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Go Inside Opening Night of APOLOGIA with Channing, Dancy & More!
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Nov 2, 2022
Direct from London, Alexi Kaye Campbell's biting play Apologia makes its New York debut with Stockard Channing in a powerhouse performance as a woman facing the repercussions of her past. Apologia is a passionate, human and humorous clash of generations and beliefs-a lively look at yesterday's rebels living in today's reality.
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Stockard Channing and Hugh Dancy are back on the New York stage
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at Roundabout Theatre Company in Apologia by Alexi K. Campbell and I caught up with the company on opening night
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This is about choice. Choices we make, the consequences of our actions
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and we think we have, you're forced into a choice, that's life
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I mean, I want to make the choice, but you have to do it, and you hope it's the right one. And it has, over years and years, its ramifications
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And that's just about life. I know you did this in London, but reinventing the show and starting all over again with Daniel Aukin
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what was that like being in the rehearsal room with him? It was fascinating, because you sort of remember some of the stuff
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And I'd say to him, look, you want to keep this, you want to change this. Then you find new things you hadn't thought of before
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because you're working with people playing the same roles, but they become different human beings
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You have different sons, you have different best friends, you have a different daughter-in-law, you know
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so you have to create a new world that suits those people and that reality
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It feels great. I mean, I'm obviously in very good company. I worked with Alexi our playwright before so that was a very easy decision for me I saw the original production of this play in London directed by a dear friend of mine so I felt like I knew what I was getting myself into
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It's a thrill, yeah. When you read the play, because we all fell in love with you and the pride with Alexei's work too
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what was it like when you first read the play? Well, like I say, because I'd seen the original production
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I had a sense of the skeleton of it and the shape of it
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But what I'd forgotten was the kind of, how can I put this
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the slightly deceptive complexity of Alexei's writing, which has this very musical quality to it
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has a kind of a great sense of style, if you like
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But what I thought was, I know that I will not get bored doing that again and again
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and I know that there will be more and more to dig and figure out. I've always been drawn to the idea of exploring how the 60s and 70s
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sort of shifted society in sort of quite a seismic way and all the things we take for granted now
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like you know all the things we call liberal values began then in the 60s and 70s so I suppose
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there was a part of me that wanted to pay homage to the people of that generation who made those
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huge changes so in the pride it was very much about gay rights and in this it was very much
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about feminism and those pioneering women who you know set the foundations for everything that came afterwards And also the idea of I always been drawn to the idea of generations and how one generation what sort of and the idea of inheritance
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and what one generation inherits from the previous one. And one final thing was how whenever there's a sort of
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I've been drawn to the idea of whenever there's trauma of any kind in a family
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everybody remembers their own, has their own interpretation of what happened. and we all kind of create narratives
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that help us make it through the day and through our lives
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And of course the problem is when our narratives clash which is what happens in this play
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What was it like for both of you to be in the rehearsal room with Daniel Hawken and just working on this play
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before it went up in front of an audience? It was great because Daniel
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was so surprisingly wonderful to work with. I don't know what I expected
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but I definitely came to it with some nerves about that. And he's so sensitive and thoughtful and nurturing
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So I feel really blessed to have had him as a director for my first show
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Yeah, he's really wonderful. And I think really allowed us all to have room to play and figure things out
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while also encouraging us to go in directions that I certainly didn anticipate going in initially So it been really great yeah the rehearsal room was a really safe space the whole cast has been really wonderful
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and uh you know never three and a half weeks of rehearsal never feels like enough time
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but everybody really um it was just a very uh it was a very intense but also just a relaxed
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rehearsal room and uh stockard had done the part before uh but in a different production and was
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just really open and wonderful about looking at it again in a fresh way and we had a great time
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and then hugh dancy oh my gosh i love working with hugh dancy so much he's he's fantastic and we
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and he showed me things about the part that i i didn't know were there and uh really surprised
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and amazed me john tillinger back on stage yes so exciting to work with joey um he's fabulous and uh
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you wouldn't know that he hadn't been on stage in 35 years. What have you enjoyed the most about working on this production
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Well, you know, it starts with the text, and I think I'm a pretty good director
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but I'm not better than the text, and the text is something that really resonated with me
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and getting a chance to explore that with this company of actors has been really dreamy
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