Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat:

Peter Brosius: Make the work you want to make. Don’t start saying, I’m gonna make this work. So 20 years from now, I can make that, make the work you want to make. And whether that’s, make it with a, a group of your friends. Make it with your neighbors. Make it with kids from college. Make it whatever way you can, but don’t think there’s a path to make the work you want by making something else. Make the work you wanna make. That speaks to you, that is from you. And there can be a path for others to see that passion, that genius, that creativity, that heart, that hunger, and the world’s waiting for your story ’cause no one else has told that story.

Announcer: This is StoryBeat with Steve Cuden, a podcast for the Creative Mind Storybeat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on StoryBeat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, Peter Brosius, has served as the artistic director of Minneapolis’s Children’s Theater Company since 1997, where he’s directed the world premieres of Dr. Seuss’s, the Niches, the musical, the Last Firefly Seed folks, animal dance, and many others, all of which were commissioned and workshopped by Children’s Theater Company.

Previously, Peter was the artistic director of the Honolulu Theater for Youth and the Improvisational Theater Project at the Mark Taper Forum During Peter’s tenure at CTC, he’s produced more than 187 shows brought to life more than 70 new works from commission to fully developed stage productions.

Served more than 5 million children and community members founded innovative educational programming and championed. Equity, diversity and inclusion efforts to eliminate barriers to participation for those underrepresented in the theater. Peter’s passion has been at the core of CTCs mission to educate, challenge, and inspire young people and their communities through extraordinary theater experiences.Peter and the CTC have worked with more than 100 writers, including Cheryl West Nelo Cruz, Naomi Zuka. Larissa Fast Horse, Imar, Moses Jerome Hairston, Barry Cornhouser Lloyd Saw Will Power. Liz Duffy Adams, Carlos Marillo, Kia Cotran, Philip Dawkins, and Greg Banks. A major new initiative generation now is a partnership between CTC.

And Penumbra Latino Theater Company, ye and Native Voices at the Autry, to commission and develop 16 new plays and musicals by Black Indigenous A API and Latinx Writers for a multi-generational audience. These [00:03:00] new works will have a life. For years to come. Peter’s also introduced preschool programming to CTC, commissioning original works and bringing in extraordinary preschool productions from across the globe.

CTC has also become a major presenter of acclaimed international productions from Europe, Africa, and Asia. So for all those reasons and many more. It’s a truly great privilege for me to welcome the visionary leader of Children’s Theater Company, the wonderfully multi-talented Peter Brosius to StoryBeat today. Peter, welcome to the show.

Peter Brosius: Hey, thanks so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Steve Cuden: Oh, the privilege is all mine, believe me. So let’s go back in time a little bit. Where were you at? What part? Part of your life when the show Biz Bug First bit you? How old were you?

Peter Brosius: Oh, um. I was very blessed. My mom was an amateur actress in community theater.

Mm-Hmm. So I can’t actually remember a time when I wasn’t making theater. Mm. So as a little peanut, I was, you know, I was in every kind of show from music, man sound and music, dark at the top of the stairs. They knew what they wanted. Sunrise at Camp Abello, I was always in a show and we’d be slamming down dinner at the dinner table and racing off to some kind of a rehearsal.

So it was a part of my life that, um. I just love so many things about it. I love the community and I loved as a little kid that I’d be, you know, respected and work with adults as equals. If I’m in a scene with you, we’re we’re, you know, we’re just playing a scene.

Steve Cuden: Sure.

Peter Brosius: So yeah, I just loved that part of it.

Steve Cuden: So it wasn’t children’s theater when you were a kid. It was theater.

Peter Brosius: I was just doing theater. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: So then what attracted you at some point to children’s theater?

Peter Brosius: Uh. I was an, an undergraduate at Hampshire College, which was a college in Amherst, Massachusetts, and a colleague of one of my professors had been doing a lot of work in Germany.

Uh, there was a very important theater there called the grips. Towns, or grips means sort of smarts or common sense. The way Hampshire College worked was you often had [00:05:00] drinks or coffee, you hung out. It wasn’t so much as relationships with professors and hanging out and talking, and together he. Um, for whatever complex of reasons he started share.

His name was Jack Zees and he started sharing me with me those scripts, information on this theater, and on the entire scene that was happening in Berlin, in the ear, in the seventies, early seventies. Okay. What was interesting about this work was it, it unapologetically took the side of young people. It was in the sense that, you know, the songs were delivered directly out to the audience.

They were based on. Salute, uh, solidarity with young people, whether that was, and it dealt with real issues of class, uh, environment, the punk movement, no future sexual repression. I mean, it was just, it was a very, very, very vital and a alive time. And so, you know, I read all these things and then as was happening that day, I hitchhiked across the country, hopped a plane, and, and landed in Berlin and sort of showed up on the door and tried to see [00:06:00] all the work I could.

Crashing on people’s couches to see this work, to meet with the people, to get to understand what was happening. And it was thrilling. You know, just seeing, watching things that weren’t happening in the United States, you know, teenagers lined up to see this work. Kids seeing themselves up on stage. I. You know, sophisticated dramaturgy, beautifully acted, beautifully directed work about real issues in young people’s lives.

And at that point, nothing like this was happening in the United States. Is it important that children’s theater be about children’s lives? Children’s theater has all kinds of opportunities about what it can be about. It can, it can open your imagination through, you know, classic tales and fables. It can also.

Help you see your own reality and help you see others’ realities in, in, in a contemporary world, and help you understand that the, the challenges you are facing are shared. The challenges you’re facing are not you alone because. Kids can feel so alone in their challenges, in their problems. Sure. And so I, what I loved about it was there were two kinds of theaters that were very interesting.

