February 21, 2025 • 14 mins
Christine Nagy talks with Tina Landau, who is making history this spring as the first woman to direct and co-write two Broadway shows in a single season with Redwood and Floyd Collins.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Broadway presents Inside Broadway, the podcast about everything theater. It's
where you hear what happens from the ticket window to
the stage door, with the stars and creative forces that
make it all come alive. Here's your host, Light FM's
Christine Neeggy.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
We have an incredible guest today that I'm so excited
to introduce you to. She is Tony nominated director, writer
and lyricist, making history this spring as the first woman
to direct and co write two new shows on Broadway
in the very same season. Tina Landau. Tina, welcome, Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Thank you for having me. That just made me nervous here.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
It's very inspiring. Tina, your story is incredible and I
want to congratulate you. I just saw Redwood the Musical
and it's absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
And I know the reviews have been amazing, so congratulations
on that. The return of Adina Menzel, if you will,
to Broadway to her home at the newer Lander Theater.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Yes, well, that's been really special and that was a
big impetus for doing the show in general, was my
desire to work with and create something for aDNA, and
it's so wonderful. How she commits herself to new work
and really doesn't think like, oh, I want to be
back on Broadway. She thinks, this is the story I
want to tell and support and be inside. So that's
(01:27):
been a real gift.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
This story is incredibly touching and I find very relatable,
and I don't want to give anything away, So I
would like it better if you could set the stage
for us. So describing the show to someone who's not
familiar with.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
It, sure, I would say. It begins with a woman
who is going through some tumult and has a life
that is reeling in her home of New York City,
who spontaneously and somewhat erradically takes off on a road
trip in an attempt to really escape and flee her life,
(02:05):
not knowing where she's going, and she ends up in
the redwood forests of northern California. She drives all the
way cross country, and there she encounters two forest canopy
botanists who introduce her to the wonders and the mysteries
and the adventures of the forest and tree climbing and
(02:26):
life in the canopy of a redwood, and she goes
on a journey that is full of healing and transformation
and a rediscovery of her reason for living and ultimately
a reconnection with the life she had tried to run
away from and avoid.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And how did you and Adina come up with this story?
Was an inspired by something that happened in your own lives?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Yes, we originally met fifteen years ago to speak very
broadly about kind of the idea of someone in a tree,
because she had been following a story that included that,
and I had been working on a novel adaptation that
included that, and that never came to fruition. But years
(03:15):
later we we met again around the pandemic, and we
both still had this image in our head of a
woman sitting in a tree and why did that compel
us and grab us and hold us? And what would
the story be behind that kind of metaphoric image. And
(03:35):
at that time I knew that I couldn't direct because
theater was shutting down, and that I was going to write.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
And also at the beginning of the pandemic.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
I lost a nephew who I was very close with,
and he was very young, and I found myself sitting
amongst and within and with the trees around my house
in Connecticut and eventually actually that that winter took off
with my partner and we drove cross country and we
(04:07):
ended up in the Redwood Forest. So well, it's not
autobiographical literally, I think the journey I went through psychically
at that time is really what guided the story we
ended up with. And Adina was there by my side
the whole time, hearing the idea, saying yeah, go that way,
or turn that way, or go with that character, and
(04:30):
so we just talked all the way through it as
I was making it.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I think that's what we're connecting with so much to
in the theater. I know, for me personally and the
people that I was with, is the healing that we
find in nature, especially when we don't have answers, you know,
when there when there is incredible loss. What you talked
about going to the trees, that's something that I've done
in my personal life. So is so so touched by it.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Yeah, it's it's amazing because you know, we think, of
course we do that what we're going through on our
own is the only experience and all that matters, and
all we can see, and then you look outside yourself
and you see that nature and trees go through the
life cycles. Things you know, happen, and there is loss
(05:23):
and there is rebirth, and there is joy in new greenery.
