Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat:

Stuart Ross: When you’re having a problem and you don’t know what to do and you can’t breathe and you think you’re going to have to stop, look around, because the answer’s there, right there in front of you. Usually when there’s a problem, the answer isn’t the problem. I found that to be true. Look around.

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.

Steve Cuden: 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, Stuart Ross, wrote and directed the long running musical forever plaid and its various offsprings, plaid tidings, the sound of plaid, and forever Plaid, the movie. Other New York credits include Radiant, Enter Laughing, the musical, standing on ceremony, the Gondoliers, and Fun with Dick and Jane. Stewart co wrote with Jack Vertell the Secret Life of the american musical and then directed it. He also directed Golden Rainbow in its workshop for the York. He adapted and directed subways are for sleeping, it’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, it’s Superman, Minnie’s Boys, Silk Stockings, and Bajour on Broadway. Stewart co wrote the book to Star Mites, which received six Tony nominations. And he also wrote the Radio City Music Hall Easter show for tv. He’s directed sitcoms like Frasier and Veronica’s Closet. He also created special material for PBS’s great performances, an evening at the Pop, starring Jason Alexander and Diane Carroll, both sides now. For ten seasons, Stewart has worked as a director, dramaturg, and or writer at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, National Music Theatre center conference. And for nine years, he’s been a panelist for the ASCAP Disney Musical Theatre workshop. Current projects include Industrial Strengthen, the Alice B. Toklas cookbook, the Bay Street Theatre youth workshops, creating theatre magic, and second time around workshops. So for all those reasons and many more, it’s a great honor and a true privilege for me to welcome to StoryBeat today the wonderfully multitalented Stuart Ross. Stuart, welcome to the show.

Stuart Ross: Thanks for having me. I’m really glad to be here.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s a great pleasure to have you. We’ve known each other for a while and it’s really terrific to finally get you on the show. So let’s go back in time just a little bit how old were you when the show biz bug first bit you?

Stuart Ross: I was six.

Steve Cuden: And what was it that turned you on?

Stuart Ross: I was supposed to go to see a movie. My brother. I had a brother who was much, ah, older, 14, um, years. And, uh, he was going to take me to New York for the first time. We were going to go see, uh, I don’t know, uh, it was the time machine, and then it’s the show. So he said it was a Wednesday, so he said, let’s, let’s take it to your first musical. And so we went, we tried to get tickets to the sound of music that was sold out or whatever reason. I don’t, you know, really remember, but all I know is I got dragged to see Gypsy at the imperial. It was on its last legs, and we’re in the last row of the imperial theater, and I saw Gypsy with Ethel Merman.

Steve Cuden: With Ethel Merman.

Stuart Ross: Wow. And, uh, yeah, I didn’t want to leave the theater. I started crying to. I didn’t want to leave. It was so magical. And then I just started running around doing all the numbers, you know, whatever. Got the big, uh, lp, it hooked you right in. Right, right in, right in.

Steve Cuden: Did you then start to watch other musicals and other show?

Stuart Ross: Uh, yeah, I think the next year they took me to see Fiorello and come, uh, blow your horn. And funny thing happened the way to the forum with Dick Sean always on the last legs and always in the balcony. I didn’t understand half of what I was watching, but it kept hooking me. But I didn’t like movie musicals at all.

Steve Cuden: What was it about the stage musicals you liked? Was it the big splashy numbers and.

Stuart Ross: You could feel it. You could feel it in your bones. And movie musicals, at least that back then, I think up until Fosse, up until sweet charity or cabaret, there was. The sound would change when they would sing. All of a sudden, literally, the sound would get muffled or dubbed, you know, this huge, overly big orchestra would come in and it didn’t have that sass, that jazz, that feeling. Fosse changed that with, especially with sweet charity. I mean, you know, we really tried to capture why we love going to musicals. But no, I wasn’t a fan of the big movie musicals. Maybe bye bye Birdie slipped by. I kind of like that because of the Ann Margaret lot of living to.

Steve Cuden: Do number, but the stage was it for you. That was with your. And so did you start to work on shows? Did you start to act?

Stuart Ross: I did anything, uh, you know, in high school, uh, I started out as an actor, of course, and worked as a, you know, in my teens as an actor in summer stock. And, um, yeah, and, uh, did everything and ran spotlight. There was somebody. I did theater workshops and, uh, Loudoun Wainwright was our teacher, uh, Rufus’s father. And, um, also this guy named Abe Einhorn, you know, directed us, taught us about comedy. And he was a playwright. He’d written a bunch of comedies. George Abbott directed them in the sixties. And, uh, he, uh, was a major prop man. I think his first show was Fanny. And then his next show was, uh, he did gypsy and he told all these stories and he made me laugh so hard. And then, you know, when I did my first Broadway show, which was good time Charlie, he was the prop guy on ithenne. Um, and that was a couple of years. But through him, I learned how to do props. I used to take the train down and sit. I lived about 55, 60 miles north of the city. And I would get on the train, go see Saturday or Wednesday matinees, and, uh, I would sit backstage with him and prep, if it was a matinee, uh, we prep the show for the evening show, then do the props. We did that for, wait until dark floor of the red menace, and I just sit back in a chair and just watch it from the wings.

Steve Cuden: Would you say that was your training or did you then subsequently go and get formal training?

Stuart Ross: Yeah, well, my parents, yeah, I just had to do theater. So there was a huge fight. I couldn’t go to a school with a theater department. They were just, like, not having it. And, um, which was insane because I ended up paying for it. But, uh, we started a theater department where I went and, uh.

Steve Cuden: You started a theater department with other.

Stuart Ross: Theater people that really just love theater. And we started our own theater department and then, you know, did plays and went crazy. And then I started working for props for Joe Papp while I was still in college. And I would take, you know, I wrote him a long letter about how he was devoted to theater, blah, blah, blah, you know, kiss ass, kiss ass. And he hired me to do props in the, uh, at the Delacorte.

Steve Cuden: So did you want to be backstage most of your career?

Stuart Ross: Well, I loved being on stage till I didn’t, but I started. I couldn’t get into the act. I started to take classes. Uh, I went to a school called Clark University in Worcester, Mass. And across the way there were holy cross and they had a theater department. So I convinced them and we got to take classes over there, but I couldn’t get into the acting class was filled up, so I wasn’t supposed to. I got into the directing class as a freshman and that you were supposed to be a junior, at least, to go into directing. But I did it and did really well and loved it, so I just started concentrating on that, because watching an audience laugh and know that you were responsible for getting that moment right was pretty great drug.

Steve Cuden: It is a pretty great drug, and it just, once it’s in your. In your veins, that’s it. It’s. It’s hard to get out anytime when.

Stuart Ross: You watch an audience just. Huh. With the rank moment hits. I just saw days of wine and roses in New York, and there’s a point where Brian Darcy James, after he’s been sober, picks up a drink and the audience gasps. You know about. Gasps.

Steve Cuden: Yes, I do.

Stuart Ross: Um, that is just magical.

Steve Cuden: So when did you start to think about writing and directing, then or later?

Stuart Ross: Directing, I started thinking about right away. I went to New York. You know, I, uh, auditioned and auditioned, but I always wanted to direct. Writing was later. I just started writing comedy for people, uh, and sketches, and, uh, that came later.