One was very Cabaret, which was a theater called Rot Gza. And the other was much more realistic in a brean way, uh, called the Grips Tattoo. And those two theaters had a big influence on me. One was with a band and cabaret and puppets and all kinds of, you know, funny audience participation things. And the other was.

Very tight, very clean, very politically astute. And those two things, uh, were two different ways of getting the audience to see themselves, to think differently, and to see that the theater could have a powerful impact. In telling their stories.

Steve Cuden: So what makes theater then special for kids? Is it that, that you’re growing their minds by showing them works on stage? What is it that makes, uh, children’s theater special for kids?

Peter Brosius: Well, a a couple things. One is when I make theater, I don’t really think about a difference. I think about making good theater. I think about high stakes, clean work, you know, beautifully realized, you know, high production values, you know, extraordinary acting.

Some of the differences are important though. Often in the work, it may center the experience of young people. Often in the work, it may look at the specific obstacles that the young people have to overcome. It may look at what kind of agency young people have in these situations, and it looks at that with an understanding of the complexity, the nuance, and the difficulty that young people face.

Because as adults we can sort of easily romanticize what it meant to be a young person. We look back at it with sort of rose colored glasses, when in fact it’s the hardest time of your life. You know, you know, you, you have so little power. Decisions are being made for you. It’s the time of greatest embarrassment, greatest humiliation, greatest exclusion, greatest bullying, and greatest learning as well.

Greatest learning. But you and I in our adult lives, probably go through the day most days without being bullied. Do you know what I mean?

Steve Cuden: That’s true.

Peter Brosius: It’s so difficult and your, your body’s changing. The world is changing. You have to apprehend and comprehend so much. [00:09:00] It’s a very difficult time, so I, you know, as I mentioned to you earlier, before we started the show, I’ve, I’ve written 90 animated scripts for kids, mostly for kids, not the little kids, but for kids from about 10 to 18.

And I never once wrote anything where I felt like I was writing down to anyone. Right.

Steve Cuden: How important is it that children’s theater not speak down to kids?

Peter Brosius: Kids live in our world? Kids, kids live in a very complex world, and now with, with an iPhone in their pocket and access to, you know, every piece of information that’s known to man.

Some of that beautiful, some of that complex, some of that brutal, we have to start with an understanding of how complex their realities are, how complex their understanding is, and those places of. How complex the emotional reality is for young people’s lives. So the greatest danger in this work is condescension is lying.

Is not respecting that audience is not understanding that they’re capable of very high stakes stories. Stories that have power, stories that have impact, stories that aren’t afraid to talk about difficult subjects because they live in our world, their parents, there’s a 50% chance their parents will be divorced.

Mm. They don’t. Their grandparents will die. You know, they, they will be in school. And especially now, like when I was growing up, there was bullying. It ended when I came into the house. Now with social media, it continues 24 7. Hmm. So these kids’ lives are just infinitely more complex in many ways than mine was.

And so we have to start with, you know, a profound respect. And when I look at it, I also look around the world and see the power of young people, for example, young people. When you look at who’s leading the, the fight on climate change, you know, you look at Greta Thunberg in Sweden, you know, starting at 16 challenging global leaders.

I happened to be in New York when the, the young people from Parkland in Florida had organized, you know, the, the fight for gun safety and gun common sense. And I was able to be in New York for this massive protest, which they’d organized in weeks. You know, these were teenagers, brilliant falling on this nation to finally act after they’d witnessed, you know, horrendous acts of violence at their school.

Steve Cuden: And so would you say kids are much more mature today because of all these influences?

Peter Brosius: I think there’s a whole set of things. I mean, I think because kids live in a, a, a, a media saturated world, they have, you know, the amount of images that they have. I mean, the kids I see are negotiating gender issues, racial issues, class issues to some degree in ways that are far more sophisticated than what I had to go through.

And what I nuanced, and I guess I sit in this chair rather optimistic because I’m seeing young people much more open, much more inclusive, much more relishing diversity, both in gender and in race. Then you then, then that was my experience

Steve Cuden: was, uh, children’s Theater Company. Did it have the same mission when you started 20 some odd years ago as it does today, or has that been expanded?

Peter Brosius: I, I think what we’ve tried to do is expand who makes the work, expand, whose commission to make the work, expand the vocabulary and aesthetic vocabulary of that work. Allowing for, you know, work that may be more contemporary, maybe come with an understanding of the political realities of young people, the differences in class, the differences in race, putting some of that much more center. At the same time, we’ve also tried to look at classic stories. Look at them through new lenses. Um, I mean, we just did a, a snow white with two actors through a feminist lens where White gets to tell her story, the untold story, you know, or I love that we get to look at classics and reimagine them and revisit them. In sort of new and muscular and highly theatrical ways.

Steve Cuden: Is that through commissioning writers to do that?

Peter Brosius: Yes.

Steve Cuden: And so you’ve obviously commissioned lots of writers over a long time. I think that’s a really marvelous thing that you’ve done there. ’cause a lot of theater companies don’t commission writers. They do the classics.

Peter Brosius: It’s very important for me for a couple reasons. One is because. I want the voice of artists, writers, and directors to engage with this audience. And whether that is because of the uniqueness of their aesthetic or the specificity of their cultural experience, that they bring their lens to this work.

Because what can we give young people? We can give them, we can give them wings, we can give them insights. They live in a very small world, a global world, and. Boy, they’d need to learn how to negotiate that world if they’re gonna be successful. You and I are not wearing clothes right now made in America. They are made because some corporation has set up a factory in India or Pakistan or China, or you know, Bangladesh. This is capitalism moves in a global way. Culture is moving in an increasingly global way. The interconnectedness of this planet is so profound that young people, I mean, we see our job as. Helping young people be curious, empathetic, compassionate, global citizens,

Steve Cuden: would you say that that job is getting more difficult because of all of these, the social media influences and all of these various different pressures on them?