And you know, there's something very to me, almost comforting
about watching how nature spins its wheel and time. And
I think the beauty of something like that is that
it can make you feel both very small but to
(05:43):
me more so, very much a part of something larger
than myself. So when I look at the night sky
or redwood forest, I don't feel small and meaningless. I
feel part of something larger, and I feel a connection
and I find solace in that.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah, the same here absolutely so. Your entire cast in
this show is incredible. They're all so so wonderful. How
did everyone prepare because we do have a tree on
stage that they're climbing, I mean just physically that looks
incredibly challenging.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, it's crazy and fun.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
From the very beginning, I knew that I didn't want
to do kind of mechanical or engineered I don't even
know what the word is, like flying by Foy kind
of stuff that was, you know, machines hoisting people. That
I wanted it to be the real thing, that arborous
and tree climbers, and you know, these scientists that work
in the redwoods do so I had to find a
(06:46):
company that would help materialize that and train in that,
and was very fortunate to find a company called band
Loop that both has background in tree climbing and our
boreal techniques if that's a real word, and also is
a vertical dance company. So lucky that Bandaloop is both
(07:11):
steeped in the practical and the mechanics, but also understands
vertical space and movement as the poetry it is. So
they have been able to bring to the process both
the goods for how to do the thing, but also
the meaning in the thing itself. So our actors all
(07:33):
trained extensively with them. Dina and our composer Kate Diaz
and myself all went to Oakland very early on before
La Joya, our first production in Lahoya, and did sessions
with Bandaloop where we learned how to climb a redwood
tree in Thomas's backyard, Thomas being one of the heads
(07:54):
of Bandaloop, And they took us into the forest and
they taught us rituals, and they taught us about carab
Beiner's and harnesses. And after that Adina went many times
to Oakland to train with them and to learn choreography choreography. Fortunately,
Kyla who plays Becca was able to go also and
train with them there, and Michael who plays Finn, learned
(08:18):
the training when we were in La Joya in our
first production. But it required, you know, putting up a
wall and ropes and doing extensive daily training for those guys.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah, the you had to work at the core. I think, yeah,
because I could talk about Redwood for days with you.
But I really would like to know what you feel
the takeaway would be for the audience. What would you
like to see the audience come away with?
Speaker 1 (08:40):
You know?
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Jesse sings At the end, she asks the question of
can she experience this feeling, this insight, this experience of
being with nature and carry it back into her world.
She asked that at the end, can I leave here
and hold this with me? I would love the audience
to leave our theater and hold something of that with them,
(09:01):
And by that I mean a sense of our place
in a greater both cosmological but also social pattern. And
I think the key word that comes to my mind
here is the word connections with other people in our
lives with the society we live in and with nature,
(09:24):
and so I hope people like the roots of a
redwood go out into the world and want to kind
of spread sideways and meet the roots of other trees
and join with them and intermingle. Because in the metaphor
of the redwood trees, you know, the roots only go
down five or six feet into the ground, so they
can possibly hold up this three hundred foot being. So
(09:48):
what they do instead is they go horizontally and lock
into the roots of other trees that they meet. And
so when you look at a redwood, what's actually happening
is that it's the support system of all the other
trees that is holding that one tall. And that's very
much a metaphor for how I think of our lives.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
It's how I think of how.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
We made the show, which is we need each other,
we help each other, we hold each other up. And
I hope an audience can see that and desire that
anew Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I do believe that we come away with that. Now
you've got this great success with Redwood and then boom,
you're moving right on to another show. So, Floyd Collins,
what is your day like right now? Are you all
Redwood all the time or now just completely into Floyd Collins.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Okay, literally today is my one day off between the two.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
So I was at the Redwood Theater yesterday.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
We were doing our b roll and some shoots and
I was doing some notes, working on things, and I
start Floyd Colln's tomorrow. Oh wow, Okay, it's our first rehearsal.
So I don't know, I know what's going to happen.
It seems surreal. I don't feel ready. I do feel
like I wish I had a three week vacation right now,
(11:07):
but I don't. And I am just hoping and trusting
that the two shows speak to each other and feed
each other. And you know, they are related in my
mind to each other thematically and even somewhat in terms
of production, very different and very the same in different ways.