Steve Cuden: I find it interesting that when you started this, you know, theater program at school, you were already being a maverick of sorts. Then. I don’t think you knew you were being a maverick, but you were actually being a maverick.

Stuart Ross: Um, yeah. And that sort of followed me. I never could understand it. I know when I got out to Hollywood and I wanted to just work, I wanted a parking space. That’s all I just wanted to do. And they were going, no, you don’t want to be in the loop. You need to create your own loop. That’s what you know. And I didn’t quite get that. It took me many years to understand.

Steve Cuden: I think it takes many people many years to understand that.

Stuart Ross: And I didn’t realize I created, you know, created my own loop or created whatever, uh, being a maverick. And another thing happened pretty, uh, soon after I did that first show, uh, I started to work for Bob, um, Moss at the founding or just after the moving of playwrights horizons to theater row and closing down the burlesque houses and getting in there. And I was like, his assistant and administrator for the start of the starting of theater row and raising the money.

Steve Cuden: How important do you think it’s been in your total career that you started out learning all these different disciplines? Has that been vital to your career?

Stuart Ross: I don’t know. It’s been. It sort of makes you kind of a nudge, you know? But I learned early on if I want to know what’s going on with one of my shows, or if I want to know what the problem is, I’ll go talk to the set designer or the, you know, the lighting guy. I would like, go to, you know, I would just, um, go right there and hang out with them and try to find out, you know, what they thought, what’s their take and what’s the, uh, nut, literally the nuts and bolts of the show.

Steve Cuden: Well, there are plenty of directors in the world that don’t have that facility that don’t understand the technical capability of people, and you do. So I think that makes a, um, that’s an advantage for you, don’t you think?

Stuart Ross: Yeah, yeah, I said, I mean, Ken Billington saved our ass several times on, uh, interlapping when we just couldn’t figure out how to do something.

Steve Cuden: Do you think of yourself more as a writer director, or combo or how do you think of yourself?

Stuart Ross: I love writing. I love fixing. I love, you know, pinpointing where a show can go and what’s. Where it needs help or where it needs to be adjusted, you know, in the book and in freeing up writers. So I love that.

Steve Cuden: Do you get asked frequently to come in and look at things?

Stuart Ross: Yeah, a lot. A whole lot. And, uh, I can be as honest as I can. If I’m not directing, it’s harder because.

Steve Cuden: You’Re not in control.

Stuart Ross: You’re not in control. But also the director has things in mind and you’re going, you know, if you just had them move this way, we might be able to hear that line better. But, you know, keep your mouth shut. I learned to keep my mouth shut when. Especially when somebody’s directing my work, there’s certain shows I want that I wrote that I won’t directly.

Steve Cuden: Uh, why is that?

Stuart Ross: Radiant, baby, which I did. Book and lyrics on code. Lyrics, um, it’s too much. Lyrics are very hard, and book is very hard, and I know how hard the two are, and I’m very aware of the pitfalls of just doing that. If you add directing into that, you can’t do the other two very well.

Steve Cuden: You probably find it hard to get after yourself as a writer. When you’re the director.

Stuart Ross: I’m too hard on myself as a writer.

Steve Cuden: You’re too hard on yourself.

Stuart Ross: Frustrated. I get frustrated and then, you know, that breeds frustration in the cast, I think it makes me pout. The lyrics were just such a, you know, I don’t know anything about lyrics, you know, except that I’ve heard songs that, when I started writing lyrics. And so I’m really open to changing and finding and manipulating, and somebody says, that lyric doesn’t quite work. And I’m going, okay, let me go at it. It’s just this big challenge. And then, um, I’ve seen so many shows now that, you know, like, false rhymes and it’s almost like blank verse. It’s being like Ar fifteen’s machine gunned at you of, uh, just these terrible rhymes. You just gone. You’re kidding, right?

Steve Cuden: Well, I guess it depends if it’s a decent false rhyme, but most of the time it’s nothing.

Stuart Ross: Well, Hamilton’s riddled with them, but that’s genius. Yeah. Different.

Steve Cuden: Exactly.

Stuart Ross: It’s a different set curve. It’s a different set of ears. It’s a different genre.

Steve Cuden: I think Sondheim absolutely loathed false rhymes, and he was always trying to rhyme perfectly.

Stuart Ross: Yeah. Yes. And he did.

Steve Cuden: And he did better than anyone else ever has or probably ever will.

Stuart Ross: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: So you’re, uh, probably best known for forever plaid and the various plaids. Was the advantage there that you didn’t have to write the songs, you were writing the material between the songs and the characters and so on.

Stuart Ross: I just had the idea, I wonder what this would be like, song to hear this now, this four part harmony stuff now. And I got some people together and we transcribed it from the, uh, the records, the four aces and the four lads. And, you know, we pay people to do it. This is before James Wright came on and we just figured it out. And we would, when we tried it the first time in 87 at the West bank with a very, very intense crowd. And I couldn’t name the people in there, but it was pretty hip crowd and they were. They were putting their arms around each other during. No, not much. Or Perry Como or a Harry Belafonte ballad. I went, oh, there’s something here. And then I had to go backwards. I had to go backwards of saying, like, well, what’s the StoryBeat? And I’ve been taking a lot of librettist workshops at music theater works, Charlie Willard and all sorts of great people. Charlie Willard from Carnegie. Um, and, uh, I learned a lot. And by the way, he was the one that really instructed us on the three act structure of a musical.

Steve Cuden: Perfect.

Stuart Ross: Funny girl was the quintessential three act structured musical. Even though the intermission comes where the.

Steve Cuden: Intermission, well, not to fool the listeners who don’t know when we’re talking about three act structure. It’s the three acts within the StoryBeat. Though most musicals have two acts with an intermission in between. But we’re talking about StoryBeat structure now, which is slightly different than the. What I like to think of as the musical theater structure, which is you break it in the middle somewhere usually around the midpoint of the StoryBeat. Was that the first musical you created, a forever plaid?

Stuart Ross: No, I had done a show called the Heebie Jeebies, again on a whim. Uh, my friend and partner, we wanted to write together. We’d written some sketches, so we created this show about the Boswell sisters. He played me the music. I said, this is great. And we started to just get a cast together and just do it. And we got some people and borrowed money, and we did it in the lobby of the west side theater upstairs, which was then the Chelsea, and they said, well, you know, we did like 25, 30 minutes and people went nuts. So we did it again. And the Berkshire Theatre Festival happened to be there. And then we got booked, ah, to do it that summer at the Berkshire Theatre festival with an amazing cast and one of the living Boswell sisters. They were a singing group of the twenties who. The original girl group, actually.

Steve Cuden: How surprising was it for you that something that you had created was suddenly finding success? Was it a surprise?

Stuart Ross: Yes. I didn’t realize it. I didn’t went. I said, oh, gee, the music. We love the music. And then I had to write a script and then went, oh, we thought we could do it like, ain’t misbehaving. We patterned it on, um. Ain’t misbehaving, you know, the whole structure. Uh, I said, oh, you know, and I was directing because that’s all I ever wanted to do. And they said, no, you need a script. So we just started writing a script and some of it was really good. And we got a production and it opened. It was, uh, my first commercial. Again, it was a critical success, but didn’t last very long.

Steve Cuden: So you had the songs with no script.

Stuart Ross: Right.