Peter Brosius: I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I mean, social media is hugely complex and you know, the studies show that you know can often be very detrimental to the psychological health.

You know, particularly of young women, you know, all the kind of negativity and body shaming and all the kinds of the, the negative side of social media. The upside is they’re consuming so much more information. Their world is so much larger than mine. They, they’re in a world of complexity and surprise and racial and gender expansiveness that’s so different than how I grew up. So everything’s dialectical. Everything’s got a yin and a yang. Everything’s got a good side and a dark side. And while there’s fantastic aspects too. Social [00:15:00] media, you know, there’s dark sides that need to be attended to because they have, they have negative impacts on young people’s lives as well.

Steve Cuden: So let’s talk for a moment about being an artistic director of any theater company, let alone a children’s theater company. How did you learn to be an artistic director? You didn’t go to school for that, did you?

Peter Brosius: No, it’s a really good question. It’s the funniest thing in the world. ’cause I went to NYU, I got my MFA in directing at NYU. So it’s three years of directing. Thinking about Breton. Sean o’ Casey and Beckett and you know, all kinds of stuff. Shakespeare and, uh, blocking and working with designers. And then you come into the situation where you’re also dealing with fundraising and personnel issues and HR issues and strategic planning and working with a board. And nothing to do with creativity or the arts. Well, it is creative and it has to do with the arts, but it’s just different.

And no one’s taught you. And so, you know, now there’s a little more work and you know, some of the programs give you a little more information, but by and large, in my case, it was learning on the job. It was learning from good examples that you saw. It was learning from examples that didn’t feel right, and watching things that worked, and watching things that didn’t work, and trying to create cultures that were positive in places where you wanted to work. Some of it was analyzing what helps me as an artist, what’s the, what’s the environment where I feel freest and most comfortable and creative and safe and open, and how do I try and do that both in a rehearsal room? And also in a staff meeting and also in an all staff meeting, how do you celebrate creativity? How do you celebrate each other and how do you create a culture that is positive and not punitive and not shaming? And so you, you read a bunch of leadership books from the business community ’cause there wasn’t much on what it means to be an artistic director. So you read like. What’s a good leader mean? And like, how do you motivate a team and all those books And I, I bought lots and read lots and, uh, you go to conferences and listen, when people talk to you about leadership, and I mean, now there’s a little more training and there’s a little more, uh, resources out there. You learn and you, you, you try your best.

Steve Cuden: Who, who did you look up to as, uh, someone that you went, wow, that they’re doing a great job. I wanna study what they’re doing a little bit.

Peter Brosius: Let me think, let me think. I’m trying to think of examples that felt really good.

Steve Cuden: Was it Gordon Davidson at the Mark Paper Forum?

Peter Brosius: There were things that really worked about Gordon, and there was, there were challenges too. I mean, you know, I, I owe my career to Gordon. The parts that Gordon, uh, had that were unbelievably inspirational. Were how he started that theater. You know, starting it with productions like the deputy and choosing to do work that Matt, or the trial of the Catonsville nine. And the stories are wild that when he chose to do that work, in one case it’s an indictment of the Catholic church during the time of the Holocaust and the other, it’s a, you know, a explication of the, the bargain brothers. Talking about the need to stand up and be activists while they were on the lamb from the FBI. Okay. Right, right. And, and so, I mean, there was more courage in those selections than anything happening in the American theater, anything. And so that courage stays with you. The, the powers that be sort of tried to take that power away from him sort of tried to censor him, tried to stop that theater from having a voice and, um. He found allies and they stood with him, and the taper became the theater that it became, because he didn’t, he didn’t run away from it. He, he chose to, in particularly at those onset years, chose to be unbelievably brave, you know?

Steve Cuden: Well, unfortunately, it appears as we’re having this conversation that the economy has done it in, not critics, uh, and it, the Mark taper form is at least on hold, if not gone forever. We just don’t know it will.

Peter Brosius: Oh, no, no. It will not be gone forever. It will not be gone forever. Los Angeles wants that theater to exist. This is a tough time for many theaters. Mm-Hmm. But. But the, the love that’s been engendered, the leadership that, that theater’s done, the employment it’s offered, I have no doubt whatsoever that theater will be back.

Steve Cuden: So how long had you been at being an artistic director at CTC before you thought to yourself, you know what? I do have a handle on this. I am pretty good at it.

Peter Brosius: I don’t know if you ever feeling that. No. You know, every, every show is a, is a mountain to climb. Every budget is a, is a mountain to climb. Every season you come up is a mountain to climb. Meeting every funder is a challenge, you know, to get, to get the money. Writing every bloody grant is a challenge, and there’s always more to learn and, you know, and you’re, you’re just, you, you’re constantly learning. It’s a great position in that you’re also surrounded like a CTC. We have an incredible senior staff, an amazing board, and incredible set of department heads, and a very passionate and extraordinarily gifted staff.

I learn from all of them ’cause they’re way smarter than I’m, so, it’s like, like being a teacher, you learn more from your students sometimes than your students learn from you. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I’m, I’m lucky to, to be here. They’re all so much smarter than I’m, and I just learn so much every day. Oh, they’ll tell you that too. I mean, it’s a great, great, great group and they know so much,

Steve Cuden: so some people I know. Don’t think of artistic directors or, and producers of, especially of theater and particularly movies and TV as being creatives. They’re, you know, you’re dealing with money and administration and, uh, the, the nuts and bolts of an organization, but that’s very far from true. Do you find that it requires a great deal of creativity to be an artistic director?

