to the Daily Joyride Podcast. Today, we have the absolute privilege and honor and joy of getting to sit down with an amazing friend and my creative north star, John Patrick Shanley, one of the most celebrated writers of our time, and of all time, really. John is an award winning playwright. He's an acclaimed screenwriter and director whose works have profoundly impacted both stage and screen. His journey began in the Bronx, where his upbringing in a working class Irish American family, his Catholic school experiences, and his time in the Marine Corps seems to have planted some seeds for the deep and complex themes he explores in his work. With a career spanning decades and decades, And decades, John has left an indelible mark in both the theater world and with his movies, and in the world of arts and crafts, as I like to call it, in general. Over a storied career, he has written over 25 plays and dozens and dozens of one acts. Some of his plays include the Pulitzer Prize winning and Tony Award winning play, Doubt, A Parable. which grapples with questions of faith and morality. Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Brooklyn Laundry, all three of which, all three of which were on Broadway in the 2024 New York theater season. Outside Mullinger, Which was on Broadway in 2014. A wildly touching story of love set in rural Ireland. Women of Manhattan. Savage and limbo. Beggars in the house of plenty. It's amazing because I've actually had the absolute thrill of and joy of working on many of these plays, performing in them, or scene study classes, as have actors and artists all over the world. And I'm so grateful that I can say that. And generally speaking, the list of your contributions to the theater, John alone, that would fill this entire podcast episode. That said, John's contributions in film are equally extraordinary, with his screenplay for the indelible Moonstruck earning him an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and his directorial debut, Joe vs. the Volcano, becoming a cult classic. Other of John's films include Congo, Five Corners. which I just saw, oh my goodness, and Wild Mountain Time, one of the most magically delicious films. ever made. And, um, so, well, John, here's what AI, who passed the bar exam, had to say about you. Okay. This is from the robots, John. Shanley's, uh, Shanley's work continues to resonate. Because of its fearless exploration of life's uncertainties and his ability to capture the universal truths within deeply personal stories. Shanley is a master of ambiguity, inviting audiences to wrestle to the ground, I might add, with life's uncertainties and find meaning in the gray areas of existence. I think a lot of that lines up. Uh, today, today we're gonna explore John's epic career, his creative inspirations, as well as his unending curiosity about human nature, and how it's informed his dynamic artistry, and the ways his art has challenged and ignited audiences worldwide. So, Folks, get ready for a conversation with one of the most thought provoking and fearless voices in contemporary storytelling, Mr. John Patrick Shanley. Welcome to The Daily Joyride. Thanks. Nice to be here. It's wonderful to have you here. I'll just, if we can go behind the scenes for a minute, we both just did a wardrobe change because we had a little Monday afternoon dance party before we started. So for those who are listening, um, he, he, we are now, um, in totally different outfits than when we began chatting this morning and it's, and it's already wonderful. So. Okay, John. there's so much. And today, it's just such a delight to be with you. And I'm also here on behalf of many of the people that I work with, my students, who also have, you know, questions about you, your life. The journey, your creative trajectory, your personal path. And, um, so I'm sort of speaking on behalf of them as well. Uh, my first question to you would be, what do you want to be when you grow up? No, that's not the question. but it does have to do with the question, which is that. and in asking this, we might go back a little bit. We might, sort of walk ourselves back on the timeline. I am so curious if, the, the magnitude of your work, the breadth, the depth, the glory of it. Were you growing up and like, was, is this a nature nurture situation? Like, were you exposed to Great works of art. Was that something that was like genetic? Was it in your DNA to be on creative fire? Was that something that was like ingrained in your cells? Or was it the nurture aspect? Was this something that your brothers and sisters, your parents, your family members, brought into your world that molded and shaped such a creative life? Creative career. Was this something that you were kind of born with? Or, yeah, again, the nature versus nurture or combination of both?

John PS: 9:25

Well, um, as you might have mentioned, I'm from the Bronx. I grew up in a working class family. My father was a meatpacker. My mother was a telephone operator. And, and mother, she was mother of five children. I was the youngest. And, you know, I mean, something that I've learned experientially in life is that we're born somebody, you know, because I adopted two boys at birth a long time ago. And, uh, I quickly realized they were born somebody. Uh, that they had, uh, a nature, that they had a personality, that they had something, um, beyond words that makes, made each of them, them, uh, and I could, by extrapolation, realize that I was the same that I have been born somebody and then there's what happened, that's what happens to you, you know, and I certainly one of the things I was born is I was born Irish, uh, and there is a, um, and I did have a natural bent towards poetry and towards the theater, uh, which I discovered Uh, along the way, you know, mean I was writing poetry and stuff, certainly by the time I was 10. Uh, and, uh, the theater came a little later. But, uh, when I started writing dialogue, I recognized this is what I do. Mm. Um, so, you know, by all my siblings are, uh, are, or were one of my sisters had passed away. All of them are very big readers. They just read. anything. Uh, and my father only read, uh, the daily news. That's it. And my mother was a big reader. So she was a Kelly. So that probably comes from the Kelly side. Uh, and, uh, um, but I had a forget The idea of, you know, were you born a writer or an artist or something that I had an experience from a very early age, a couple of things. One, I found it really odd that other people thought that this thing, being alive, was normal. I was just like, Don't you see this is, this is wild. It's wild that we're alive. And I had that from a very early age, much before writing came into it at all. And I also had Organizational abilities to bring into existence ideas in my head. So, I, for instance, had double pneumonia, was hospitalized, and I thought, uh, uh, what we could do, I was in the children's ward, is I could arm everyone with water pistols, And we could all simultaneously Ring for our nurses and when they came in and we could ambush and so I organized that whole uh and other Things like that certainly by the time I was four Uh that I just I would get ideas And then bring those ideas into existence. Uh, and that was, uh, a forerunner of the idea of putting on a show. Uh, but it's more than putting on a show, because it's really about real life. It's about, we don't have to just go through this day by the numbers. We can come up with a plan to make this, uh, exciting, unusual day. To match what I think is really going on in life, that it's an exciting, unusual thing to be alive. Uh, and I've never stepped away from it. I continue to be very, very surprised that I'm here. Uh, and I'm very also, maybe even more surprised that other people, many other people, are not surprised. And, uh, are invested in the idea of this is ordinary, and this is normal. Uh, when nothing is normal, and certainly nothing is ordinary. Um, so, uh, when I write something, one of the things I'm doing is I'm applying that sensibility to whatever happens to be of interest to me at the moment. That's

Robyn Cohen: 14:15

so beautiful. It is so exotic to be alive. It is. Scientifically, I think, um, the scientific research says that the chances of you being here are Existing at all is about one in four hundred trillion that your ancestors ancestors ancestors made it through the ice ages and the wars and the famines and procreated and there's, you know, and they had a legacy and you're it, the chances of all of that coming together. It's like, It's impossible. I mean, the whole thing is impossible.

John PS: 14:55

Well, it kind of shows actually the, uh, uh, craziness of statistics. Uh, uh, you know, I mean, Carl Jung made the observation that if you look at the pebbles in the stream and you average out their size and you come up with the average size of a pebble in that stream, no pebble in that stream has to be that size at all. Um, you know, the birth of statistics came out of France. There was a guy in the 19th century, I believe, who, uh, noticed that approximately the same number of people fell or jumped into the Seine each year. And, uh, he, uh, so he started, well, you know, then we can predict about how many will fall or jump into the Seine next year. Uh, and I had this explained to me in some introductory to statistics college course a long time ago. And my reaction to that would seem to be completely different than the professors or anybody else in the class. I was just like, well, that's freaking crazy. That's the wildest thing I've ever heard in my life. Yeah. I don't know why and, and that the professor and the guy who invented statistics were not interested in that that is bizarre. They were just like, oh, how useful, that you can predict. So now we can use that to, we can apply that, maybe to mathematics, to a variety of situations to come up with meaningful predictions. And I'm like, yeah, but that sort of skips over the fact that why the hell do approximately the same number of people fall or jump into this age? That's the wild part. That's the wild part. Uh, and why I probably never would have given birth to the science of statistics, because I would have been too busy reeling from the news.