Steve Cuden: And so you then had to figure out how to make a StoryBeat around the existing material, correct? Yep. Uh, and what’s the trick to that? Is there a trick to that?

Stuart Ross: Well, I learned with Platt, I made up the characters there. I had real characters and one of them had polio. So there was all sorts of things. One of the Boswell sisters had polio and the other two used to sort, uh, of like carry her around or walk with her arm in arm to fool everybody. They made movies, they did all this stuff. And, um, it was weird to. With the living family around, they got very protective, and that was very difficult. But it did teach me, when I had the opportunity to do plaid, which was another harmony group, that it was the characters. And like I said, I had all these romantic songs, and I’m going, well, what’s the StoryBeat? And I said, suppose the characters are, uh, the least romantic people in the history of the world. They don’t want to perform. They don’t. They never performed in public, and they don’t even. They look like they don’t even know what a girl is. And they only have each other. They each have the sadness in their lives, and they get killed on their way to the first gig and come back to earth for one night. And other people have done similar things since I did plaid, but they never get that underdog quality right, that lost. I mean, Jersey Boys did brilliantly, very in awe of that show, but that was the key to Plaid’s success.

Steve Cuden: I thought, well, the difference between Plaid and Jersey boys, and it’s a big difference, is Jersey Boys is based on an existing StoryBeat and a real StoryBeat, and Plaid was made up by you.

Stuart Ross: But they made sure to keep the Jersey boys always. They never thought they were. They always had a problem. They always had something wrong. They never got cocky conflict. They had internal conflict, and they had sadness. So you can root for them.

Steve Cuden: We all know that one, as opposed to it just looks like a bunch of people singing a bunch of songs. There’s something to hang your hat on for the audience so they can dig in. Do you object to the term jukebox musical? Some people do.

Stuart Ross: Um, I don’t like it. I don’t like the term review either. I mean, because plaid is not either.

Steve Cuden: I mean, it’s not a review, for sure.

Stuart Ross: Um, yeah, it’s a concert with characters, and it follows chorus line, actually, almost, like, to the letter. Um, but it’s simple. And I don’t consider it a jukebox musical, personally, because that period where that songs were on the jukebox was very small. I mean, some of the songs were big hits, like love is a mini splendor thing and catch a falling star. But really, you know, it was not like AbbA. Ah. Or the four seasons or the temptations or Donna Summer. They were like, it’s a little bit of a. You know, that’s the only reason I don’t care. I don’t think I misbehave, and I don’t consider it a jukebox musical. Although I guess Jacques Barrel is a jukebox musical.

Steve Cuden: Sure. Jacques Barrel, uh, ain’t misbehaving, if you want to use that term. And I know that people do object.

Stuart Ross: To it, but each one of those shows, and probably platoon, this really successful ones, broke the mold or did something different of the real successful one.

Steve Cuden: Well, Jacques Barrel has no StoryBeat in it. It’s just a succession of songs.

Stuart Ross: But there’s an emotional through line.

Steve Cuden: There is a through line, yes, but there’s no. But there’s no. There’s no actual StoryBeat. It’s all different characters all through every song.

Stuart Ross: Ain’t miss behaving has those characters, and it was so skillfully put together. There’s one line of dialogue, but each of those characters were kept away from each other until black and blue was the only when they come together. And, you know, ah. Uh, you gotta learn from that.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s the great Richard Maltby Junior, who has also been a guest on this show.

Stuart Ross: No, I saw that.

Steve Cuden: And so when you’re trying to create a show like that, are you trying to create a play at the same time that then the music fits into.

Stuart Ross: Yeah, you’re trying to, um. You’re trying to take the audience on a journey. You’re trying to take the audience from kind of infatuation to true love. Uh, you know, like Casablanca does that, you know, good old Robert McKee. There were several people I’ve wanted to do. You know, I have on my list of things I would love to do, like Christine, uh, Lavin or Lily, uh, Allen. I mean, these are great songs, and they tell stories, and, you know, there’s so many more. More popular, uh, or more known. But, yes, you have to be able to tell that StoryBeat.

Steve Cuden: It’s really critical, isn’t it? The StoryBeat part of the, um, creation is really important.

Stuart Ross: Yeah, well, look at mamma mia. I mean, two first. There you go. They’re trying to find, you know, identify their parent. I mean, you know, pretty basic, pretty solid, pretty much of a human condition.

Steve Cuden: What would you say are the biggest challenges, then, to creating a show like that? What are the. What are the major issues that you have to overcome?

Stuart Ross: The rights of, uh, the rights. Um.

Steve Cuden: How long did it take you to obtain the rights to do forever plaid? All this song?

Stuart Ross: Oh, that was a breeze. The show I produced. Okay, that’s part of my StoryBeat. But, you know, forever plaid, I had no money when I did plaid, I wanted to keep writing books to musicals and didn’t have anybody to work with. I’d been. I had just written, uh, fun with Dick and Jane, playwrights horizons, and was, uh, writing this in my spare time. The plaid thing just seeing what happened. And so we kept doing it. And, um, you know, I did it for, like, six months on my. I kept taking out credit cards, uh, because every time you took it out, you got $10,000 worth of credit. And then I would take out another one, or I was able to turn the show into an industrial, and I would do it late nights at different times up at Paulson’s, uh, and gras and West bank. So by the time we got a real producer and, uh, we’re ready to do the show, the show was already had a run and was it, you know, a hit? And we were just doing it in a cabaret, and all of a sudden they said, this isn’t a cabaret, this is a real show. And they said, you better get the rights to these songs. And so the producer and the genius mark send off made an offer saying, yeah, if you don’t want to, you know, you want yours to be part of this, here’s the deal. And if they didn’t want to do it, we take the song out. And they all said, okay, we got a great deal, which, thanks to us, nobody will ever get again.

Steve Cuden: I was going to say, I don’t think anybody could get that again, could they?

Stuart Ross: No, not what we did. Uh, and, you know, other people, like Beehive and other shows were paying like, $75 per show per song or per week per song. Um, but we did a really good deal percentage wise.

Steve Cuden: So you had the songs and you worked a show around the songs. Did you have to modify any of the songs in order to make the show work? No. So you actually fit everything to the songs?

Stuart Ross: Yeah, sometimes I put some dialogue in between it. Uh, I did find I had to put two songs together. I had to merge two songs or mash up two songs because two and a half minutes wasn’t enough to tell a StoryBeat. I mean, I had. There were a lot of visual stories going on where you watched the guys go from, I don’t want to do this, I hate doing this. They’re going to hate us to, oh, my God, this feels so good to sing. I can’t believe we never got to do this. This is so good. We wasted our lives. Then I had to come up with, where do I go after that? So I gave one m a nosebleed in chronic nosebleeds. So we had to stop the show, and we had to go off and get cauterized. And somebody was forced on stage to tell a StoryBeat, and he didn’t want to be there, and he told a StoryBeat about his life, which was my StoryBeat. And so I started. Then I had to start the show again. And, you know, only now they had a little more confidence and they started to bring the audience more into the show until they get to, um, heart and soul, where they actually bring somebody on stage. And then they did the Ed Sullivan thing, which, like, blew them away. And they realized, this is so good, but we’re going to have to leave soon. And we started to feel bad for them because they’d have to leave.