Peter Brosius: Well. The job at our theater because we do a lot of new work. Okay, so there’s, there’s all kinds of creativity. One is that you need to interact. With such an extraordinarily wide range of people, you’re gonna interact with a billionaire, you’re gonna interact with a captain of captain of industry. You’re gonna interact with a community volunteer who is devoted years and millions of dollars to this community. You’re gonna be interacting with an actor who doesn’t have healthcare and doesn’t know where rent’s coming from. Mm-Hmm. You know, you’re gonna be acting with community leaders who may be opened to partnership, may have had bad experiences with large organizations. So you have to build trust. And trust takes a long time and it’s hard work. So you’ve got to be able to work in a variety of contexts and treat all the people you deal with, with respect and curiosity and learn from them. So that’s part of it. Figuring out a season, there’s never not enough money. No matter how big you are, there’s never enough money. ’cause the bigger you are, the more expensive it is to produce, you know? And so it’s just there’s never enough money and there’s never enough time. You know, I worked in Germany for months in, uh, um, at, at the in Cologne and what I remember, they were working on a project, and I think it had been in rehearsal for seven months, and at the end of the process.

They said, oh, we just need two more weeks. I was like, it’s the same wherever you are for seven months or five weeks, you always eat another week or two. I mean, creating a seasoned plan is an act of creativity because it’s like making a beautiful meal. It’s like making a bouquet. It’s like making, and when you’re a big theater like ours, you know, you’re serving a multiplicity of constituencies.

And in our theater we have an acting company. In our theater, we have a performing apprentice program where we recruit across the country. We bring young talent in. How are we building their talent? How are we helping them grow? How are we giving work to our company and making sure they grow? How are we giving a plethora, a cornucopia of possibilities to our audience to show that theater’s a big tent?

The theater is a multiplicity of aesthetics. It may be four people sitting around the dining room table. It may be live untrained baby animals, and a postmodern dancer. It may be a new musical, you know, it may be a silent piece inspired by the life of Buster Keaton, you know, and it can have so many forms and all that. What’s great about our art form. All that’s called theater. Sure. You know, one person alone, we did when we did Seat Folks, Soja Parks, this one actress alone on stage playing 22 different people, creating an entire community in Cleveland, in a busted up neighborhood and watching that community come together, have a party, find community, and, and build a new, uh, a neighborhood. All by one actress without changing costumes or having a prop other than a glass of water.

Steve Cuden: So it sounds to me like starting or figuring out a season. Programming your year is extremely complex. Where do you begin? What do you, how do you figure it out? You know what? Your audience more or less is going to be, correct?

Peter Brosius: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: But how do you then figure, where do you begin? How do you start it?

Peter Brosius: We start because we put a high priority on creating new work, a high priority on creating new work. And we do that because we want our, we want artists to have the opportunity to make work for this audience. Because it feeds their soul and it reconnects them to why they made theater. It’s so exciting, and it’s not someone’s 15th Hamlet. Not that there’s anything wrong with somebody’s 15th Hamlet. Sure, 11th Death of a salesman, but you’re having someone see something for the first time, and you also get the chance for this audience to see this vision, see this aesthetic, hear this experience.

So we start with what’s, what’s in the hopper, what’s ready. You know, what’s, what’s coming up in our development thing that we feel either is, is ready, we’ve got a refined first draft, or refined second draft, or we’ve got a first draft and we know that this author can take notes and, and rewrite in time to make it in a year. So that’s where we start. We always start with what’s, what’s most exciting. We also know we have a whole series of goals. We want to make sure that, you know, like we’re, we strive to have 50% of our work on our stage. By bi, from Bipoc Perspectives, we know we want 50% of the actors on our stage to be bipoc. We wanna make sure that the work has radically different aesthetics. We want the work to appeal to different age groups. We want work that’ll appeal to a mass audience and some work that we know is being put on our stage to create conversation, to build community, to address some of the really tough issues inside our community.

And we have an acting company. And we have performing apprentices and we wanna look at the goal of selling four and a half billion dollars worth of tickets. Mm-Hmm. To, to keep the lights on. So all of those go into a, a planning process that is not simple, is iterative. That takes multiple passes ’cause. The first dream season you never can afford. The budget never works out well. You’re, you’re never going to really know whether a show’s gonna sell till you open the show. Right? That’s true. I mean, you can know certain things. You can know certain things. You can know that a show called How The Grin Stole Christmas is gonna sell more tickets than a show like we did last year. The beautiful production that Talvin Wils directed called Locomotion, which was a powerful, beautiful, elegant, gorgeous production, uh, adaptation by Jacqueline Woodson, her beautiful book. Hugely proud of that work, and yet we just know it’s not complicated. You. So it’s a balance. This is gonna sell X, this is probably gonna sell y.

Steve Cuden: It, it’s a harder sell because people don’t really know it. They have to learn it.

Peter Brosius: A, they don’t know it. B, it’s, you know, it may be challenging, you know, there’s some tough things. It’s about foster care system. It’s about a kid and his sister who are separated, who, and, and have lost their parents and our, and about his journey to find his way of expressing. His loss, his hunger for family through it. A gorgeous piece. It’s beautiful piece. We’re hugely proud of it.

Steve Cuden: Slightly challenging to an audience.