Robyn Cohen: 16:59

I get that. And, in your, in the body of your work, are you trying to talk about these ideas in your plays, in your movies, in your poetry? Are you trying to, like, Is part of that an aim to wake people up to the unbelievability of the cosmos and you in it? Is it, do you have, do you have a sort of in the background already always intention when you set forth to like share these ideas with the world? Because you really are talking to the world when you're When you are putting on plays and shows and movies, is there something about that in the background in terms of your inspiration for doing it? Or what is, what is? why do you, what has you keep giving these gifts to people? What are you wanting them to see, feel, do?

John PS: 17:58

Uh, I don't know what they're gonna do. I, you know, my job is to be me, their job is to be them, and I can't leap over my job to their job. Um, that's when you start. writing stuff that's pretty boring. Uh, it, my, my job is to notice my own preoccupations. Um, and, uh, uh, like for instance, I've just written a new play that I'm still tinkering with and I had noticed, I noticed that I am Very drawn to, concerned with, sort of wandering in a circle around the idea of good and bad and evil. Okay, so good is good, right? Good is good. Uh, and, uh, bad is not really, because good is like, good contains bad, you know? So you said like a person is basically good. They got some bad stuff too. They just do. And then, you know, you get, uh, the, uh, bad people, they got some good stuff. This is for the yin yang, a little bit of the other, always going on, and then evil. That's a quintessence. So I'm like, Oh, so like evil is actually the only purity. These other things are alloys. They are, uh, uh, a bit of one thing and the other. And the balance goes one way or the other. It goes towards being bad or goes towards being good. But they contain a lot of fudge. They contain a lot of the other. And I thought, well, that's interesting. And then it started to expand to weak and strong. Like, and some people are weak and some people are strong. And they'll say, well, this is a weak person. This is a strong person. And then I got interested in the idea of attraction. That you'll notice, for instance, that there are women who will say, I like bad boys. And And I'm like, okay, but the same, I'm not a bad, I'm not a bad girl. But I do like bad boys and I'm like, well, that's interesting, you know, so in other words, you, so then kind of what maybe you're saying is I want what I don't got. I want, you know, I'm out of balance and I need to balance myself with some of this different energy. Uh, and, uh, that started to lead me into play about people who have, uh, a relationship that's based on that. Uh, and then to really explore that projection of parts of yourself onto another person because you can't own them. And that, because that I think extends to almost every human on earth. Uh, and we've just been through a time where there's been a lot of demonizing of the other, certainly in this country. Uh, but you know, Also in this world. And, uh, uh, you know, of course, that's, uh, remedied by looking in the mirror and going like, Oh, there's a comic from a long time ago called Pogo. And it had, uh, uh, thing that sort of became him. Um, and, uh, yeah. Uh, a meme before there were memes and it was the characters looking for somebody who did something wrong and finally realized at the end that it's him and he said, I have seen the enemy and he is us. Uh, and that is, you know, of course in acting or in writing or any of that, you know, the ownership of all of the sides of yourself, it's really tough for people, really tough.

Robyn Cohen: 22:05

Yeah.

John PS: 22:06

And they can, and yet that's where the gold is. Uh, the gold is always, the real gold, is always covered with excrement. It's in the most unlikely place, and it feels unwholesome. And that is fascinating. So then imagine that adding the that to the idea of of relationships. Um, and the one, you know, I was talking to somebody a couple of days ago, and, uh, I said, They were talking about shame. I had said that I was ashamed about something, uh, and I had said that in a public forum about some plays that I had just done a reading of, uh, and I said, you know, you know, what are you, why would you feel shame about that? And I said, I think that shame is our final protection against that which in us is the most valuable. Because in other words, if given the opportunity. We, each person will betray themselves and they will give away what is most precious about them. So how do you prevent that from happening? How does the psyche do it? It's because making you feel like it's the worst thing about you, then you won't give it away. And then when that protection extends into art, then you become a liar. Uh, you can't go to that final place. You can't get to the sort of central truth because you're ashamed of it. And that's because, let's say, let's say you're on like some lousy, uh, sitcom that's been written by idiots and you are, you, and you have the, have a moment there where in desperation you would give them your soul. You would give them the thing that, that makes you, you and, uh, but the thing that saves you is your shame that you think it's horrible and the worst thing about you. So you're never going to show that. And that protects it.

Robyn Cohen: 24:27

Do you think there's a time when shame is the final protector, the last stand against evil, as you mentioned? It can also, the flip side of that, because there are times when, listen, if I went out and you know, went drinking, I smashed my car and I hurt someone and I feel shame, then, maybe and only then, 1 percent of the time, maybe then and only then, it can be useful in that way.

John PS: 25:03

Everything is

Robyn Cohen: 25:05

Yeah,

John PS: 25:05

every part of you is useful. That's what I'm basically saying, though. It may seem I'm saying the opposite. Your shame is useful.

Robyn Cohen: 25:12

Yeah.

John PS: 25:13

Everything about you is useful. Every, every part of you is one of the jewels in your treasure chest. It just is. And then you have to decide, you know, when you're going to take this stuff out and how you're gonna, Use it. Yeah. When somebody, when somebody, they're, you know, like I'm writing something and And there's a question in it about murder, that someone in the, that may either have murdered somebody, or may be willing to murder somebody, uh, and, uh, I struggle with that. I'm like, well, you know, I know there's situations in which I would kill somebody, but you know, they usually revolve around some kind of, uh, uh, defending something. Um, but, um, you look at, and so you look at that and you go, so you kill somebody and then you, you continue, you can continue to function, you can find a place for that. And of course, throughout history, so many people have found a place for it in the, in their psyche that they can continue to function and maybe be of social use. Um. Uh, but then I was like, well, you know, these guys who like con old people out of their life savings, which happens constantly. It's happening constantly. It's like, well, now, who are, who are those people? And how are they evil? You know, obviously, it'd be very difficult for me to look at that and say they're not evil. They're not evil. Uh, uh, because you know, they'll take the person's let's say they got 200, 000 to come back and take the last 10, 000. They'll take the last dime that person that they will never stop until they're drained. Um, and I think about that. I thought about, you know, what it would be like to sit down and have that person explain to me. Why they, if they find it acceptable, uh, and would they be willing, would they be willing to have that conversation? I'd be very interested to have that conversation, not to judge them, but to understand. I like to understand. So, I started thinking about good, bad, evil, and weak, and strong, uh, and other words that all are words that come into play Having to do with judgment, um, where people talk about, well, he's a bad person, he's a good person, he's a weak person, he's a strong person, uh, and, uh, I just knew I could get a flashlight and go in that cave and endlessly explore the labyrinth of what that, those things mean. So that's, you know, my latest, uh, area of intrigue is to think about that and, and do that in a play.

Robyn Cohen: 28:38

Which occurs to me as part of every single one of your plays and films on some level. Well, in so much as, as, as you said, there is no, there's no access to creativity or the imagination or understanding with judgment. Judgment is like the kryptonite. And if you're writing characters, so we just watched Five Corners. I did with my partner Billy and his jaw was on the floor. I was gobsmacked. I didn't, I didn't expect it. And it's um, it's so fascinating because of the intersection of love and passion and violence and probably two other things which make up the Five Corners. And it's fascinating that we started, you know, you were saying that the one pure thing that we can kind of identify at times is like, that is evil. Like, for sure, 100 percent that is evil. But everything else, and illustrated in this movie, it's, It's all seems to be in the gray matter that we are a morass of energies and emotions and are is do love and violence. Is that something that because it's so prevalent in this movie and it's such a powerful story and it explodes what you were just talking about like in one human being or just in one character, the polarities. The abandoned little boy who is now a murderer, you know, the, it's, it's the whole spectrum and, you know, do, does, well, I'll ask this question, does love and passion always have to include, is there unconditional love? Is there unconditional love? And if so, what is it for you? And how do you access it? When you need to?

John PS: 30:39

Well, well, you know, uh, uh, first of all, nothing removed from everything else. is human. So, uh, unconditional love is a concept a lot like evil, uh, in that it is unadulterated. Uh, and those ideas that certainly the Greeks wrestled with, uh, uh, but of this quintessence, that quintessence, I think are very, um, this, they're useful. In terms of dialectics, they, uh, and they help us, they help us to sort of clarify our thinking, but they do not exist, first of all. Uh, nothing exists, first of all, utterly separate from everything else. Everything, I think, is one thing, and I think all of us are one person.