Steve Cuden: So which of the three legs of a show, obviously, you do it in a. At least with plaid and some other shows you’ve done it where you have the material of the, uh, music and lyrics already in hand. But typically, uh, someone will write a play or a. Before you have a libretto, and then they’ll start to create songs for that libretto. This is a different way to look at it. You’re creating this, the show around the songs. Did you. Do you find that to be more challenging or less challenging than creating the play?

Stuart Ross: First, I would have to say it’s less challenging because you have the limitations. And you know what? You’re. You’re, uh. It’s ass, uh, backwards, frankly. So you have to stop. You don’t realize what you’re going in for. You know, you have to rearrange your, uh, your curve. You know, you gotta make it. It’s much harder to create a StoryBeat from scratch, obviously. And that’s why we use. Based on movies or plays or novels. Novels are really hard. I tried that a couple of times. Uh, it’s really hard.

Steve Cuden: Adaptation is not necessarily an easy thing to do.

Stuart Ross: Now movies are easier because the camera works much the way the emotion of a. A song would work, as you point out, somewhat, I guess. I don’t know if you said that, but you did draw a lot of parallels between movies and, uh, musicals.

Steve Cuden: You’re kind and you’re talking about my book beating Broadway. That’s what you’re talking about.

Stuart Ross: Beating Broadway indeed.

Steve Cuden: So how did you decide before you knew you were going to have a show? I know you were doing what was essentially a, uh, concert in the very beginning. But how did you decide which songs to choose?

Stuart Ross: I think there are 20 somethings, 26 songs in plaid. Some of them are snippets or part songs, maybe 28. And we had about 45 because we would do like. I would kept trying it. I tried it out as a play first. I wrote a play, actually. We did the thing. We did the cabaret. And then somebody said, went up to Rochester and tried it out as a two act version, sort of a play, sort of not. They were. They come back to their old, uh, basement, semi finished basement, and where they used to sing, they go through their lives, and that worked really well. And then somebody, a lot of people came up and said, we’ll bring it to New York if you make them alive. And, no, I made them alive. And I wrote this champion season kind of play, uh, about it, but that didn’t work. I mean, it really didn’t have work at all, but the music carried it somehow. And then they gave. They said, this will never work. And they threw the rights back at me, and I just happened to have star mites had just opened and closed, and it was kind of a sad experience. And then I get with the rights, said, we’re not going to produce this. Just forget it. And they gave me back the rights to forever plaid, and I was pretty low, and I went ahead and did it myself.

Steve Cuden: Well, that turned out to be a fortuitous thing, huh?

Stuart Ross: Huh? Yeah. I mean, it didn’t feel like that at the time.

Steve Cuden: I’m sure it didn’t, but it turned out to be.

Stuart Ross: It was like, you know, well, I don’t know. Maybe they’re right. Uh, but, you know, it took me a couple of months to get to the point. I think somebody was ripping me off. Somebody. The people who did the taffetas were doing the cardigans, and I went, no, this I can’t stand. So we actually started to do it.

Steve Cuden: Well, the business, as you know all too well, is filled with negatives and things that are difficult to overcome and obstacles and people who are trying to say no all the time to you? The business is filled with that. What do you do to overcome that? How did you get past the fact that they had given you the rights back and you were at odds with that? What did you do?

Stuart Ross: What did I do? I’m like, I was a Buddhist. I was just a new Buddhist. And I went and got guidance, and I felt really low. And, uh, I was told, well, maybe it’s just the way the world is saying, don’t do this anymore, or if you believe in it, keep going and see what happens. And so I kept going, and we actually opened the same weekend as, you know, as a cabaret, late night cabaret, uh, on the same weekend as the cardigans. They reviewed us together, and we got the favorable part, the favorable review. But I had to let go of a lot, and I had a, you know, and I had a lot of support and a lot of people who were just believed in the show, the people who were performing it and donating their time.

Steve Cuden: Well, you had to believe in it yourself, I assume.

Stuart Ross: Yeah, it made me feel good. I just couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop myself. And I had to do all these very intricate press things.

Steve Cuden: What do you mean?

Stuart Ross: Well, I started this thing. We were, you know, we were performing at Paulson’s or then McGraw’s, and the china club was not far away. And we used to flyer the china club, said, before you go there, come see forever plaid, you know, and we’d get seven days up there, and they’d review it, and we’d send out, ask people to write the names of their friends, and we’d send postcards to people’s friends. Just saw forever plaque and look like a, uh, greetings from Miami kind of postcard, greetings from forever plaid. We pay for it. And just if they would write the postcard and send it to their friends, and we started selling out. And everything we made above the expenses, which were very minimal, went to Broadway cares.

Steve Cuden: Oh, thats really cool.

Stuart Ross: Yeah, we didnt take any money or keep any money.

Steve Cuden: Trey, when youre thinking about how to create a show, whether it was then or now, and probably now, it makes more sense in, uh, context. Now, do you think about what the audience is going to do with it, or do you think about the audience? Do you have them in mind or not?

Stuart Ross: I think about me as the audience, and that’s the way I direct, too. What will keep me interested if I get an emotional response like, I saw, there’s a wonderful movie. I don’t know if you saw it, but you should see it called bathtubs over Broadway.

Steve Cuden: I have not seen it, but I’ve heard about it.

Stuart Ross: Brilliant documentary, and I think you can get it. Well, any streaming service, I guess you can pay $3 or maybe it’s free. I don’t know. It’s a brilliant movie about industrials from the fifties, sixties, and seventies, and about somebody who happened to wander into this bizarre field. They would give out albums, you know, as souvenirs of these industrials in the fifties, sixties, and seventies and eighties, and he would just start collecting them. And he worked for Letterman, and Letterman had a Dave’s record corner on it. But he started getting involved with the lives of people who wrote these, who had big dreams and get to know them and their songs. They would spend all their lives. I don’t know if you’ve written industrials.

Steve Cuden: I have not.

Stuart Ross: I’ve seen a couple and they would spend their. They wanted to write my fair lady or west side Story. And they were writing the g, the General Motors 1956, you know, introducing the Chevrolet, the exile, the Impala. And that was, nobody would see or hear about it again. So he created that. He wrote this or this movie was made about him and his relationships.

Steve Cuden: Industrials are true one offs.

Stuart Ross: Yeah. And, like, in 1956, the general motors industrial cost, uh, 3.5 million.

Steve Cuden: Wow.

Stuart Ross: Same year. And that was two performances or maybe five. Ah. The same year that was micro lady was 350,000. And so it was really an interesting subject. So I got the rights, or worked with the rights to do the small show of this because it affected my heart. I felt emotionally connected to these people’s dreams, having to change your dreams and realizing, you know, that what you did in life was valuable.

Steve Cuden: And so you’re now working on a show that’s sort of loosely based on that.

Stuart Ross: Yep. And, uh, but it’s, you know, again, during the pandemic and during anything, I can only if somebody hires me to do a show, that’s one thing they can think of doing back to the future or whatever. And if they’re going to use me, great. I’d love it. But if I’m thinking of myself, you, uh, know, I can handle four or five people. I can write for four or five people. I know I can produce it. I know I can get it on stage. I know I can hear it in the living room.

Steve Cuden: What’s your trick for creating characters? You’ve done plenty of that. Do you have a particular methodology or technique for creating characters?