Peter Brosius: We’re in the city, you know where, where George Floyd was murdered, and we know our community was reeling. And so we knew we needed to find a way to create a piece that would have a conversation in our community and bring the, because it wasn’t happening in schools, it may not have been happening at church or synagogue. It may not have been happening in families. So we found this book called, something Happened in Our Town by Three Child Psychologists. In Atlanta, which looked at two families who are neighbors, a black family and a white family, and two kids, a young girl and a young boy who are good friends and what happens to their relationship. What happens between, between the families when there’s a police involved shooting of an unarmed black man in their community. And we had major, uh, uh, conversations after every single performance led by, led by the mayor, by religious leaders, by police officers, by community activists, and people stayed because they needed to talk. They needed to heal. Our community was wrecked, and so sometimes we know we have to act to help deal with some of the challenges in our community. You feel like you are a place of solace for people? I. We hope we can be a place of reflection, of conversation, of investigation, of solace, sometimes healing and sometimes, uh, uh, aperture. Mm-Hmm. And so, and we’re not, you know, my wife’s from Italy and I, on some trips to Milan to visit her dad, we go into the Piazza de and at six o’clock at night. Everybody’s there talking about the news, they’re talking about politics. And I may not know you, but you and I are gonna get into it. And you know, that’s not exactly America, you know, we don’t have those places, but we’re gonna talk and say, what are we gonna do?

And you know, and watching that happen in Milano was like, oh my God, the town square. We don’t have the town square in the same way. And we don’t have that place to come together and wrestle with it. And. I mean, I know you, but we’re gonna get, get into it, you know?

Steve Cuden: So you do a wide range of different subjects and and contexts and so on in the works that you do. I ask this question of lots of guests. I’ll be very fascinated to hear your answer. What for you then makes a good story. Good. Why does this work for you and something else does not? What is it that attracts you to something?

Peter Brosius: Great question. So we’re storytellers. We believe in the power of story as obviously you do the name of the show story. We know that stories have power. We know that stories, and we also know that we think we learn more. Often by stories that engage us emotionally rather than stories that are just giving us facts that are expository. We may learn more by following a character who we’re engaged with, who we watch, face challenges, who we watch, learn who has incredibly high stakes, where the given circumstances are rich and complicated, and whether that’s in a fable or that’s in a reality.

So we look for work with high stakes. We look where, where there’s consequences to action. We look for work where it’s got ideas that you need to wrestle with that are profound. We just did an American Tale of the Musical in which that team, you know, Imar, Moses Tony Award winner for Bands visit, and you know, Mike Mahler and Alice Muckler and Tabia Magar, the the wonderful director and great composers took that film.

And then sort of how can we continue the exploration of this film? How do we look at Jewish identity and the fact that people had to leave and dig into that, how do we look at what the immigrant experience is as. Poor people coming into a capitalist economy that can exploit the immigrant. And so they took this, you know, this film that had immense power and found a way without contemporizing it to make it unbelievably resonant.

And so, so we knew there was something there. We knew there was a powerful story, and so part of our work then was to say, how do we take that? Because we’re going to do this because we can make it something and dig deep and make it strong. I guess the other thing is like. Even something you say, okay, we’re gonna do how the Grinch Stole Christmas. Okay. Big gigantic musical great songs that you know Tim and Mel created and filled with joy and filled with fun. Yet at the center of that story is the story of an outsider who’s not welcome, who doesn’t feel welcome, a community that’s closed, its doors. It’s also about we can all change. And at this moment, politically in the United States, that’s an open question. Can anybody change? And yet you’re watching. And in our production, what I’m very proud of is it’s hard to change. Change is hard. And so we dig into that. Yes. Is it fun and filled with big musical numbers? Absolutely. But at its core is a story about the possibility of the human heart to grow, the possibility of a community to open up and for both.

Outsider and the community to find a new way to be together and create community. You don’t put on works that have, uh, that are just entertainment, that you don’t put on works that are just fluff. It has to have some depth of meaning to you. I mean, yes, I mean, there’s huge fun in how the Grinch stole crystals of, of course. I didn’t mean that there wasn’t huge fun. No, no, no. But for us, and for me, as you know, as a director and as artistic director, it’s just more fun. To dig into something that’s meaty. I mean, we did Corduroy. Corduroy, the book, you know, the Don Freeman book. This is great. And it’s filled with physical humor, just unbelievable physical comedy. But at its core is also the story of a little girl going to a new school who needs a friend. And you know, this is the one friend she feels she can have as this bear that’s about a little bear, who no one’s ever picked up because he’s broken. Who no one’s ever loved, who’s no one. No one’s ever said, I want you to be my friend and I wanna take you home.

And so he searches the whole bloody department store to get a button to put on his overall so that he can be loved. And so we’ve all felt the need for love. We’ve all felt that hunger for love. And so yes, I mean, we have, you know, people dancing in whipped cream, we throwing toilet paper rolls at the audience. We do all kinds of wonderful mad things, but we’re not afraid. Also at that moment where the little girl and corduroy separately are both broken hearted. Because they’re not accomplishing their, their dream. And that is to what makes a good story. What makes a good story is something real is, is something of of, of consequence and something that matters.

And, and what also makes a good story is that you love the characters and you’re laughing your tail off because they’re so bloody funny or so tender or so pigheaded or whatever. So we like, we like to do work that we can, you know, deliver on the highest quality. We like to do work that we think will touch the audience in a multiplicity of ways. And surprise them with its theatricality.

Steve Cuden: So most of us that teach writing of some kind or another, usually focus on the fact that stories involve some form of conflict. Now, that doesn’t mean hurting people, it means that there’s something at odds. Um, and I assume that most of the work that you do is conflict filled and it finds some form of resolution.

Peter Brosius: Yeah. And most stories are about the pursuit of an objective. Someone needs to accomplish something. They need to want something. And so we spend a lot of time in the development of our work. Is there an active pursuit? Is there something that, that the, these characters are trying to do? And are the obstacles real? Are they manifest, are they serious? And, and because life is filled with real obstacles. Yes, it is. And, and especially if you’re a young person. Learning to do this. Learning to tie your shoe, learning to ride a bike, raising your hand thinking you have the answer, having the wrong answer, and having 30 kids laugh at you, not getting chosen on the soccer team, having your parents divorce.

Steve Cuden: Life is not easy.