Robyn Cohen: 31:49

Agreed.

John PS: 31:50

And even more than one person, you know, something larger than the species that we run around in, uh, we are so and but also, again, though, that makes you sort of go in the direction of, uh, Quintessence, unity, which I always think ends up being useless because it doesn't have anything to do with what's really going on in the human psyche. The human psyche's got it all. The human psyche eats its babies. And would, uh, step in front of a car to save the life of a stranger. Uh, it's got it all, isn't it? You know, and you can't have one without another. It's just, uh, uh, uh, a package deal. We are a package deal. And, uh, anytime you reduce yourself or us to a singularity of any kind, it's You're missing the boat, you're not human anymore, you're not thinking in human terms anymore. And that's all we got. So then it just sort of becomes a little bullshitty. But it's interesting. I mean, it's interesting for me to start with good, bad, and evil, and then start to by degrees, and I envy the Greeks so much. because of their doggedness in sticking with, following through on ideas and philosophical questions that, uh, we too often give up way early in the, in the race. We get winded very easily. Uh, when dealing, especially with abstractions, uh, of any kind, uh, but they are, the more deeply you go into it, finally, on the other side, you come back to specifics. You come back to what it is to be human, but now you can sort of label little parts of what you're doing. By the, so let's say a color code or something and until you have the whole rainbow. Uh,

Robyn Cohen: 34:13

yeah, my, the whole rainbow is, um, something. So one of my acting teachers, Larry Moss, who you've met, he, he always, um, insisted that we bring in to class for scene study and acting technique classes. You can only work on the best plays. Like, don't bring in your two pages of copy from the sitcom. We're only going to work on Eugene O'Neill and John Patrick Shanley. We're only going to delve into the world of Arthur Miller because his edict was that you can only grow as an actor in the hands of a great writer. And I think it has so much to do with what you're talking about. Um, your plays. explore on a level that I had never seen or experienced before meeting you in your writing that is so dynamic, so diversified, so everything. It is like what you were sharing, like there's a oneness and it contains all the energies, all the things, the, The complexities of the human being mirror and match the violence and complexities and wonder of the cosmos. I mean, it's all this one explosive energy, which is undeniable and can't be described all at once. And that I found to be in your writing. That is in your writing, and it's in your characters, and um, I've just, I've been in so many classes, whether I'm taking the class or teaching the class, and I just, I give them your, your plays, because they can't not grow, because what I've learned is that writers that are willing enough, daring enough, committed enough, brilliant enough to be able to write these kinds of situations and characters, um, If I, the actor, am going to be in a scene or a play of yours, your play, let's take Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, your play tells me, as an actor, what I have to address in my acting technique so that I can grow to a point where I can meet the writer, you, in the case of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, to fulfill upon telling this story. and it also is something that teaches people about commitment, because if you're gonna work on one of your plays or be in your world, I remember I was in, um, the workshop in 2017, I think it was, we were in Los Angeles and, um, you were, we were being assigned full length plays and or one acts sort of on the fly to workshop. And I was assigned the role of the elephant girl in The Elephant Girl. And that is, that's the title, it's called The Elephant Girl. And, or what was it called? It's called

John PS: 37:31

The Elephant Girl, and you were assigned The Elephant Girl.

Robyn Cohen: 37:34

I was the elephant. Yes, thank you. And, uh, I remember there was a description and we had basically like a night or two to just sort of go through it and we were going to come back and just put it on its feet in front of, you know, the audience of students and auditors. And I remember reading through it. I sat myself down before I left the theater. I'd gotten the assignment and it said, this is a. This elephant is in a, like a, a huge white dress and she's carrying a red umbrella. And I left the theater, this was like the third day of the workshop, and I went to Melrose in Los Angeles and I raided, like, to three different thrift stores. Like, I just started, like, looking for a Vic like, a Victorian white dress. I didn't know what I was doing. I really didn't. I knew that this was more like, this was a class. This was a workshop. This is not a performance class. I knew we were all just in there, like, just, you know, getting together to put stuff up and see what happens. But I was on this, like, mission to find I just read it in the character description. I was like, I'm playing an elephant. It's a white dress. So I, I couldn't, you know, I'm for hours. I'm like looking through these racks, you know, and finally I see this dress and it's like 27 bucks and it weighs like 20 pounds and it has its white and it's Victorian and lace and tulle all the things and I'm like, I'll take it and I run out and I go home and the next morning. Or maybe two mornings later, I'm packing my bag to come in, we're gonna do now the reading of the full length play, The Elephant Girl. And I pack my bag, and in my bag, John, I put this huge white dress, I put the red umbrella, and then I put, just like, another kind of dress that I have in my closet. Just like, a normal white dress. You know, kind of contemporary, classical dress, black, simple. And then I also put in my bag, um, just like clothes that you would wear if you're going to be physical. If you're going to go to the gym, just like workout clothes. Like you might, you might wear that in an acting class or an acting workshop. And so I have this panoply of costume items, clothes, items in this bag. And I go to the theater, and um, and we're up. And so I'm backstage getting ready. We had some time to prepare before we went on stage to do this first time ever reading. With scripts in our hands, but we're gonna do it on our feet. We're just gonna stage it on the fly. And I'm backstage, and I'm with the other actors in the group. And I'm going through my bag, and I think it's We'll call him Ryan. And I was like, Ryan, come here. Come here. And I, and I said, you know, I, I, I found this dress, um, on Melrose and it seemed to be like, and I know and I know this, but, but look at this. What do you think of just this simple dress? And, and I was like, or you know, maybe I'll just wear what I'm wearing. I'll wear my, I'll wear my wear outfit, you know,'cause we're gonna be active. And he looks at me and he says, put on the white dress. I was like, what? He's like, get in that dress. I was like, why are you lovingly shouting at me? And he's like, why are you afraid to show them how committed you are? And that really shook me to the core. Cause it's, it's who, it's who you are for me. And it's who you are for so many actors that we get to meet our talent and meet our commitment. When someone dares. Dares. On some level to bypass the shame, turn the lights on, stop hiding, come out and play as you do with that kind of authenticity and passion and violence and rigor and explosiveness. It gives us permission john to be all that we are. And

John PS: 41:41

I remember your commitment. I remember your commitment, like, something you could actually see.

Robyn Cohen: 41:52

Thank you. Thank you for reflecting that. And, you know, a few months later, we were in New York City, and I was able to do your, the French Waitress. At the, um, the theater on the, on the West side. And, um, and it hasn't stopped, you know, when I'm not with you, we're still all day every day. I mean, because we all as actors that are as artists. Who are interested in growing and developing forever. We all want to know, like, how do you, what's the best thing that I can do? Like, and this is a question that I will put to you, like, what's the most effective thing? What's the best thing I can do? My students ask me, my colleagues, you know, what, what can I do? Physically, spiritually, psychologically, practically, what is the best thing that I can do to move the needle? The needle forward on everything that I want to do and create and say, so what would, what would you say to them, John, what is, what is the thing that they can do?

John PS: 43:01

Oh, you got to declare yourself. You got to say, I'm here, I'm here and I'm not going away and I'm going to be me. And you're going to have to accept that. You claim the space. You claim whatever's going on, you recognize you're basically God like nature, that you're not simply in control of yourself or something, you're in control of the air around you. Everything you touch touches everything in the world. You're that powerful. Uh, and which you don't even have to, in other words, when somebody's that powerful, they don't have to demonstrate it. They just have to be it. So, like, I'm sitting here, and when I move my hand, I can feel the air touching my head, touching my fingers. And then I realize that this ocean, this single body of thing, what we call the air, that encompasses this entire planet. I am manipulating that. I am in touch with that, and nobody can take that away from me, and nobody can take away my place in things. I was placed here, like you place a chess piece, at the day of my birth, and I will be here, moving through the world, and touching everything, and being touched by everything, until my piece is taken off the board.

Robyn Cohen: 44:47

That's epic. What do you tell people? What do you tell yourself? When you say, I'm here, I declare myself, this is me, let's go. And the world says, no, no, no. Right? With actors, for instance. And they say, no, no, no.