(11:29):
So I'm just going to try to be in both
worlds and allow them to talk to each other.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
And Floyd Collins was something that was a show of
that went up off Broadway in the nineties, correct, so
bringing it back now it's coming to Lincoln Center. This
show also sounds like, as you said, there's connections in
that it's dealing with nature and isolation.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Yeah, in Floyd, we have a man who is a
seeker and goes underground, below ground and becomes trapped in
one position and stays in a cave underground. And in
Redwood we have a woman a seeker who goes up
into a Redwood tree and it's not trapped, but remains
(12:15):
that on that platform for the bulk of the show.
So they're kind of like inverse images of each other.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
So Tina, this doesn't happen overnight, and that you have
two shows running on Broadway for people who are inspired
by you and would like to follow in your footsteps
and write and direct theater. Tell us a little bit
about your background, if you can, and how you got
started and discovered that you had this gift.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
You know, I was one of these kids who, at
age six, was putting on the shows in the basement
and would walk around not really knowing what I was saying,
and saying.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I want to be a director.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
I always just liked making things, and I've always thought
of writing and directing as very related than overlapping actions,
because when I'm directing, I'm writing with light and sound
and movement, and when I'm writing, i'm writing images, and
(13:13):
you know, they're both very much to me the same act,
which is of making something. So I don't subscribe to
what a lot of people would say, which is how
can you do both? And you shouldn't do both, because
to me, they're intertwined like those redwood roots. But I
grew up going to the theater, seeing Broadway shows, and
(13:33):
then I kind of went off on my own into
a deep dive for many years of high school and
college and beyond into a more kind of experimental, avant
garde theater world. And I always thought that those two
worlds could never coexist and that I had to choose
and be one or the other. But I really just
(13:54):
followed my bliss and learned that they could be synthesized
and speak to each other and really beautiful ways. And
I have never followed a traditional career path. I haven't
taken jobs just to work.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I've always kind.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Of lived by my heart and thought, if I have
a career, great, If I don't, that's okay. I'm just
going to do what feels true and real to me
and allows me to be an artist in the world.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Well, congratulations, because the work has just been stunning, So
thank you.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
So much.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Thank you. Really such a pleasure to meet you. And
Floyd Collins will be at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at
Lincoln Center, performances set to begin March twenty seventh. And
of course you can see Adina Menzel in the entire
wonderful cast of Redwood at the Neederlander Theater. I'm Christine Nagy.
Thank you. We will see you next time on Inside Broadway.
iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Broadway presents Inside Broadway, the podcast about everything theater. It's
where you hear what happens from the ticket window to
the stage door, with the stars and creative forces that
make it all come alive. Here's your host, Light FM's
Christine Neeggy.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
We have an incredible guest today that I'm so excited
to introduce you to. She is Tony nominated director, writer
and lyricist, making history this spring as the first woman
to direct and co write two new shows on Broadway
in the very same season. Tina Landau. Tina, welcome, Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Thank you for having me. That just made me nervous here.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
It's very inspiring. Tina, your story is incredible and I
want to congratulate you. I just saw Redwood the Musical
and it's absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
And I know the reviews have been amazing, so congratulations
on that. The return of Adina Menzel, if you will,
to Broadway to her home at the newer Lander Theater.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Yes, well, that's been really special and that was a
big impetus for doing the show in general, was my
desire to work with and create something for aDNA, and
it's so wonderful. How she commits herself to new work
and really doesn't think like, oh, I want to be
back on Broadway. She thinks, this is the story I
want to tell and support and be inside. So that's
(01:27):
been a real gift.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
This story is incredibly touching and I find very relatable,
and I don't want to give anything away, So I
would like it better if you could set the stage
for us. So describing the show to someone who's not
familiar with.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
It, sure, I would say. It begins with a woman
who is going through some tumult and has a life
that is reeling in her home of New York City,
who spontaneously and somewhat erradically takes off on a road
trip in an attempt to really escape and flee her life,
(02:05):
not knowing where she's going, and she ends up in
the redwood forests of northern California. She drives all the
way cross country, and there she encounters two forest canopy
botanists who introduce her to the wonders and the mysteries
and the adventures of the forest and tree climbing and
(02:26):
life in the canopy of a redwood, and she goes
on a journey that is full of healing and transformation
and a rediscovery of her reason for living and ultimately
a reconnection with the life she had tried to run
away from and avoid.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And how did you and Adina come up with this story?