Peter Brosius: Life is not easy. And, and yet life is also hilarious and joyful and ridiculous. Mm-Hmm. And so, you know, part of our goal is to put. All that on stage in a way that we hope is dynamic and alive and vital.

Steve Cuden: And so clearly you commissioned many works, but I assume that you also look for new work.

Peter Brosius: Yes. As yes.

Steve Cuden: And so what then, for those listeners out there that are writers, that they’re trying to get new work produced, what is your advice to them in terms of bringing work to you or sending work to you? Or how does it work for you?

Peter Brosius: So we do a lot of stuff. Okay. One is, I, I look at, um, theaters. In, in the uk, in Canada, across the United States, in Australia and New Zealand. You know, in South Africa, in in Japan, across Europe, you [00:35:00] know, across Latin America for work. That is extraordinary. That’s theatrical, that’s invented, that’s surprising. You know, so to that end, you, as you talked about in the, in the opening credits, you know, we brought in work from around the world that’s unique, that has like extraordinary shadow puppet artists or incredible audience participation or has the best, you know, skaters and, and hip hop dancers, whatever that is. We look for work that takes the audience seriously. That’s not afraid of that doesn’t, that’s not easy that. Either is so shocking in its or so original in its language, or its theatricality or so deep and, and, uh, um, powerful in its heart. And so we read work that comes in, uh, we develop a lot of work, you know, and then we, we are always looking at what our colleagues are doing in those places. We look at what festivals are doing around the world, and then we also look at what are books that we wanna adapt? What are stories in the news that need to be told? What are collections of songs who are musical artists? That we wanna bring their work together and, you know, make a piece. What are popular films, animated films, and so I, you know, I guess what I would say is work that is cute, condescending, reductive, that doesn’t accept the genius of the audience that tries to make things easy or, uh, that generally doesn’t have a home here with me. Mm-Hmm. You know, other people across the country. I like substance. I also like crazy theatricality. I like things that are wildly original. We are different than film and television for sure. Sure. We can break the fourth wall. We can immerse the audience, we can surprise them with direct address. We can surprise them with going into the audience.

We can surprise them in ways. And I think in this era where there’s so much on the screen, there’s so much in 2D, there’s so much on your phone, on your, on your tablet, on your computer. We’ve gotta find ways that the theater is so vivid and alive and theatrical. That you absolutely can’t have that experience anywhere else.

Steve Cuden: What is the most difficult thing for you, consistently in developing new work, whether it’s musical or play? What are the things that you’re always bumping into? You’re going, boy, we we’re always trying to overcome this challenge.

Peter Brosius: You know, it’s a great question. I don’t know. You know, every artist is so different, you know? Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. It’s just so incredibly different. It’s making sure. That the centrality, if there are young people in it, that the centrality of their experience is alive and vital, that their agency is real and has stakes, that we’re not giving easy answers or easy resolution, that we’re not having adults.

Solve the problems. You know, we take lessons from some of, when you look at amazing children’s book authors like Raw Dahl, I mean, raw Dahl had a really difficult childhood, and the adults around him were pretty monstrous. And so adults in Raw Dahl stuff are either mad, crazy, vicious, you know, useless, you know, and so not that we do that, but.

What I love about him is kids solve problems. Matilda’s gotta solve her own problems. Mm-Hmm know, I mean, no magic wand comes in. There’s no DSX Mino that solves those problems. She has to figure it out. Yes. She turns out to be telekinetic. So there’s that kind of thing, but that’s not a, an instruction from a, uh, uh, an adult. And so making sure that, that the answers aren’t pat. The answers are earned, that transformations are real and are complicated and difficult, that not everything gets resolved. We don’t wanna leave people in a place of hopelessness, but sometimes, I mean, that was one of the beautiful things in, uh, um, an American tale that the team created was in the film, for example. You know, they win and they chase the cats away, and the cats, you know, are, are, are sent away and they’ll never be back. What this team came up with was a change on that, which is the notion that, yes, we [00:39:00] did that with these cats. There will always be cats and there’ll always be things we need to oppose.

You know, that’s a small but epic shift in perspective. Sure. And so what that says to the kids is like, yeah, you win this battle. The war never ends. The war never ends to fight because there will always be those who try and oppress others. And so and so they have, the penultimate song is one that just makes me cry ’cause it’s about the unique promise of America, you know, that America is that place that offers that promise of welcome offers, that promise of possibility. And so, you know, the team just did it brilliantly. And so, I mean, I’ve only heard it 13,000 times and I cry every single time. That’s one of those things that, because. They made the stakes really real and they made the stakes really high. That the song, that penultimate song is so satisfying, you know? Is there a typical length of time that most of your development plays go through, or is each one unique?

It’s pretty unique. You know, I sort of, you know, sort of no wine before it’s time. You know, it’s like you try and what we try and do is say, what does this particular author need? Do they want a workshop? Do they want a reading? Do they want a collaborator? Do they need time in a hotel away from their families?

You know, do they need a research trip to, to do X? So we try not to do a cookie cutter process that we’re in. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we did some of that in our New Works festival at the Taper. And, you know, one size doesn’t fit on. I mean, a couple things that have been important to me, uh, which is to make sure that that development process is author centered and safe. And private and designed by them as much as possible so that you not, like you get a two week workshop, then you, you know, it’s like, and, and we’re gonna have a bunch of strangers come in and tell you how to rewrite your play. We don’t do that. I’ve, I’ve seen that in theaters across this country, and I’ve seen the damage from that.

Steve Cuden: You’re playwright or author centric?

Peter Brosius: We are, because we often say, we just want you to make your best play ever. And a lot of the people we work with have never written for family audiences.

Steve Cuden: And so you have to, you have to guide them a little bit, I assume.