Stuart Ross: Yeah, I usually go into my own insecurities or m dream about what it would be like not to have these fears or, you know. Yeah, I think I have to take it from my life, you know, or, you know, read enough about other people to see what they went through in their lives and what their struggles were and how internal were they and how did they overcome them. Yeah, I also like to be funny, you know, and I also like to, you know, out of the worst situation, it’s like to find the humor and just build on it. And I love word salads. I just do. And, you know, people who like words. It’s much easier to write for a character who likes words.

Steve Cuden: Well, for sure.

Stuart Ross: And, uh, you know, it’s hard to.

Steve Cuden: Write for a character who doesn’t like words.

Stuart Ross: Yeah. It becomes like you’re writing in negative space. And, uh.

Steve Cuden: Exactly.

Stuart Ross: That’s always a joy. That’s why I, like, I directed Frazier.

Steve Cuden: That’s uh, lots of words.

Stuart Ross: Yeah. But they were, the people who were writing them thought the same way as the characters. They all had discretionary income and they all. They knew what they were writing about. It’s one of the successes of the show.

Steve Cuden: Oh, that’s a brilliantly written sitcom, one of the most brilliant of all time.

Stuart Ross: Of all times. And it was written by brilliant people who could write many other things, those actors.

Steve Cuden: Are you an outliner? Do you outline your plot before you start to write?

Stuart Ross: Yeah, I almost have to have it written in my head before I start, which is not good. It really delays you. I mean, I was. I grew close to Carl Reiner for the last twelve years of his wonderful life after I did interlapping the musical, uh, which was a called. It used to be called so long, 174th street was one of the worst musicals ever, or closed. And, um, he said, you know, and I got to work with Joe Stein and rewriting it, making it work. We made it work. And I got to work with Joe Stein and Carl Reiner. So I became friends with Carl when he came to New York, saw the show. I can, you know, came out here and became friends and did the show a few times and out here a couple of times. And so he told me, you know, whenever I was having downer times, he said, I just started this thing. Said, I open, you know, I didn’t know what to do or write about. So I just said, um, harry opens the door, there’s a very beautiful japanese woman standing there asking him if he’s free. And then I just took it from there and that was it. And I don’t know if I could do that. And that’s how he started. He wrote this wonderful book, uh, called all kinds of love.

Steve Cuden: And that was how he wrote from.

Stuart Ross: That book on that book and probably everything, you know. He published a book of just titles.

Steve Cuden: A book of just titles.

Stuart Ross: Yep.

Steve Cuden: I did not know that.

Stuart Ross: Yes. I wish I had it right behind me. I’d quote it. He also published a book that said, uh, people ask me how I write a book, and every morning I get up and write and look at what I write and I go to sleep and every morning, and that’s all it is. That sentence are two sentences for, like, 160 pages.

Steve Cuden: Wow.

Stuart Ross: Insane. It’s like Gertrude Steinhous, you know, you.

Steve Cuden: Must have learned a few things from hanging out with him.

Stuart Ross: I did. I did.

Steve Cuden: Like what? Give us an example of something that Carl Reiner gave to you.

Stuart Ross: He told me to lose weight. Um, he told me, I don’t know. I just made him laugh a lot.

Steve Cuden: What a thrill that must have been to make Carl Reiner laugh.

Stuart Ross: I told him, he said, what do you want to do out here? What kind of job do you want out here? I said, I don’t care. I just want a parking spot. And he thought that was the funniest thing. And, uh. I don’t know. I’m trying to remember. I was trying to think, what did you know, Carl Weiner and I, what did we do? I mean, he was very, uh. He did a lot of sketches for me. He would sit there and do your show. Show sketches and tell me about what happened in the writers room. And I would.

Steve Cuden: He would perform them for you, uh.

Stuart Ross: Sing vesta ljuba or, like, recite shakespeare. And, uh, you know, and we’d go through stuff, and I would bring them cds and stuff. And he came to see forever plaid, and he came to the opening of the movie, came to see all my shows, and I got to know his family, and, uh, we’re still close. That was a rough, uh. That and Fred willard. Those are my two really rough pandemic losses.

Steve Cuden: Yep. When Fred Willard went, and I’ve had various, uh, people around them, like, I’ve had Phil Proctor on the show, um, well, that’s right.

Stuart Ross: I saw it twice a have fill on twice.

Steve Cuden: I had Phil on twice. Yeah, well, Phil’s been a friend for a long time, so it’s always great when it happens.

Stuart Ross: Rocky rococo, at your service.

Steve Cuden: Fire sign theater.

Stuart Ross: Oh, God. Brilliant, everybody. I was just talking with his daughter, hope. I had written a benefit for tree people out here, and, uh, we had. Fred was in it, and Joanne worley was all about the voice industry. You know, people who do voiceovers and their stories. And so they asked me to do another one this year, and I said, why don’t we. We do a celebration of Fred and all those second bananas? Because I fell in love with second bananas. I didn’t want to know about Lucy. I want to know about Ethel.

Steve Cuden: The second bananas make the show go as it picks.

Stuart Ross: Yes. Edward Everett Horton. I mean, Jesus. Like, you go to these parties at Fred and Mary Willard, and you would see all the poker players from Raymond, you know, all of them, um, were just the most exciting, fun thing for me.

Steve Cuden: Let’s talk for a moment about directing. In specific. Uh, how long had you been at the directing game before you thought to yourself, you know what? I am pretty good at it. What, is it early on, or did it take you a while?

Stuart Ross: No, I knew from the beginning. I knew from when I was 18.

Steve Cuden: You had just innate self confidence in being a director.

Stuart Ross: Yeah, but I didn’t have innate self confidence when somebody would challenge me and that would plug me into so many things. That’s one of my tips. Get therapy. If you’re going to be a director writer, learn how to deal with people and be tolerant. Um, because it’s very hard, no matter how brilliant your vision is.

Steve Cuden: Do you approach directing a play differently than you approach directing a musical?

Stuart Ross: Oh, I’m just so. When it’s a play, I’m just, like, relieved. It’s so much easier. I mean, it has its issues. It’s so much. You get to sit, you get to. You don’t have to worry. You can let the pacing happen, and if it’s too slow or if it’s not right, you can adjust it based on how humans biorhythms, how the human biorhythm mechanism works for the audience and the actors, and you can. You can bathe in it for the audience.

Steve Cuden: That doesn’t understand what you mean when you say pacing. Are you talking about the. The speed of things, the rhythm of things?

Stuart Ross: You’re talking about the pacing of the emotional orchestration of the piece or what’s going on underneath, emotionally, for the characters in a play? In a musical, you have to gear up to a song, and you have to make sure that works. And yet it’s just. It’s just harder if you just have to make adjustments. And I try to. The computer in my brain is always making adjustments in a musical. In a play. I did. I did notice in the last few plays I’ve done, they were easier to set earlier.

Steve Cuden: What do you mean by easier to set?

Stuart Ross: I wouldn’t have to jiggle it around and, uh, you know, cut that and speed this up and tighten that. I couldn’t. I could. You could let it unfold. It could blossom on its own once you staged it. Well, yeah. And that. I used to stage everything completely by the numbers. Brilliant. I was so good at it, I learned how to do it. And I learned from these books from Carnegie Mellon, the Dean Cara, or Carraghean books. I kind of do it, and I took it like it was like sustenance for me. And then after a while, I realized it was already in my blood. And I could just let the. I could let the actors just read it and read it, then occasionally say, why don’t you get up? Why don’t you turn? Why don’t you go over there? Why don’t we put a little sittable or an ottoman downstage. Why don’t you sit on that just over there? No big deal. See how it feels. And you can’t do that in a musical.

