“I remember we were talking about it pre-pandemic,” he says.
I don’t know.
I’m just interested in other things.'
Oscar Isaac in ‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window’.Julieta Cervantes
“There was already an energy there,” he continues.
Let’s see.'"
Watch the conversation in the video above or read more below.
Rachel Brosnahan and Oscar Isaac in ‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window’.Julieta Cervantes
The stuff has to come out.
All that junk has to come out.
But the the real stuff, what’s really underneath there, we don’t want to know that.
Rachel Brosnahan and Oscar Isaac in ‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window’.Julieta Cervantes
HARRIS: That is so true.
ISAAC: That’s the thing.
They’re just as difficult and conflicted and full of contradiction and not easily digestible.
Miriam Silverman in ‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window’.Julieta Cervantes
It’s very purposefully that way.
It is pastiche in some ways too.
There’s vaudeville, there’s Borscht belt, there’s Chekhov, there’s Greek tragedy.
Rachel Brosnahan in ‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window’.Julieta Cervantes
There’s all these different forms that conflict and have discordance in them.
But it creates something that feels so unique and gives a bubbling, primordial feeling it.
People misunderstand what a writer’s job is, especially in this moment when identity is also a product.
We treat things with very little nuance and complexity.
In other forms, a self-portrait can look like a landscape, a self-portrait can look like a scene.
You have to piece together all the reasons why that person’s body is there.
RACHEL BROSNAHAN (Iris): She feels so viscerally present in every single character in this play.
But I definitely hear her speaking through Iris based on what we know about her.
We’ve had the great privilege of digging into some of her life and activism and other work.
That to me is the moment that feels the most directly connected to Lorraine.
Lorraine had already experienced great success as an artist at 29.
At 29, Iris has yet to experience any of that success.
But, in some ways, Iris also feels like the opposite of Lorraine.
Iris might have been her inner white girl in some ways.
The one who can throw a temper tantrum and be a mess because she couldn’t.
Even if that came with its own challenges too.
Everyone is their own hipster."
What do you think Mavis and, by extension, Lorraine are getting at with that line?
They think they’re in this world that is unique and special.
Because you’re a rich, Upper East side, conservative doesn’t mean you’re square.
You’re having your own life, you’re doing your own thing.
There are depths to plumb.
There are secrets there.
[Hansberry] did that so brilliantly with everybody.
They flip and turn and harm and betray and surprise us all throughout the play.
I like that idea.
And they don’t teach us that.
She also got down with the get down, you know what I mean?
She was hanging out with the freaks and the funky people too.
She wrote an intersectional play to be like a f— you to her peers.
She also threw in her diss track against Edward Albee.
Any time someone has an excuse to disengage that person’s called out.
HARRIS: Your plays are not necessarily better because they’re different.
We’re doing different things to get to the same point.
And that is part of being a human being.
That’s part of being an artist.
She says that so beautifully and so clearly.
But to your earlier point, just to name it, this was Lorraine’s community too.
She knew every single one of these people so intimately.
The audience said, “We want this play here.
We don’t care what the critics have to say.
We want to see this play happen.”
Are you guys feeling that?
What do you think about the feeling of this play?
What do you think it is about this play that inspires their spirit in an audience?
Cause I feel like I’ve seen it here.
SILVERMAN: It’s with young people too.
I feel like we meet all these people at the stage door who [are making] repeat visits.
They saw it at BAM; they come back to Broadway twice, four, five times.
It’s so many people’s first Broadway show.
So to this day, when I hear somebody talk about, saying, “It was unfinished.
It’s messy.”
That’s one way to say it.
That’s so incredible.
That’s also been part of the buzz and the excitement about engaging with this.
ISAAC: It’s a reminder of what a once in a generation voice she had.
She was such an original, nonconformist, anti-establishment provocateur.
And had she lived, what could’ve been.
It’s been a profoundly moving experience to live multiple lives with this play.
That’s what gave us the jet fuel to do this.
But the real visionary that I must thank in this moment is Annie Kauffman.
Because Annie has stood by this play since she was 19 years old.
Let’s see."
HARRIS: This is really crazy because this play has been on Broadway twice.
And you have not let us down.
SILVERMAN: Thank God.
I only learned that like the week before the nominations.
I learned that both Frances Sternhagen and Alice Ghostley had been nominated.
So thank goodness I didn’t break the streak.
It’s one of the most gorgeously crafted characters I could ever hope to play.
It’s a credit to [Hansberry’s] genius.
HARRIS: When an actor gets to meet writing like that, it’s always so fun.
It’s never been nominated for Best Revival and never been nominated for Best Play until this season.
What are you guys feeling as we go into this moment with that nomination?
BROSNAHAN: It’s felt really organic, this whole process.
That actually is just the cherry on this sundae.
Every single person here was in it for the passion of this work.
But it feels like an organic part of the journey of this show.
SILVERMAN: And it’s your work.
We left and I talked to Annie.
These two roles are impossibly hard roles.
They’re two of the hardest leading roles that exist in theater.
I’ve never told you guys this, but she was like, “I found them.”
She basically said, “I don’t want to do this without these actors.”
And so we just talked on the phone and cried a little bit because we were so happy.
It’s Best Revival because of that and this amazing casting and their work.