John PS: 45:09

I am the world. I am the world. I am. How the can the world tell me no? I am the world. I am the center of everything. And so are you. And so, you know, a bunch of, like, tiny little people who don't know that they're anybody, who don't recognize their own stature and things, their own power, their own dignity and things, who are sitting behind some table, those are people to have compassion for. They are, they are looking for somebody to remind them that they're alive.

Robyn Cohen: 45:53

Mic drop. Mic drop. The whole, the whole conversation. So, how did you gain access to the keys to that kingdom of knowing who you are? How do we get access to that? Like, Were you born knowing? Did you, did you do some wonderful hoodoo magic? Was this something that you decided? Mindset? Did you? Okay. It

John PS: 46:22

wasn't

Robyn Cohen: 46:23

a

John PS: 46:24

decision, but, uh, you know, first of all, I was born somebody. Then at a certain point I became a writer and everything I wrote didn't quite work. And that went on. For probably 14 years, uh, and then I wrote, I gave up and I, and what I had been doing is I've been writing plays to show how smart I was, uh, and nobody cares how smart I am. Uh, and then finally I gave up and I wrote a one act play. I'm like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna write about, you know, what I think and what I feel. And I wrote this play, Welcome to the Moon, and I did a reading of it with an audience, and I saw something happen in the audience that I had never seen before. And they were saying, this is it. This is you.

Robyn Cohen: 47:28

What are they responding to?

John PS: 47:30

And I didn't know. I didn't know that that, that, and I, my feeling, my response was, I'll never forget it. I felt mildly disappointed. I thought, oh, that's what they want, the truth.

Robyn Cohen: 47:49

Ah! I didn't see that coming, folks! Okay, okay.

John PS: 47:55

And I valued, and I valued the truth at very little. Uh, and, uh, I felt a little defeated that that's what they wanted. Uh, and, but I was like, okay, okay. And then I started to write from that place, and the world changed. for me. And, uh, uh, I wrote Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Savage and Limbo, and Welcome to the Moon all at the same time, back to back to back. And when I finished Savage and Limbo, which was the last of the three, I stood up from my desk and left my wife that day, because that's what you gotta do. In other words, you can't just, these things aren't in a vacuum. This is your life. You know, when you act, when you write. When you do whatever the heck it is you're doing, that's your life. And it's precious and it's brief and you gotta live it. You know, I didn't want to live it. I would have done anything not to live it. I tried every other thing I could think of besides living my life. And then finally I'm like, okay, I got, you know, I had a dream, uh, the night before I left. And the dream was, I was in my apartment, uh, and, uh, uh, there was nothing there. And, uh, I was naked and I went to the door and I opened the door and I thought about going out and there was, the wind came up and I caught the door. And I thought. If I go back in there, there's nothing. It's dark. If I come out here, I'm, I have nothing and I'm naked. And then I thought, I'm going, I'm going out and it let the door slam and then my life began.

Robyn Cohen: 50:06

It, um, it sounds like a moment where your life came into a kind of. congruency,

John PS: 50:19

you reach a certain focal points. But I just, you know, basically, I've come to the end of my life, right, that that I could not continue to do the things that I had been doing. Yeah, and continue to live. Yeah, I wanted to live one more day. I was going to have to go. Wow. And I went.

Robyn Cohen: 50:42

How do you muster, how does one muster their life force like you do to share on the level that you do?

John PS: 50:51

Clarity. Clarity. To really take the time to face what you already know.

Robyn Cohen: 51:02

Ha! To

John PS: 51:03

put it to the test. Into words and say, okay, I don't like this and I do like this and say, if I don't like this and my life is built on this, I don't want to live anymore. So I'm going to go over here where I have nothing because that's where life is. You don't have anything. It's all an illusion. You don't really have anything. All you got is you, uh, and as soon as you start to cling to people and things and, uh, tried and true formulas, uh, you've left your life. Like you, you went into, you went into, uh, uh, a holding room. Yeah. I know somebody who I know very well who had terrible addiction and, um, he would call me and talk to me about it. And, uh, I would say, you know what I call where you are? The room where nothing happens. And, um, there, there's a, he left that room. He left that room.

Robyn Cohen: 52:24

There's a, a song quite popular these days and it's called The Room Where It Happens. The Room Where It Happens. The Room Where It Happens. Oh, I

John PS: 52:33

know. I know that song very well.

Robyn Cohen: 52:36

But this was the prequel. This is the prequel.

John PS: 52:41

This was apparently, you know, if I had been out of musical comedy gifts or musical gifts, maybe I would have. If that's not, you know, my friend still talks about the room where nothing happens, uh, he's still that made it tangible for him. Yeah. Yeah. And it also left it a place that he could conceive of leaving. That's important, you know, that you, because people feel trapped because they don't really see any way out. So sometimes it can be really important to recognize you are in a very specific room or house and you can leave that room or house and go someplace else completely.

Robyn Cohen: 53:28

Yeah. That's what your creative magic sort of, that's the fairy dust of you too. Like when I'm intertwined and tangled with your work, seeing it, performing it, I'm in the aliveness of life. I'm just in the aliveness of life. And that room where I can go to is, it's really just the space between my ears. It's a tiny little room where I have one, usually one little threadbare story that's shouting really loud about the way life is. But then when I get that even the word is, is made up, that there is no is, there is no is of anything, the word is is made up, there's the universe, then I have access to a portal, and It's like, then I can go outside, metaphorically or physically, of that little room where there's this tiny voice screaming about the way life is. And it, and the thing that really actually catapults me into the creative cosmos, is other people. Like, getting out there in life is, is oft times about getting over there in someone else's world. Being with another. Cause that's where life, or at least part of life, is at. It's at, life is actually out, it's out there. It's not in here, between my ears. Life itself, and the electricity and magic, And the liveness of life is actually out. It's out there. It is out there. And, you know, as an actor, part of the technique is stop focus, stop focus. Where's your attention? It's got to be on the other person because no one cares when it's on you. No one cares. It's the phenomena of you actually come out. and become mesmerizing when your focus is out there on the aliveness of life. It's what brings the artist out. I think I'm thinking about, I know this is quite a toggle, but your, your Instagram feed, John, it's so delightful. Like it brings me such joy. And I know like a lot of people are like, ah, social media. But I just want to say there's a yummy corner of the sky in social media, and it is with John Patrick Shanley's account and the sort of like, it's such like a yummy, I just want to like cozy up with like my hot chocolate and, and take in drink in what it is that you might be thinking about musing about in that moment the other great thinkers and philosophers and artists and works of art or a photograph and um it seems to be all about that and that's In your plays too, I mean, I don't know if we can compare social media as a platform to the stage, to the film, but that seems to be global in your, in your life, and in your work, like, hey, look at that pond out there, it's impossible, it's impossible that that pond even exists and that we're alive to see it, that wonder, you know, I remember in one of our classes, one of our workshops together, you were talking about, The difference between, oh, and this has to do actually with your, your mom, your source of life, who I think I also want to remember a story you told me about your mom and Five Corners. But before that, I remember you sharing like, there was a fundamental difference in perception about life. itself as a phenomenon. And you said, you know, other people in my life, maybe it was your mom or someone in your family thought that like life just was, it was just like a, it was a blanket statement. And that for you, life was magical. You used that word, you said magical. And that that has made a profound difference in the way life shows up for you in your world. And then for the worlds of the people that you touch, we get that magic. So I just, I always love that because it has to do with like, I don't know if you would call that a filter through which, but what is your filter? Like how, how does life occur? Does it occur through a particular filter? Like life is magical?

John PS: 58:32

Uh, no, I don't think so. I mean, it's just, um, everything reminds me of something else. Um, you know, we're metaphorical beings. That's all we do. We make metaphors all the time. The way that we perceive, uh, this physical world is metaphorical. Uh, we have models in our head and we compare them to what we're seeing, and that makes it a third factor. And, uh, but I, I have, uh, I'm a metaphor making machine, so everything reminds me of something else. And I'm always working on probably at least two or more creative projects, uh, in my head. So whenever I'm at rest for a moment. I wake up during the night, I'm walking down, I go to one of them, one of the other, or other of them gets a hold of me. I go back, I open work on things that I did 30 years ago, and one moment that didn't work, and I'll find myself working on it again. You know, so that part of my, um, uh, psyche is, it's a workshop and it's constantly, uh, going from one project to another that's in that workshop, um, and holds my, uh, interest. And then, like I said, you get a preoccupation, good, bad, and evil, you know, and you also then you have to notice that. There's an old folk saying that. Uh, God speaks in a very low voice. You have to really get quiet if you want to hear what he's saying. And you'll have voices in your head that shout, that's not God. And then the one that you can barely hear, that's God.