Steve Cuden: Musical is more precise, isn’t it?

Stuart Ross: I know. Especially I was directing brigadier for reprise, which is one of the best things I’ve ever done. And it was Marin, Mazie and Jason Danley.

Steve Cuden: Wow.

Stuart Ross: I know. Deb Gibson and Orson Bean and Sean McDermott. It just was brilliant. And I was lucky and, um, loved it. Jason wanted to know, where do I go? What do you want me to do? How do I get there? Marin wanted to sort of like, let me just feel this for a minute and see where to go. And they were in the same scene, so I was like, I didn’t know how to, you know, uh, we had a producer. They’re watching me going, well, Stuart, what are you going to do now?

Steve Cuden: And on top of it, they were married.

Stuart Ross: On top of it, they were married. And he was probably a little more of a, uh, not exactly what you think of for Tommy in the, uh, in Brigadoon, but we made it really work for him. And for Marin, we just lowered. I wanted to lower the keys. I wanted her to start singing in a more conversational tone. And, you know, I wanted that power that she has. She’s was a samurai, you know.

Steve Cuden: She was a genius, an absolute genius, no question.

Stuart Ross: I saw her do the last performance of the king and I. That was, you know, she was amazing. Changed the whole show for me.

Steve Cuden: I saw her and, uh, Brian Stokes Mitchell do a kiss me, Kate. That was really something I wished I had.

Stuart Ross: She was out tonight.

Steve Cuden: I thought it something. They were very well matched. Both of their power was very well matched.

Stuart Ross: And I saw her do a one nighter Seth Rodetzky did for a, I don’t know, maybe it was Broadway cares with the full orchestra of 20th, uh, century Doug sills. And she tore that thing apart. And I was sitting behind Hal Prince, and he turned and he said, I didn’t know this thing was that funny. She was side splitting.

Steve Cuden: All right, so you get a play or a musical delivered to you, or it might be a sitcom script, and you maybe you, you do know it a little bit, or maybe you don’t know it at all. Where do you start, aside from reading it? You have to read it. But what’s your first approach to it? What are you looking for in a script to make it go?

Stuart Ross: I look for an emotional connection right away, no matter what my brain says. If there was, like a moment where I see somebody willing to grow and willing to own up to their. Their problems, or admitting the truth about a situation where I can hook in, where I can get the audience to go, like, that’s like me, or that pulls me into the StoryBeat. I look for being pulled into the StoryBeat.

Steve Cuden: And do you then drive the show toward that?

Stuart Ross: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it, uh, depends, because then other things will happen. If there’s not. If there’s only one or two moments I can work with the writers to say, like, this is really working and this isn’t, uh. Or it’s not. We’re taking a tangent here. And kill the babies. Kill your darlings? Is that what it’s called?

Steve Cuden: Kill your darlings?

Stuart Ross: Yeah, yeah. Um, but they don’t want to hear that, especially when you’re up for a job.

Steve Cuden: They don’t want to hear that. If they’re up for a job or.

Stuart Ross: If they really want to keep a number and it’s not working, we’re going to say, okay, let’s figure this out. How do you want to make this work?

Steve Cuden: And do you then take the script and start to break it down all the way into its beats, or how do you operate?

Stuart Ross: I take it down further. Yeah, I, like, take each scene, uh, as it comes. Yeah, I guess I will break down a scene. When we did enter laughing right from the get go, I didn’t want to do it right from the get go. I found a way in right from the get go. And Joe loved the idea that we made it. Unless you’ve seen interlapping, uh, you don’t want to go into the details. But there’s a point where we get to about 20 minutes into the show, or I more. We get to his parents. It’s about Carl Reiner. It’s autobiography.

Steve Cuden: Sure. Sure it is. Yeah.

Stuart Ross: Music by brilliant Stan Daniels. And the music, it’s going like this and this and this, and it’s hilarious. Builds and builds, and it gets so hilarious, you just don’t know what you’re gonna do. You just. You’re already. You’re 20 minutes, and you’ve already sort of shot your rod with funny shtick. Join myself together. Josh Grazetti, Richard, kinda. All the other people who played, played in the show, George S. Irving. And then we got to Jill. Michael Tucker and Jill Ikenberry had a scene. They’re the parents and their kids home, coming home late, like it’s one in the morning. And I just said, take your time. I stopped the show. Literally stopped the show. And I said, pretend we’re doing awaken sing now. I don’t want a false beat here. I mean, you’re gonna have something to sew. You’re gonna. You’ve got dishes, you’re gonna pace. You got an old bathrobe on. And we went to town in the opposite way that you would normally do a musical. We slowed the show down. That was beat by beat because they were that kind of actor. They are that kind of actors, and they really have to know what they’re doing. And they’re married and they were playing parents, and they. So we had all that going on. But, uh, we did break that down and it worked. The audience was like. Like, mesmerized.

Steve Cuden: So being a director, as you well know, is one of the most high pressure jobs in theater or in tv or in film. It’s a high pressure job. What do you do to handle pressure?

Stuart Ross: I say, when the pressure starts coming, I have a line I use that’s too important a decision for me to give a quick answer for. No matter what it is. No matter what it is. You like the blue or the red for the hat? I usually try to count to ten. I have to. I don’t like everything coming. I have a severe, you know, Adhd. I’m dyslexic. I have things. I’m also a subson OCD. I’m sure I’m spectrum adjacent. Um, I just. When all those things come, um, and on top of that, tinnitus or tinnitus, whatever. So sounds, people going in my ears, they sample. And I’m just. So I just. I’ve learned to nod.

Steve Cuden: You nod and you push them away for a little bit so you can.

Stuart Ross: Think, yeah, I have to take a break and think. Um. And unless somebody lies to me, that’s still the hardest thing to deal with. Unless, you know, somebody does something that’s going to hurt the show. Like a press agent not telling you there are critics coming that night when you were expecting them in two nights and nobody telling me. So we said, when an actor says, can we try this tonight and see how it applies? I go, yeah. And then found out that the times was there, oh, boy, that’s rough stuff. And that’s hard to keep your temper in check. But I’ve been doing that.

Steve Cuden: Do you find that it’s extremely challenging to keep your temper in those moments?

Stuart Ross: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: So do you do. What do you do? Do you breathe? Do you. How do you get through breathe?

Stuart Ross: I have to, yeah, I have to breathe. I have to, uh, once or twice, I think once every five or six years, I’ll have a meltdown. Um, or just cry.

Steve Cuden: What’s your favorite thing about rehearsals?

Stuart Ross: Oh, God. Working with the actors, it’s almost like it’s an intrusion when the audience comes laughing with the actors. Oh, my God. That’s what you know. Or coming up with a line and getting the laugh. The actors to laugh. Uh, you know, especially when you had Joe Stein, you know, the great, um.

Steve Cuden: That’s one of the greatest.