Peter Brosius: Well. To some degree, there’s sometimes there’s acts of translation, sometimes there’s just acts of focus. Sometimes there’s just acts of like, shine a light here more. And like the one I was just talking about, sometimes it’s like, uh, there’s a play that we were working on and, uh, one of the characters would bring a challenge in the situation. But then in this, you know, one scene, the adult would sort of go off on this tangent and the problem was left waiting. So it’s like, no, actually the most important thing is not what this adult has to say, but the dilemma that this young person’s brought to the table. Mm-Hmm. We can’t ignore that because that’s almost, you know, that doesn’t help this character, nor does it help our investment, nor does it help us value the severity and degree of this question. ’cause young people take those questions really seriously.

Steve Cuden: Oh, sure do. Do you have a preference to work on a completely unique new play, or do you really enjoy working on established work?

Peter Brosius: Um, I’ve been blessed to do both in my life. You know, when I was at the Taper, I got to work on, you know, the work of Samuel Beckett. You know, I got to work on all kinds of stuff. And here I’ve had the great pleasure of taking Exta work, whether that’s Wizard of Oz, how the Grinch Stole Christmas, whatever, and trying to find my way into that, my way into that, right? There’s a joy in that because. Those works are deep, they’re profound. They come out of a very important place. And part of that work that’s so fun is like, why did the writer write this? What was the impulse? I mean, doing all the research on Frank Baum on Why, yeah, how Wizard of Oz came about was mind blowing. I mean, what a character. No doubt. No doubt what? So that was great work.

But there’s also, I think probably my particular joy. Is the creation of something brand new, you know, something that’s never been imagined. It’s really hard. It takes forever. It’s filled with pitfalls.

Steve Cuden: Like what? Tell us some typical pitfalls.

Peter Brosius: I dunno if there’s typical pitfalls. I mean, when we were working, I mean on, on one show, it was just trying to find how, like trying to find the comic progression. Like, how does this build to this, to this, to this? And we’d find things that, you know, would stop in the middle or would be non-sequitur or actually didn’t have punchlines. And so this, the energy would drop out of the scene and then you try another thing and that wouldn’t work. And you try another thing. And that wouldn’t work until you found something. Sometimes it took the second production. It’s research, it’s r and d, you’re an r and d factory. You’re making mistakes to find your way. Yeah. And so sometimes you build in enough time and sometimes it gets a little tight ’cause you are like, oh my God.

Sometimes, I mean, I’ll tell you one story. This was an extant play. This wasn’t an original play. I mean, there were two that were amazing. We were, uh, um, we were doing a production of, if you have a mouse of cookie, a classic piece. Generally the comedy in that comes from dealing with scale, like outsized props.

Okay. Like, you know, this is really big. And I was like, okay, that’s like old school. For me, that’s more like old school Ringling Brothers clowning. Sure. Which is not my favorite kind of clowning. My favorite kind of clowning is taking real objects and transforming. I was working with two of our company actors.

And so we were coming, you know, I made lists of like, okay, here’s a, a glass of water with a straw. What are 40 bits you can do with a glass of water with a straw? Here’s a shaving cream can and tinfoil. What are 40 bits? And so it was like a vaudeville list and I do my prep and, and then we’d come in and the actors are just unbelievable comic geniuses.

And so they would come up with 40 things. It was so bloody funny. So I said, oh, let’s bring some kids in and see what their response is. And we, we were dying in rehearsal. We thought we were so funny. We thought we were bloody geniuses. And these kids come in and truth be told, it was my son’s like second or third grade class and one of his classmates was sitting right in front of me and we start the thing and we’re like, these kids are gonna die. This is so funny. And he’s going like this and he’s counting all the ceiling tiles. We’d gotten so caught up that instead of one piece of business with a soda can, we did 20. ’cause we were so funny. And so I, I, we finished the run, I was like, oh my god, the disaster. And, uh, I said to the team, uh, we’re re restating the entire show and we’re gonna do it the next three days because we fell in love and we forgot to tell the story.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s a very interesting pitfall to fall into, is that you, you’ve had so much fun with something that you’ve actually lost the thread.

Peter Brosius: We lost the thread and then we had another one we were doing, uh, lost Boys of Sudan, and it was so interesting, uh, uh, original play by Lonnie Carter about the Sudanese refugees. The first act was in the Sudan, the second act is in Fargo, and it was built out of research in many, many conversations with the Sudanese, uh, refugees. And we, we did this run through close to, uh, going into tech, and I turned to my team and I said. Is this as bad as I think it is? And they said Yeah. Yeah.

It stopped down. So, um, I was like, okay. And I was like, and then I, then they left and I was sitting in the room and I was looking at our idea board and I saw there was a fi, there was a, a, a fire pit in, in Kenya at one of the refugee camps. And I was like, oh, right. We were do this as if we were around a campfire and we were just gonna pull the props from around what we had, and I was having them go off stage and do these elaborate costume changes and all the energy was dying and I was just, I just sat there by myself for an hour and I was like, oh my God, I forgot the core aesthetic idea that we started with.

I just got caught on something else and so I brought the team back in and we didn’t have much time. We were going into. Tech or preview, I said, we’re gonna restage it. It’s all gonna be fine. It’s gonna be great. And I just said, cut all that stuff. It’s gonna start with the storytelling around this, and we’re just gonna use those few objects, the essential objects we need.

And we made a really good show, but it was like you had to fail really big and see that you’d lost the core aesthetic drive that you had. And somehow you got distracted, you know it happens.

Steve Cuden: Mm-Hmm. So, making theater in general, being an artistic director, being the director of shows and producing shows, all of that requires collaboration with many other people. Tell me for you, what makes a good collaboration work?