Robyn Cohen: 1:00:30

You can only hear it though, when you stop talking.

John PS: 1:00:37

That's

Robyn Cohen: 1:00:37

definitely. And listen. Like your life depends on it, because it. It may just depend on it. You listening to that low voice that can only be heard in the silence of your soul. What does that look like for you when you're writing? You just said like, you'll be, you're constantly workshopping, crafting, um, in the question of any given day. Yeah. Like in the course of any given day, do you have, what is, what does that process look like? Very

John PS: 1:01:13

often what I'm doing is I'm wrestling with the question. Uh, and, uh, uh, the, like, somebody says something in a play of mine, and then there's the other character hears that, and they say something back, and I may be, I may work on that for weeks, or I just keep, is that the really the, is that really the sort of truthful Next thing. What's the truthful next thing in this scene? Uh, not, you know, what would be Neat or whatever. But what would be, what would be the truth? And then sometimes, once in a blue moon, uh, uh, I'll be walking down the street and I'll suddenly bust out laughing because I just got an idea that I did not see coming and I'm like, okay, well. All right, then. All right, then. You know, and those I live for those. Yeah. And they come, they come with some regularity, not every day. Yeah. But with some regularity, just in other words, I've been writing something, and I get to this moment, and I suddenly have this uh entirely different next moment comes to me and I'm like, Oh that is so much better than anything that I've thought of and partially just living with it, you know, just like continuing to contemplate the wall. You're staring at a brick wall, you know, like in that movie, uh, Children of the Damned, I think it was called. Uh, it was about a bunch of kids who are born with blonde hair and they have psychic abilities and they're evil. Uh, and there's George Sanders is, uh, they, they can read minds and he has done something that's going to destroy them. But if they can read his mind in time. They'll be able to stop that from happening. So, what he has done is, he is staring at a brick wall, and he just concentrates on the brick wall. And so, when they read his mind, all they see is a brick wall. And then, the time is running out. with them to save themselves and time is running out for him. Is he going to be able to withstand his psychic onslaught? And you see bricks starting to fall out of the wall as they start to get through. And at the last moment they realized what was behind that wall, which is very destructive. And they like go, ah, but it's too late. And he's one. So I've turned that around for myself. And I think about the brick wall and I'm like, I'm the children of the damned. I'm those little blonde kids. And I'm determined to get past that wall. And the wall is predictable. The wall is, that's what you know, you'd think the next moment would be. That's what makes sense. But then if you have an epiphany, then you go like, actually, this makes like, endlessly more sensitive than anything I've thought of. And on top of that, it makes me laugh out loud.

Robyn Cohen: 1:04:38

Cause the truth is funny.

John PS: 1:04:41

You got something. Then you got something.

Robyn Cohen: 1:04:43

Wow. What does that actually look like on the daily? Are you staring at a brick wall literally? Or is that, I mean, how does that translate to your world? Are you just, do you wake up and just do you have time for yourself? You, but

John PS: 1:04:56

I stay in that moment. I'm writing, you know, I'm, I don't, I can go in and sit at the keyboard at any time, uh, and start writing. That I can always do, but in other words, should I? Uh, and I'll put off, uh, writing stuff because writing for me is the treat. Everything else I do is work.

Robyn Cohen: 1:05:19

And

John PS: 1:05:19

writing, so I can just, uh, So I, these days I tend to write like after lunch and take care of a lot of other stuff, but I'm just waiting for that and I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it the whole time about what I'm going to write or what the problem is or what I'm dissatisfied with. Like, I just wrote this play, and I found that I really liked the whole play until three quarters of the way through this play, a guy walks in. And every time I get to that moment, and I rewrite it and I rewrite it, I go like, I just hate it when he walks in. I hate it. I hate it. I need it. I see why it could be a good thing, but I'm in hell. I hate that guy walking in the door. And so, and I know. No matter how many times I rewrite this, as long as that guy walks in the door the way that he's walking in the door, the whole thing's ruined. Uh, and I'm very depressed about that. I never can pass that guy walking in the door. And then I'll have talks with myself. I'm like, John, you know, you don't have that. You don't want him to come in the door. He didn't have to come in the door. He's like, no, you got to come in the door. And that'll go on for weeks, sometimes for a year. Uh, and, but, and then I suddenly experienced that differently and I go like, how lucky am I that I'm not sitting here bored. I'm sitting here tormented by this guy walking, this imaginary guy walking in this door. I mean, most people wouldn't even begin to understand why I was upset about that. But

Robyn Cohen: 1:07:11

it doesn't matter.

John PS: 1:07:12

It's been real. That's been an experience that I've been having for some time now with this guy walking in this door

Robyn Cohen: 1:07:19

oh, I, I love that so much. And, and yeah, like who cares if they understand why that's so meaningful or not, because the proof's in the pudding. And I love what you just said that, oh, for everyone listening out there, the, the writing is the treat. That's the treat part. The thing in and of itself, the thing in and of itself. And I think, you know, and that's what I'd love to, for everyone listening, like, what are the myths that are out there driving us about what life is really about and, and, and what are the truths? Like, in terms of, um, in terms of, you know, creating a life that you love, like where you get to sit and grapple with this guy coming through the door, the treat of writing, like in terms of creating a life by design that you love being in, what are the myths about getting there and what are the truths? And I suppose it's sort of a sidebar of, like, the treat being the thing in and of itself. Because I'm just noticing, and I, you know, I currently live in Hollywood, and there's, there's just so much lying about what's gonna make you happy and fulfilled. There's, the lies are running rampant, and it's hurting people. It's killing people. Emotionally. Spiritually. Um, because we did not come here for a pile of things, though we are told when we land from wherever we come from that, uh, the holy grail is, is the car and the house and the awards and the accolades and, and all of these things. So what are the, what are the truths? If those are the lies, what are the truths? And what do we need to focus on that really does make a difference toward catapulting us to a created life on our terms that we love living?

John PS: 1:09:16

Well, I mean, I remember I suffered some. massive reversal in show business at some point. I don't remember what it was anymore, but I was pretty down. Maybe my love life was not going well either. Uh, whatever. I'm walking down the street and I'm walking through NYU, the NYU area, Washington square. And there's a guy with a folding table outside the library. And he's selling used books and I would stop and look and see what he had. And I saw this one beat up book and taped to the front of it because the title had worn away so you didn't know what it was. It was a piece of white paper with lines from a notebook that he or somebody had scotch taped to the front of the book that said, all of Shakespeare's comedies. 3 dollars. And I looked at that and I thought, what do I got to worry about? If I can buy all of Shakespeare's comedies for 3 dollars, which I immediately did, uh, life is great, you know?

Robyn Cohen: 1:10:47

And

John PS: 1:10:48

all my concerns are bull. They're just bull. You know,

Robyn Cohen: 1:10:53

I got that. Ah, ah. Getting over the wall though, you know, like seeing, seeing life for what it is and what it can be.

John PS: 1:11:07

Actors, actors, actors. And you know, the, the, you know, I go to plays, you know, and I'll go with somebody, you know, I go with different people. And most of the time I go with actors. I just know a lot of actors. And, um, I, uh, but I, uh, and then afterwards, you know, you have the inevitable conversation like, well, what'd you think like it or, and, uh, invariably the actor will say, or not always invariably, but a lot, an awful lot, they'll say, well, everybody was great except that one person. And it's always the part. It's always the part they were right for.

Robyn Cohen: 1:12:01

I get that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John PS: 1:12:05

See, I'm a playwright. So I'm like, yeah, but what did you think of the play? I'm like, what if, I'm like, what bizarre focus? Yeah. You're focused on that one person and also that it makes you frown. Yeah. Uh, you know, so in a way, even though they're more conscious thought is probably, I could do so much better than that person in that part. They're unconscious thoughts. is they're seeing themselves up there and they're failing. There are, you know, because that is the part they identify with and they're not happy about it.