Stuart Ross: And he would say, like, I like airline better. Wow, that’s great. When you have a new writer go, you change that line without me. I said, we’re just trying to say the words that feel the more you know. And you get like, oh, God, you know, and this. I’m working with a writer who’s close to 90 now on. On a show, and he’s. You have to handle him like you’re not handling them, but I have to make suggestions, ask him questions to bring it out, to get him to see the problem and get him to, um, understand that there’s a problem here and find another way. And he loves that.

Steve Cuden: Do you find you use the same technique with actors to get them to figure out what there’s. What they should be doing in acting?

Stuart Ross: You have to, uh. It’s the same. They’re people.

Steve Cuden: It’s all about asking questions.

Stuart Ross: Then, yes, it’s pretty much, uh, you know, working with the students, it’s a little different because they don’t have the same set of tools. But I still treat them like, okay, how does this feel? How does this feel? What do you think we should do here? And they don’t know. You’re the director. They’ll say, and I’ll go, yeah, I am. But I want to see where we can come to some ground where you’re comfortable, because an act of being comfortable is heaven.

Steve Cuden: So you’ve gone all the way through rehearsals. It’s now opening night, and your job more or less is finished. Is that a good thing? Is it a sad thing for you? What do you. How do you approach.

Stuart Ross: It’s frustrating because you can’t talk to the actors. You can’t go backstage. You can’t give notes, even if you have a great idea. I mean, with interlapping. They actually said to me, you can come every night as long as you write a new joke every night, as long as you come up with a bit of business every night. But they didn’t want notes, or they did, but, you know, you had to have something that was going to make them. You know, feel better about their performance.

Steve Cuden: So it’s difficult for you not to meddle once the show’s open.

Stuart Ross: Yeah. I mean, I don’t understand. Yeah, open. I left and da da da da da. Uh, I know people who do that, very good directors. But it’s a job and it’s over. It’s hard for, you know, when you’re doing regional theater because they’re not going to pay for another room, leave the next day. I always have an extra day in my. Or I used to an extra day in my contract. So it doesn’t feel like a dream.

Steve Cuden: What for you, is the big difference? And what do you think about directing tv versus theater?

Stuart Ross: Um, I love tv. It was so much easier. It was so great. I mean, I didn’t do a lot of it because right around the time when I started to get some traction, I started writing at the public theater. I sort of was there for a few years working on radiant baby, you know, working with George Wolfe and creating a show, and I missed it. I. What the hardest thing for me about directing tv. Uh, and actors loved getting questions. Why. I remember, uh, I did things with Kirstie Alley in Veronica’s closet. And I said, well, where are you coming from? When we did the first scene, the first day, she looked and stopped and she went, oh, you’re from the theater.

Steve Cuden: Well, um, he’s used to traffic cops.

Stuart Ross: Yeah. But it’s also, I knew so much less than everybody else in the. Every camera person, every prop person, all the lighting people. I. I knew so much less that I felt a little cowed. I felt like I, uh. Imposter syndrome. It made me very nervous to be with these great people, which you don’t feel doing theater. Not at all. Unless the producers are hanging around, like with producers hanging around in the theater or probably I learned it in tv. And when there’s the suits or in the audience, um, looking at. Around, just keep rehearsing the same scene over and over. They’ll leave, they will leave, they will get bored. And, uh.

Steve Cuden: But the actors don’t mind at all, do they? Because they want to rehearse.

Stuart Ross: They don’t mind at all. They also know what, what’s going on. So.

Steve Cuden: I love hearing stories like that. That’s, uh, a technique that you use to dissuade people that you don’t want around, to be around. I think that’s great.

Stuart Ross: Yeah, we had ways. I had a stage manager, a wonderful stage manager, and, uh, whenever the producer was around, he would sing a song or he would say, uh, we need to rehearse the battle scene. Oh, okay. And that meant the battle axe was coming or whatever, you know, whatever it meant. That meant, you know, that somebody was going to be there tapping their finger. I was doing a show with Larry Grossman. It was. And it was called compose yourself, which I put together, and it was a review of his stuff. And with stories. Jason was in it, and the wonderful Liz Larson, Darius de Haas, uh, Lorna Luft, uh, Howard McGillin. I mean, Nikki Renee, Nikki James. It, uh, was just spectacular. Um, but Larry was always, like, on my case, and sitting there with his pen clicking. He was very nervous, so I put him in the show. Why don’t you come on stage? Why don’t you sing that song that was so personal, and tell the StoryBeat about Tony Bennett singing your song and hearing it coming out of the PJ Clark’s on a summer day in New York in the sixties.

Steve Cuden: He wrote Snoopy, didn’t he?

Stuart Ross: Snoopy and Minnie’s boys and Doll’s life and grind and pretend. Charlie, the Muppets, all the Muppets. And he wrote gone too soon, the Michael Jackson song. Yeah, I did that. I did that one other time with a writer who was just on my case the whole time, and I put him in that person. I made. I put him in a straitjacket and put him on in the show, like, as a crazy person who had these songs in him, but he was a straightjacket, and it worked. And m he was so concerned with that that he didn’t really give me too many notes about anything else.

Steve Cuden: That’s funny. Let’s talk for just a moment, while we can about your working with the ASCAP Disney workshop. What is your function there? What do you do?

Stuart Ross: Well, that was a while ago. Michael Kirker asked me to do the. With Stephen Schwartz, you know, to hear the, uh, shows and then be on a panel and give my two cent and criticism, or find out what the writers want to say. That’s how I always look at everything. Ask the writers what they intended. What did you intend by this? Do you think, you know, and ask if they think it accomplishes it? And so we just go through all these shows of varying qualities and, uh, have to be, you know, go down the line and be on a panel with five or six people, and you just, um. I remember sometimes that it was so exciting to see them, like, go, ah, see the light bulb go off and see them really make changes in their show. M that was from all the years at the O’Neill, because that was the magic place. That’s when, like, the bug, really, that for developing new musicals, where you just rehearse the show and do a reading and then have a panel or discuss it and then go. The writers go away, and the next day you do it again, tighten it and hear it. They would do some more rewriting. They do it and do it, do it. At the end of the two weeks, you had a different show because the.

Steve Cuden: Writers eventually lose sight of the forest for the trees, that old cliche. But they do. They can’t see it, and they need the outside help.

Stuart Ross: They need the outside help, and they need to understand what they’ve written. Uh, I mean, it depends on the level of the writer or what’s going on, but, you know, and also Paulette Haupt, who was the brilliant head of it for so long, the artistic director, but she was like a facilitator, uh, you know, with the panels and the different people who would dramaturg her. And if somebody, uh, was going into their personal agenda, she would try to get the writers to see, you don’t have to listen to that person. You do have to listen to that. There’s a problem there that that person is seeing that maybe has some validity, and she would sort of buffer, and that was really important to the writers, and that was joy. And same thing at the Askap Disney, except I wanted to start my own. Where do they go after the Askap Disney workshop or the O’Neal? I want a place for second where after they’ve had their first or second reading, a regional production or workshop, where do they go? That’s where the energy drops.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s still a challenge after all that to then get a show mounted somewhere. It’s a big challenge.

Stuart Ross: Yeah. So I wanted to create the next step, kind of, you know, and I’ve been in talks with a lot of people and just trying to just table reads. Just table reads. Let them play the music. Let them. They want to sing it. If they want friends to sing it, great. But it’s about the work. It’s about fixing so they can get ahead of the game and the results. Really exciting. Uh, you know, I did a couple of shows that way, and, uh, it certainly had. Yeah. And her laughing was like that. I just kept having them read it again and again, and they said, you know, we have to stage this. I said, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it.