Peter Brosius: A room. Oh, a, a space in which all ideas are welcome. A space where, in my case, personally, where I’ve done my work, I’ve done my months of research, I’ve done my months of prep, I’ve done my months of reading, and. Notebooks and ideas, and then when I can come into the room and forget all of that, Hmm. And let, let the room and, and I’m prepared if nothing’s happening. That’s amazing that I’ve got plenty of ideas. But that, I mean, my joy is, and I say this at every cast, and you have to live this because you can say it and not live it and try to live it, which is that, look, if I were a painter. And I, I’d done this gorgeous rothko blue and and orange canvas, and you come in and say, I think it’d be better green. And I’d like, can you do it green? Well, that’s a hell of a lot of work. Mm-Hmm. If we’re gonna come in and say, what if we did this? We can probably test that idea in about 15 seconds or or a minute. And so to create a space. Both in the design process and in the rehearsal process, and in the tech process and in the preview process where all ideas are welcome. And that you truly try them out. And whether that’s a 9-year-old kid or an assistant stage manager, or the assistant choreographer, and I have, my favorite moments of shows I’ve done are those moments where the ideas on stage aren’t mine. Oh, you know, the ideas on stage are one, uh, Hugo Mullaney, who wonderful young student actor. There was a moment in, uh, uh, Matilda, where Trench Bull was like sort of screaming at his character. And I said, so in this moment I, I, I, I want you to take a step back. And he said, wouldn’t it be better if we were all together and everyone else took a step back? I was like, I was like. Yes, that’s a better idea.

And so my idea wasn’t funny. His idea was hilarious. So when, when every single student abandoned this kid and left him out to dry, the audience just died. And so that, that’s one of these moments I luck at, at every time. I was like, thank you, brother. I mean, that’s so creating, creating that space where all ideas are welcome, all ideas are respected. We will do our dangest Tory them to try them because even if that idea doesn’t work, it might open a door or a window to another idea.

Steve Cuden: It seems to me there’s a theme throughout your experience in the theater where you, you allow others to shine, which is a wonderful thing.

Peter Brosius: Well, that I always believe there’s a better idea. I believe there’s a better idea than mine, and I believe that even though we’ve staged the scene, and it’s great that the next time we go through it, there’s still a better idea. And it may come from me, it may come from the actor, it may come from the stage manager. It may come from the designer coming and saying, yeah, what? What if you did this? I was like, oh my God, such a good idea. Why did I think of that? Well, let’s do it.

Steve Cuden: I’ve been having the most marvelous conversation with Peter Brosius of Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis. And, uh, we’re gonna wind the show down a little bit right now, and I’m wondering, uh, you’ve given us an enormous number of, of great stories that we’ve already heard, but I’m wondering if you have a, a particular story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, stranger, maybe just plain hilarious.

Peter Brosius: There are things about a youth audience that are sometimes either moving or, uh, insane. Uh, one of our actors read Sigmund. I believe it was in Grinch, in this tender, heartbreaking moment where he’s up on Mount Trumpet trying to see if he can change. And, you know, it’s, it’s a moment of a crisis of the soul. And, um, he’s up there. The music’s very quiet. It’s very still, he’s trying to figure this out. A gentle snow is falling and this young man stands up in the front row, turns the entire audience, and yells the snow’s fake and Reid’s job is to continue and keep going. You know, it’s just like, okay.

Steve Cuden: that’s the, that’s the crushing of the fourth wall, isn’t it?

Peter Brosius: I mean, I know the deal and you right. However, there’s another story going on, you know, that emotional moment. I mean, one of my favorite things that happened was we were doing a show about Ital, uh, uh, the Pakistani young man who was a leader in the fight against the rug trade, the child rug trade. And, um, I got this letter from this young, young girl. Who saw the show and she wrote saying that she saw the show and she wanted to do something to help the kids. So for her 10th birthday, she’d ask everyone to collect money so that she could send it to one of the schools in Pakistan and India that helped these kids get an education instead of working the rugs. And it was a check for like $14 and it was unbelievable. It was like she took action, she saw this play and she wanted to make the world better. You know, you’re like, okay. That’s a good day in the theater. You know,

Steve Cuden: last question for you today, Peter. Uh, you’ve given us an enormous amount of really excellent advice, but I’m wondering if you have a single solid piece of advice that you like to give those that are starting out in the business or maybe they’re in a little bit and trying to get to the next level.

Peter Brosius: I guess one is don’t give up. Just don’t give up. You’re gonna get, I mean, it’s hard. You just can’t give up. The other is, and make the work. Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Don’t wait for the all the money in the world to do it. And I guess the third would be make the work you want to make. Don’t start saying, I’m gonna make this work.

So 20 years from now, I can make that, make the work you want to make. And whether that’s making it with a, a group of your friends, making it with your neighbors, making it with kids from college, making it whatever way you can, but don’t think there’s a path to make the work you want by making something else.

Make the work you wanna make that speaks to you, that is from you. And there can be a path for others to see that passion, that genius, that creativity, that heart. Hunger and the world’s waiting for your story. ’cause no one else has told that story, you know, so well, well that is just such inspirational, uh, thinking because the old cliche is there’s no time like the present. And you’re right. Do it now. Do it now. Yeah. Now,

Steve Cuden: Peter Brosius, this has been, um, just a fantastic hour on StoryBeat and I can’t thank you enough for spending your time and giving us all this great wisdom and, and all of your history and experience. It’s been fantastic talking to you. It’s been great talking to you.

Peter Brosius: Thanks so much for the conversation. It’s been a joy, Steve,

Steve Cuden: and so we’ve come to the end of today’s StoryBeat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you are listening to. Your support helps us bring more great StoryBeat episodes to you.

StoryBeat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Tune On, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden, and may all your stories be unforgettable.