Was an inspired by something that happened in your own lives?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Yes, we originally met fifteen years ago to speak very
broadly about kind of the idea of someone in a tree,
because she had been following a story that included that,
and I had been working on a novel adaptation that
included that, and that never came to fruition. But years
(03:15):
later we we met again around the pandemic, and we
both still had this image in our head of a
woman sitting in a tree and why did that compel
us and grab us and hold us? And what would
the story be behind that kind of metaphoric image. And
(03:35):
at that time I knew that I couldn't direct because
theater was shutting down, and that I was going to write.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
And also at the beginning of the pandemic.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
I lost a nephew who I was very close with,
and he was very young, and I found myself sitting
amongst and within and with the trees around my house
in Connecticut and eventually actually that that winter took off
with my partner and we drove cross country and we
(04:07):
ended up in the Redwood Forest. So well, it's not
autobiographical literally, I think the journey I went through psychically
at that time is really what guided the story we
ended up with. And Adina was there by my side
the whole time, hearing the idea, saying yeah, go that way,
or turn that way, or go with that character, and
(04:30):
so we just talked all the way through it as
I was making it.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I think that's what we're connecting with so much to
in the theater. I know, for me personally and the
people that I was with, is the healing that we
find in nature, especially when we don't have answers, you know,
when there when there is incredible loss. What you talked
about going to the trees, that's something that I've done
in my personal life. So is so so touched by it.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Yeah, it's it's amazing because you know, we think, of
course we do that what we're going through on our
own is the only experience and all that matters, and
all we can see, and then you look outside yourself
and you see that nature and trees go through the
life cycles. Things you know, happen, and there is loss
(05:23):
and there is rebirth, and there is joy in new greenery.
And you know, there's something very to me, almost comforting
about watching how nature spins its wheel and time. And
I think the beauty of something like that is that
it can make you feel both very small but to
(05:43):
me more so, very much a part of something larger
than myself. So when I look at the night sky
or redwood forest, I don't feel small and meaningless. I
feel part of something larger, and I feel a connection
and I find solace in that.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah, the same here absolutely so. Your entire cast in
this show is incredible. They're all so so wonderful. How
did everyone prepare because we do have a tree on
stage that they're climbing, I mean just physically that looks
incredibly challenging.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, it's crazy and fun.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
From the very beginning, I knew that I didn't want
to do kind of mechanical or engineered I don't even
know what the word is, like flying by Foy kind
of stuff that was, you know, machines hoisting people. That
I wanted it to be the real thing, that arborous
and tree climbers, and you know, these scientists that work
in the redwoods do so I had to find a
(06:46):
company that would help materialize that and train in that,
and was very fortunate to find a company called band
Loop that both has background in tree climbing and our
boreal techniques if that's a real word, and also is
a vertical dance company. So lucky that Bandaloop is both
(07:11):
steeped in the practical and the mechanics, but also understands
vertical space and movement as the poetry it is. So
they have been able to bring to the process both
the goods for how to do the thing, but also
the meaning in the thing itself. So our actors all
(07:33):
trained extensively with them. Dina and our composer Kate Diaz
and myself all went to Oakland very early on before
La Joya, our first production in Lahoya, and did sessions
with Bandaloop where we learned how to climb a redwood
tree in Thomas's backyard, Thomas being one of the heads
(07:54):
of Bandaloop, And they took us into the forest and
they taught us rituals, and they taught us about carab
Beiner's and harnesses. And after that Adina went many times
to Oakland to train with them and to learn choreography choreography. Fortunately,
Kyla who plays Becca was able to go also and
train with them there, and Michael who plays Finn, learned
(08:18):
the training when we were in La Joya in our
first production. But it required, you know, putting up a
wall and ropes and doing extensive daily training for those guys.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah, the you had to work at the core. I think, yeah,
because I could talk about Redwood for days with you.
But I really would like to know what you feel
the takeaway would be for the audience. What would you
like to see the audience come away with?
Speaker 1 (08:40):
You know?
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Jesse sings At the end, she asks the question of
can she experience this feeling, this insight, this experience of
being with nature and carry it back into her world.