Steve Cuden: You feel like the, the reading and the reading and the reading leads you naturally to what the staging will ultimately be me?

Stuart Ross: I do. I mean, and the staging on the interlapping when we did it as the concert or the mufti, so much of it stayed. So much of it stayed through the, um, many years. I think the last production was in 2019, uh, and we started in 2007, so that was twelve years. And so much of the staging stayed the same. And I also invented during that show, I think it was that show, this thing, uh, a little triangle with wheels on it and three, like plastic, uh, I don’t know, like handcuffs, that kind of plastic that loops where you can put your music stand on this little thing with casters. So you’re music. You’re rolling. You could roll your music stand around so it’s nearby, but you don’t have to hold your script. And you can just rehearse and walk and stage with this, your friend, which is your script, on a music stand, that roll.

Steve Cuden: Oh, that’s brilliant.

Stuart Ross: And it was. It’s served me very, very well. That was really, really fun to do. Uh, and, uh, it really helps the actors bridge that. Not. It’s not a performance, it’s not a real reading because we’ve had the script long enough. But I can. It still gives you permission to experiment.

Steve Cuden: It sounds to me like you would also be a very good teacher. Have you done some teaching?

Stuart Ross: I want to do more. I just don’t, you know. No, I do the Bay street theater workshops, and I did the show up at the Matt school of music. I love it, and I love watching kids, uh, well, students learn to write and fix their own material. And, um, I had an assistant from, uh, pace, uh, when I did the golden rainbow workshop. And I would always say, like, look, okay, we need to put the piano on stage. Stage right, because the audience, or audience left, because the audience’s eye, if we put it on stage over there, the audience eye goes there and it’s going to stop. And they have to look back to see the actors, and it’s a pain in the ass. So keep the piano over here, um, on the audience’s left, then m that’s the way the eye goes. And I’m able to shoot out these things. Like here. If you want to learn something, learn that.

Steve Cuden: Well, you know, I taught for a long time at school, uh, here in Pittsburgh called Point Park University, and there was nothing more for fulfilling than seeing the light go on in the student’s eyes. That’s what you’re talking about?

Stuart Ross: Uh, yeah, that’s. That happened at the matt and school, and we were developing this new show, which was taking all the elements with different songs from different shows, creating what makes the musicals that we love work. And, you know, taking them through the want song was a mashup of lovely. Wouldn’t it be lovely? And somewhere that’s green, which, you know, and then, you know, only go through the whole show. And watching them come alive and watching them understand put on your Sunday clothes was a release for the audience. Was amazing. Was just amazing. They would get emotional about talking about how that worked, and it was one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done.

Steve Cuden: Uh, I bet. I bet. Well, I’ve been having the most wonderful conversation with Stuart Ross for a little more than an hour now, and we’re going to slowly wind the show down. And so I’m just wondering, in all of your experiences, you’ve told us some really great stories already, but do you have a, uh, StoryBeat that you can share with us that’s either weird, quirky, strange, offbeat, or just plain funny?

Stuart Ross: I had this job when I was an actor. I answered an ad in backstage, and I had this job. I would go down and I would just be one of the people in the mug line at, uh, the jail at, ah, whatever you call that jail, right? So I would just sit there and read a book, and then I would go in and have to go into a mug line with all these criminals or not criminals to see if I got idd or to see what’s going on. That was my most interesting, uh, job. But also.

Steve Cuden: And nobody ever pointed the finger and said, it’s you, did they?

Stuart Ross: You don’t know that. But, you know, I could say I did. I have. I was asked to do Diane Carroll club act of one person’s show, which, and it was her first time in 20 years or whatever, and she didn’t know if we were going to get along or whatever. And then I just had her google herself and said, well, what are you going to have me say? I said, I don’t know. Let’s google yourself in front of the audience. And this was 2006, and there Diane Carroll is, like, googling herself and saying, like, the Diane Carroll dresses from dynasty and a Julia lunchbox. She said, oh, my God. Oh, my God. And then she was like, oh. So we put it in, we put all that stuff into the show, and it sort of was so much fun, and we just have. So she got into the theater when her mother took her to see Annie. Get your gun. And Ethel Merman shot up a rifle in the air, and a duck would fall down, and I would. And it was the same theater, and I would see a gypsy, you know, and it was Ethel Merman. She would come down, come that through. I mean, an entrance to the aisle, carrying a little dog, and she died. We’re the same person. So that’s how, um. Yeah, we got along really well. And I just love so much working with her and, you know, trying to connect and find out that stuff. I had one more. I did have one funny thing. So we’re doing interlaughing, right, with George Irving, and he’s 86, and he’s playing the acting teacher, and we’re having a good time. And was with Michael Tucker and Reagan Madison, all sharing a dressing room. And our stage manager, Sarah, who’s young and fit, right. And it was at the York, and they had, like, all the hats were on top of the dressing room lights, you know, the soffits or whatever. And she had to. I was there giving notes, and she had to step on a chair and reach up above George Irving. She was very close to his to head while she was up there. And he said, of all the days, I forgot to put in my teeth.

Steve Cuden: So, last question for you today. Uh, Stuart, you’ve given us just a huge amount of advice and a lot of, uh, great things to think about. Ah, already in this show. But I’m wondering if you have a single solid piece of advice, or maybe more than one, uh, that you like to tell people who are starting out in the business, or maybe they’re in a little bit and trying to get to that next level.

Stuart Ross: Well, the first thing is make sure you have, uh, I don’t want to say therapy, or they don’t teach you that. They don’t teach how to talk to people in directing school. But you can learn everything you want except how to deal with people who challenge you. Get out of your own way. Get out of your own way as fast as possible if you want to be a director or if you want to be anything. But really, it’s very, very important, no matter what’s going on inside. And really hard for me to learn that. And, uh, I wish somebody had told me that also, when hitting rough times, which I had many, you know, or times when you’re not working, that’s what I call rough time. But I was cleaning out my apartment and said, I’m just going to get rid of the theater. I’m not going to have anything. I’m going to get rid of all my records. And I found those 45s that had the four lads, Perry Como and all those things. And I said, I wonder what this would sound like. Live. So when you’re having a problem and you don’t know what to do and you can’t breathe and you think you’re going to have to stop, look around, because the answer is there, right there in front of you. Usually when there’s a problem, the answer is in the problem. I found that to be true. Look around. That’s so important.

Steve Cuden: I think that’s spectacular advice. It’s usually right in front of you if you just bother to take the time to look.

Stuart Ross: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I, uh, see now I’m looking for if you’re looking for it, but you can calm down and look for it. Don’t get too excited or aggravated. But, yeah, look for it with, with alert eyes. Be nice and stay alert.

Steve Cuden: Stuart Ross, this has just been so much fun to talk to you today, and you’ve just given us so much great stuff to think about. And I can’t thank you enough for giving m us this, these wonderful stories. Um, and for spending this much time with me. I really appreciate it.

Stuart Ross: Oh, that was great. It was a pleasure.

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’re listening to? Your support helps us bring more great StoryBeat episodes to you. Story beat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartradio, Stitcher, Tunein, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden, and may all your stories be unforgettable.