Robyn Cohen: 1:12:45

Recently, there are a lot of people that are not happy with a lot of things in their families and the communities. in the world at large, in the political sphere. A lot of people aren't happy. Recently you shared something on a video you made, and at the end of it you said, but you know, I still have hope. And then you said, significant hope. How do we hold on to that? How do we hold on to that? How does that actor hold on to that? Who's watching someone on stage he wishes he was? How do we hold on to our

John PS: 1:13:24

significant hope? Your relationship, my relationship is not with other people as an artist. My relationship is with the sky. My relationship is I am vying for a place in the sky. I am free of my earthly bonds. I don't really, I'm not competing with other playwrights or actors or Movie directors, I think I am competing with an idea of excellence, an idea of beauty, and I am going as far as I can to connect with that. And that is always there. No one can take that away from you. You On one level alone in life, there are no other people. You are on your path. No one else is on that path. Only you and only you can walk that path. If you always have this thought about dreams, you know that I have a dream and I wake up and I'm trying to remember the dream. And then I think, you know, if I can't remember this dream, it will be lost for all time. I'm the only person who had this dream. And that's true of the experience of life in general, that if you let it slip through your fingers, the very specific qualities, experiences that add up to Your life. No one else can do that. No one else can share that, can capture that, uh, can memorialize that, or just celebrate that. Only you. So, when I am, for instance, like, writing a play and failing, and come completely up against the fact that I have failed and I probably will never be able to get this play right the way I want, Then I go to another place and I see me doing this and I'm by just like, look at you having this big angst about this thing. It's imaginary thing that you're doing. And other people would be sitting here and they're bored because nothing's going on. And you're tormented because something is just out of reach that's great and you want it. Well, that's struggle. Then you're alive, man. Then you're doing it.

Robyn Cohen: 1:16:19

Oh, so many mic drops. Yeah. It's solid gold. Yeah. Because the alternative. Is not bothering because of the shame because of the fear because of the because because because fill in the blank How do we learn to love the grapple? Because it's hard. It's hard, but it's all you got.

John PS: 1:16:51

Yeah. It's all you got. But I know, you know, that going to, you know, when I was talking about going to the theater and I gradually came to realize the personality type of an actor is fundamentally different than a playwright. It is not the same thing at all. And so It's not enough to say, you know, uh, it's like, uh, one of my early plays, Women in Manhattan, uh, a character comes to real life. Thank you. She comes to a realization where she says, it's not enough to say, be like me. You know, you can't just invite another person into your paradise. They have to find their own and, you know, a compassion that I experience a lot with actors is I can see they feel helpless. And I never feel helpless. I feel yes momentarily or a few days or whatever, but I can't live with it. But my nature, I can't live with just feeling helpless, and also then all I have to do is do something. I can walk over to a keyboard, and I can do something about the feeling of helplessness. And then I think, well what can an actor do? What can an actor do? Uh, and then I talked to a friend of mine who's, uh, um, a former actor who then, you know, what became a business person. Um, but, and, but she also was a concert pianist. She was in a lot of different things. And she, um, Has started, uh, a thing in her home in LA, uh, where she does readings of plays, uh, with a group of people and that group has grown, uh, and then they talk about them after they do. So she chooses to play and she casts the play. Uh, and, uh, then, and very often, not always she's in the play, uh, and she's experiencing great. joy and rediscovery of her own agency, taking matters into her own hands. It's three bucks to get all the comedies of Shakespeare and actually free. to read them out loud.

Robyn Cohen: 1:19:30

Oh, that is so rife with just the truth of, well, two things about that. You said the fund, there's a fundamental difference between actor and writer. So I would just want to earmark, what is that? What is that in a, in a sentence or two? And then, um, what you just shared about cause yeah, I'm gonna, I'll just tell one on myself that. For probably the majority of my, I've been acting professionally for 30 years, and the majority of it, I have had this experience of helplessness. More recently, it has unequivocally shifted over my helplessness to the category of full blown myth. It is the biggest lie that I ever told myself, and the loudest lie.

John PS: 1:20:24

And

Robyn Cohen: 1:20:28

reckoning with that. and dismantling bogus force fed idea from any number of sources that I paid attention to. Dismembering and dismantling that lie has been the transformation of my experience on this planet.

John PS: 1:20:57

Well, wherever, you know, people who feel like they can't find their power, I would say the very simple thing, and that is You want to know where your power is? Go to the place that makes you feel like you don't have any, because that's where it is.

Robyn Cohen: 1:21:23

Can you say more about that?

John PS: 1:21:25

So, when you're like, oh, I feel helpless, I'm in the hands of others, everybody else has all the power. Then go to that place that feeling of helplessness because that turned inside out will get you everything you want you to be able to, you just, in other words, you don't wait for anybody for anything you just start doing. Uh, and what you do readings, you produce a film, you put whatever it is, there's no one can stop you and what's more, most people desperate for someone to tell them what to do. Huh? Yeah. They just want somebody to tell them what to do. I'm here. I've got all the energy. I've got all these abilities. Somebody please tell me what to do. Become that person. Yeah. Tell them what to do. Don't worry about yourself. Don't like sit there and go like why won't anybody? Do it for somebody else. And everything will start to change right away.

Robyn Cohen: 1:22:29

The sort of the wise man, the wise woman in you talks to you and says, Hey, it's time. Let's go. And you stop listening to the voice of the scared infantilized little girl.

John PS: 1:22:45

Put on a show. Make a movie. You can do it. No one is standing in your way. Yeah. Yeah. I had, I did a interview a year and a half ago or something here in my apartment and the camera person. Um, said something, uh, basically about feeling hampered by the limited choices. And I said, make a movie. And, uh, uh, I said, give you the rights to one act play. I gave her the rights to one act play and, uh, she went out and she raised the money and she directed the play into a film. Uh, and she just was shown it a couple of festivals and, um, she broke out of the thing that she had created for the prison that she had built for herself.

Robyn Cohen: 1:23:40

Yeah. And that could do it,

John PS: 1:23:41

you know.

Robyn Cohen: 1:23:42

Yeah, that's extraordinary. And it can become the everyday of your existence. By, you know, take one, one right minded action at a time, or something that might trip you up for a while, but you know, dusting yourself off. So, okay, so this is a, let me see how to say this. When I, when I think about your plays, when I see your plays, when I'm performing in your plays. I feel like you're always, um, I don't know how to say this, but you, you fight for people. You fight for people. All different kinds of people. There is a commitment behind these plays that I experience, anyway, about, like, you standing up for human beings, sometimes a certain kind of human being, a certain character, and being in the audience of, let's say,"Doubt" I had the experience of John Patrick Shanley is fighting for me right now. I mean, it was literally like a voice in my head, like someone, someone is on my side. I, I mean, I didn't really know you at that time, but I knew you like, I've like, I know my own name in that moment. Cause it was like, He's, he's got me. That really,

John PS: 1:25:19

that really touched me. Thank you.

Robyn Cohen: 1:25:22

It is, it's the truth of what it is to be lucky enough to be the recipient of your work and your passion and your love. And I had never had the experience of that kind of thing in a, in a room full of thousands of strangers and it's seeing a play. I was like held and it was going to be okay. And someone was. on my side and I kept going back to the play. I had to, I was like, you know, studying and so I would like second act it like five nights in a row. I did buy two, three full fledged tickets and then I second-acted it. So I owe you, I know I do owe you for the... But um, when you are writing, because you had mentioned that You're not trying to make people do anything. You're not trying to make people do anything. That's not your job. You had discovered that it was more about The Truth. But, and, are you fighting, I mean, when you are, let's say, with"Doubt,", are you like, I am going to speak on behalf of people in this play that don't have a chance to because they're children, because they're no longer on the planet, because, because, because, I, do you have that in you? Are you like, part of, The engine that makes your genius go is like, I am going to, I'm going to, I'm fighting for this, I'm fighting for these kinds of people. I am loving on, I want to protect, I want to defend, is that in there in the alchemy of your creativity?