She asked that at the end, can I leave here
and hold this with me? I would love the audience
to leave our theater and hold something of that with them,
(09:01):
And by that I mean a sense of our place
in a greater both cosmological but also social pattern. And
I think the key word that comes to my mind
here is the word connections with other people in our
lives with the society we live in and with nature,
(09:24):
and so I hope people like the roots of a
redwood go out into the world and want to kind
of spread sideways and meet the roots of other trees
and join with them and intermingle. Because in the metaphor
of the redwood trees, you know, the roots only go
down five or six feet into the ground, so they
can possibly hold up this three hundred foot being. So
(09:48):
what they do instead is they go horizontally and lock
into the roots of other trees that they meet. And
so when you look at a redwood, what's actually happening
is that it's the support system of all the other
trees that is holding that one tall. And that's very
much a metaphor for how I think of our lives.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
It's how I think of how.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
We made the show, which is we need each other,
we help each other, we hold each other up. And
I hope an audience can see that and desire that
anew Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I do believe that we come away with that. Now
you've got this great success with Redwood and then boom,
you're moving right on to another show. So, Floyd Collins,
what is your day like right now? Are you all
Redwood all the time or now just completely into Floyd Collins.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Okay, literally today is my one day off between the two.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
So I was at the Redwood Theater yesterday.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
We were doing our b roll and some shoots and
I was doing some notes, working on things, and I
start Floyd Colln's tomorrow. Oh wow, Okay, it's our first rehearsal.
So I don't know, I know what's going to happen.
It seems surreal. I don't feel ready. I do feel
like I wish I had a three week vacation right now,
(11:07):
but I don't. And I am just hoping and trusting
that the two shows speak to each other and feed
each other. And you know, they are related in my
mind to each other thematically and even somewhat in terms
of production, very different and very the same in different ways.
(11:29):
So I'm just going to try to be in both
worlds and allow them to talk to each other.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
And Floyd Collins was something that was a show of
that went up off Broadway in the nineties, correct, so
bringing it back now it's coming to Lincoln Center. This
show also sounds like, as you said, there's connections in
that it's dealing with nature and isolation.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Yeah, in Floyd, we have a man who is a
seeker and goes underground, below ground and becomes trapped in
one position and stays in a cave underground. And in
Redwood we have a woman a seeker who goes up
into a Redwood tree and it's not trapped, but remains
(12:15):
that on that platform for the bulk of the show.
So they're kind of like inverse images of each other.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
So Tina, this doesn't happen overnight, and that you have
two shows running on Broadway for people who are inspired
by you and would like to follow in your footsteps
and write and direct theater. Tell us a little bit
about your background, if you can, and how you got
started and discovered that you had this gift.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
You know, I was one of these kids who, at
age six, was putting on the shows in the basement
and would walk around not really knowing what I was saying,
and saying.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I want to be a director.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
I always just liked making things, and I've always thought
of writing and directing as very related than overlapping actions,
because when I'm directing, I'm writing with light and sound
and movement, and when I'm writing, i'm writing images, and
(13:13):
you know, they're both very much to me the same act,
which is of making something. So I don't subscribe to
what a lot of people would say, which is how
can you do both? And you shouldn't do both, because
to me, they're intertwined like those redwood roots. But I
grew up going to the theater, seeing Broadway shows, and
(13:33):
then I kind of went off on my own into
a deep dive for many years of high school and
college and beyond into a more kind of experimental, avant
garde theater world. And I always thought that those two
worlds could never coexist and that I had to choose
and be one or the other. But I really just
(13:54):
followed my bliss and learned that they could be synthesized
and speak to each other and really beautiful ways. And
I have never followed a traditional career path. I haven't
taken jobs just to work.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I've always kind.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Of lived by my heart and thought, if I have
a career, great, If I don't, that's okay. I'm just
going to do what feels true and real to me
and allows me to be an artist in the world.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Well, congratulations, because the work has just been stunning, So
thank you.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
So much.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Thank you. Really such a pleasure to meet you. And
Floyd Collins will be at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at
Lincoln Center, performances set to begin March twenty seventh. And
of course you can see Adina Menzel in the entire
wonderful cast of Redwood at the Neederlander Theater. I'm Christine Nagy.
Thank you. We will see you next time on Inside Broadway.
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