John PS: 1:27:18

Probably. I think that I, I, I intentionally and, uh, with a lot of sweat, create a place, an open place for the audience, for them to be able to do whatever they want, but push back the dialectics on all the sides of something to create a space for you. So like, so you're someplace in the play for you to be you.

Robyn Cohen: 1:27:52

Yeah. Do you just, Love, like, are you, the love, you love people, you love, you love, yeah,

John PS: 1:28:05

I really like people, I really like people, yeah, that's true. Uh, and, uh, the, in a way, the worse they are, the better.

Robyn Cohen: 1:28:17

Okay, now we can talk about Five Corners. For a moment, or not, but Sure, sure. Uh, the worst that, can you say, um, a little more about that? The worse they are, the better, because

John PS: 1:28:30

I've always been attracted to the villainous colors of, uh, people. So if I like see somebody, like I remember I worked with this guy one time, long time ago. Uh, he was an administrator at a university and, um, he was the closest thing I came to find he was a villain. Uh, and, uh, and I couldn't get enough of him. It was like ice cream. Uh, and uh, uh

Robyn Cohen: 1:29:06

What are you saying? And

John PS: 1:29:09

then because He was on one level so predictable and on another I'm like, I just never have seen somebody like you. Uh, and so he delighted me. And then finally, one day, he came scurrying out of his office. And I'm like, what's the matter? And he's like, there's a spider. And I was like, this is the cherry on the cake. He's afraid of spiders. He can, he walks on water as far as I'm concerned. That he's got it all.

Robyn Cohen: 1:29:49

Is he a character in a play now? Or is he going to be? No, no, no, no,

John PS: 1:29:54

no. But I, I, I have some, I'm very fond of some incredibly difficult people. Very fond. And I can take a pretty high level of abuse in order to get their company, because these people that I would describe them as difficult, I have, I have just cause for describing them as difficult. Uh, and so I was sort of keep my head down a little bit while they beat me about the head with whatever's available, just so I can see a little more. Just let me give me five more minutes of this. It's so good.

Robyn Cohen: 1:30:34

Material. Uh, I

John PS: 1:30:37

I mean, most of the time I don't use it as material. It's something stranger than that. I just get a kick out of them.

Robyn Cohen: 1:30:46

It's it's somehow nourishes, nourishes you..

John PS: 1:30:51

Yes. Definitely. It definitely does. It gives me more nourishment than many people who are supposedly much nicer, much gooder. Uh, these other people, I mean, God help me if I was ever in a room with Trump, I'd probably never leave. I'd be eating popcorn and just asking him like, what's your favorite number? You know, what's your favorite? Anything I could get, any piece of information.

Robyn Cohen: 1:31:21

Well, that, uh, that's great. That's make, that makes me think. Um, one of the things, so I've been working on a show, What the Constitution Means to Me, by Heidi Schreck. I don't know if you know Heidi, you saw it. And, um, and, uh, yeah, wonderful play, and it's her, real story. The women.

John PS: 1:31:48

I know. I saw it when she performed it.

Robyn Cohen: 1:31:51

Wow. Wow. Wow.

John PS: 1:31:53

It was very clearly her story.

Robyn Cohen: 1:31:54

Yes. And, um, Interestingly, originally, the version you saw when it was on Broadway, you know, she workshopped it for many years. Maybe more than that. The better part of a decade. And she didn't know, of course, we never, we can, how can we tell we don't have crystal balls, but it did a lot. She never imagined, you know, necessarily that it would do everything that it ended up doing.

John PS: 1:32:20

And

Robyn Cohen: 1:32:20

the run closed in 2019 on Broadway, the show that you saw and in 2019 before the pandemic, she realized that although she had been terrified to tell this story because it's her story and the legacy of the violence in her family and how her grandmother ended that legacy of, you know, it's, it's deeply, it's gutting and hilarious and wonderful, but she had been terrified to put it out there. But then when it closed, she said, you know, more people, more people are gonna wanna hear this story because of the response she got. And the men and women who would come to her and say, ah, that's my mother, that's my grandmother, that's my great-grandmother. And so the, the play closes on Broadway, and she goes back to work with her director, Oliver Butler.

John PS: 1:33:13

Mm-hmm

Robyn Cohen: 1:33:14

And she says, we have to figure out a way to make it so that someone else could perform the role of Heidi Schrek in this play because right now no one else can perform the play. So they, they created, uh, another kind of a play. They got their friend Maria Dizzia, wonderful actress, to come in and workshop a new version of this play whereby somebody else could, could perform the show. And, um, they created some sort of interstitial dialogue and a kind of a meta thing where at a certain point the actor says, Okay, I'm gonna actually play myself now. I'm not gonna play Heidi anymore. I'm gonna be myself, Maria, or myself, Robyn. And so in doing that and creating these extra little scene tidbits and dialogue, now the show is, you know, it's being produced everywhere. And, um, the, one of the things that I I've loved performing in the show and you know, and the biggest piece is, of course, when a seventy year old woman comes up to me after the show and says,"You know, my community, my family, they banished me when I had an abortion. And, um, but it wasn't the right time for me, I could not. I was a teenager. But I am so glad I waited." And then she'll turn to her right and she'll say,"Because this is my 32 year old boy who came at the perfect time in a miracle moment, and this is how it was meant to be..." And I just would hear, you know, stories like this all the time. And so, uh, we're doing it and I'm performing it here in California in various theaters. And, um, but the best part of the show, and the most interactive, during the show is something that Heidi created that you saw when you, um, when you watched the production in New York, which is that she basically does like this little kind of Q& A with, between Heidi Schreck and the debater. And they're questions that an audience has come up with and sort of submitted. Uh, they have these index cards and the audience can ask questions of Heidi and the debater and I met with Heidi and she shared that the reason she made the last the last piece of her play like a five minute conversation where two people were just sitting and asking questions of each other is, she said, because, you know when you drill it down and when you know when you strip everything else away the world the politics the environment the political scene like people just want to like, be in their living rooms, sharing stories, talking to each other, getting to know one another. Like, just be, be with one, be with one another and feel the wholeness of that connection and the wholeness of themselves. And so she put this in the last part of her play. And as I was thinking about, you know, our conversation today, I was like, ah, maybe I just do like a little Q and A with John. Just some kind of random questions that I would be interested in, which are all in some ways connected to what we've been talking about. But, um, would you be up for a little, I've never done this before, but I have a couple questions on index cards that I have for you, if you're interested.

John PS: 1:36:45

I've got to buy some index cards. What a great

Robyn Cohen: 1:36:48

thing.

John PS: 1:36:48

Index

Robyn Cohen: 1:36:49

cards are the best. Do you like the colored index card or do you like, I mean, the size, the five by sevens? I'm

John PS: 1:36:58

so early in my index card fantasies that I can't answer that question.

Robyn Cohen: 1:37:03

The index cards fantasies. Ah, I got that. I got that. Um, so we joke that the play we're putting on is called What the Constitution Means to Me, or The Play About the Index Cards. Okay. So, all right, here's one. What piece of art has had the biggest impact on your life?

John PS: 1:37:31

Cyrano de Bergerac. I was on stage crew for Serenota Bergerac when I was 13, 12, 13. And, uh, uh, and it was a very good production student production that became, uh, a legend at the high school where it was done, uh, to this very day. I went, I've gone back to the high school. They threw me out. Uh, and, uh, but then they invited me back as their honored guest.

Robyn Cohen: 1:38:03

All

John PS: 1:38:05

right. Poetic

Robyn Cohen: 1:38:07

justice.

John PS: 1:38:08

I mentioned that play and they said people were still talking about it. So the play was performed in 1964 and people are still talking about that production.

Robyn Cohen: 1:38:18

Brilliant.

John PS: 1:38:19

And you were on the crew. I was backstage and I would hear it from the wings and that relationship to the material being neither part of the audience nor part of the acting troupe, but a third thing. It turned out to be I was a playwright.

Robyn Cohen: 1:38:41

That's so oh, I heard a cell phone come in. I did. You're back, you're back. I love that blending of Cyrano de Bergeac and modern technology and then there we were, and here we are, we're back. We're back. Oh, what is the biggest risk you've ever taken?

John PS: 1:39:16

Oh, man, I've taken a lot of risks. Yeah.

Robyn Cohen: 1:39:22

It's hard to name just one. A series of risks is your life.

John PS: 1:39:29

It's an interesting thing because I think objectively, in other words, from other people's point of view, there's several things that they would point at as, as, uh, hair raising, uh, risks. But for me, not so much. For me, leaving my first wife, because I had nothing. I had no idea of anything past the door closing behind me. I had nothing. I owned nothing. I had no money. I had no place to go. I just was walking out the door and I never came back.

Robyn Cohen: 1:40:05

Wow.

John PS: 1:40:06

So that was big...

Robyn Cohen: 1:40:08

May I just ask as a side, a sidebar, when you walked out, did you already have the vision? You said clarity, but when you walked out, did it include a vision of the life, your life to come?

John PS: 1:40:27

No. It had, no. It had clarity about the life I didn't want. Got it. And all that was in the other life was nothing. It was me. It was just the first day of the rest of my life and there was nothing there yet. But the alternative was all of the stuff that I had been calling my life and that's what I had to leave. You

Robyn Cohen: 1:40:51

Courage! I think of the Wizard of Oz all the time. It's a big

John PS: 1:40:56

one. Courage is a big one.

Robyn Cohen: 1:40:57

Courage! Uch. It's in every syllable of John's plays. Um, what quality do you value most in other people?

John PS: 1:41:16

True eccentricity. Uh, stuff that is just part of who they are, that, um, I get to see, yeah, I mean, most of the stuff that I've done in my life has been so that I won't be bored, uh, you know, uh, and that has been since the very beginning. And the thing that, uh, the danger is always other people, because other people want to bore me. It's an active, it's an act of aggression. Wow. Because what they're doing is they're trying to control the experience of being alive. And since I'm having one, they want to put that fire out before it burns down their house. Um,

Robyn Cohen: 1:42:22

Ah, okay. Would you rather know all the mysteries of the future or all the mysteries of the past?

John PS: 1:42:36

There's no difference. You know, the past and the future don't exist. Uh, all times are now. Uh, and so it's not simply like the past is irrelevant and the future unknown, no. It's time itself is, I think, an illusion and that all times are taking place right now. I've already died, I haven't been born. That's happening right now, and it will continue to happen. Uh, and so, you know, when you experience, let's say, the death of a loved one, they're also still alive, um, and you're dead. Everything's happening, everything's happening all the time.

Robyn Cohen: 1:43:24

And there's science and quantum mechanics, quantum physics that speaks to the fact of what you just said. I find it comforting. As best they

John PS: 1:43:37

understand

Robyn Cohen: 1:43:37

it. They don't understand

John PS: 1:43:39

it, you know, they're barely, you know, kind of describing out of the side of their mouth something that doesn't make any sense to them.

Robyn Cohen: 1:43:46

Yeah, yeah. Well, how, how could it? But there's that, that knowing, there is that knowing. Yeah. And they are trying to prove it scientifically.

John PS: 1:43:58

Yeah, I don't feel like, you know, when you talk about, you know, wanting to know the mysteries of the past or the future or now.

Robyn Cohen: 1:44:08

Yeah.

John PS: 1:44:09

Uh, I don't really know that there are any. I don't know that maybe that that's the right way of the most productive way of thinking about it. Mm hmm.

Robyn Cohen: 1:44:24

What would be a more productive way?

John PS: 1:44:27

Uh, I don't know. I think that you just got to keep showing up and notice your current preoccupations and how they change, that they're not always the same. Uh, and and what you and what you do with that, um,

Robyn Cohen: 1:44:50

so I find that so comforting because somehow it makes it all a little less mysterious and somehow the universe more accessible. So this is a penultimate, a penultimate question from a student. And then I have one more question before we complete. So the world is ending tomorrow. What's the last line of the play?

John PS: 1:45:23

I'll tell you tomorrow. My, my, my greatest fear, I expressed to a friend of mine, uh, a while back was, I'm on a plane and the plane is crashing, it's starting to crash, uh, and I think of something really funny and I say it and no one will survive to tell what I thought of. I can't die like this. This is too good. Just, somehow, get it out of the plane. Get it out of the plane.

Robyn Cohen: 1:46:08

Ah! Okay. We should probably finish on that. But, uh, I'll just ask you this as a I mean, that sort of said it all. That says it all. But, as a boon. How would you, John, describe yourself in three words?

John PS: 1:46:30

Um, oh gosh, I don't know.

Robyn Cohen: 1:46:33

That's a good one. I don't know. I, yeah.

John PS: 1:46:36

Do we need, do we need so, do we need so many words? Three's a pretty high number.

Robyn Cohen: 1:46:44

There's the answer, folks. Folks!

John PS: 1:46:46

I am, I am, I am. I am, I am. That's all I got.

Robyn Cohen: 1:46:59

John, you are. You are. You are. You are.

John PS: 1:47:04

So are you, baby.

Robyn Cohen: 1:47:09

This is, uh, this is beyond beyond. Thank you. Thank you for sharing this unbelievable time and cyberspace with me and the many who will be privy to hear this and so excited and encouraged to hear this. You are, um, And you've really, um, you really make the world go round for a lot of people, creatives and non creatives. And, um, so on behalf of, on behalf of the creatives, the non creatives and the, the world community, Thank you for your I amness and thank you for your courage and your brazenness and your humor and poetry, and passion and life. You just, you make people want to live. And every time I, yeah. And every time I think of you, or I, I, you make me want to, every time I see something, I'm like, you make me want to be everything. You make me want to be an actor. And then I remember, Oh, good. I am. It's okay. I am an actor, but you make me want to be, you know, be everything. And I just can't tell you what that does for me and for the people around me and for the world at large. So thank you. And God bless you. And, um, this is going to, this is going to be out there for people to hear in the new year. And, um, I'm just going to say that, you know, for all of you folks listening, will you come back for a Part two, sequel.

John PS: 1:49:08

Well, maybe in a year.

Robyn Cohen: 1:49:12

That's the right answer. That's the right answer, folks. Uh, okay, well, uh, uh, I just wanna, I just wanna, I don't know, pinch your, not pinch your cheeks, but you know, mwah, mwah. All that stuff. Thank you also for the dance party leading into this. That was a total blast. All right. Thank you. Thank you. You're the best. So appreciate you. You too. God bless you. Ciao. Ciao. Ciao. Ciao. Grazie. Amore. Gelato. That's all I got. Thank you, John. Thank you. Thank you. I love you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

John PS: 1:49:54

I can't turn this off.

Robyn Cohen: 1:49:57

He's stuck. Oh, let's see. Let's see. Let's go. Thank you so much for joining us on today's Daily Joyride. Wow. Well, wow. Oh my goodness. That was, uh, ah, sometimes I don't use words to express the feeling. I just make noises. So that's what's happening right now. hope today's conversation has added some magic and wonder and passion and inspiration to your day. And remember the journey to a life filled with joy and authenticity and this kind of expression, it's always ongoing and we're here to explore it together for sure. So if you're inspired to dive deep, deeper into your own creative expression, don't miss our upcoming acting classes starting January 28th at the studio. It's an incredibly vibrant community where magic authenticity and power and presence and creative miracles are happening right and left and are just coming at us from every direction and with every interaction. So visit www.cohenactingstudio.com to sign yourself up and to get yourself in. And I can't wait to see you there starting January 28th. Also, I have a special gift for you. It's an audio recording. It's in the show notes. It's called 5 PROVEN WAYS TO PEACE AND POWER. It's designed to help you harness your inner strength and find real tranquility and equanimity in your daily life. So download it from the link in our show notes or visit the website, www. cohenactingstudio. com for more details. And lastly, if you've enjoyed today's episode as much as I have, or even, even half as much as I have, please subscribe. Please share this show with your friends and family and leave us a review if you can. Your support helps us so much. It helps us to reach more people, more listeners, more eyeballs and earballs, so that we can create even more transformative content with more incredible guests and so on and so forth. So stay tuned, keep shining your light, and let's all just ride the waves of life together with some grace and joy and power and presence, and let's keep embracing the art of living and the art of loving your life. Ha! Sounds like a plan. Okay. See you next time. Mwah!