Take Your First Steps Inside the New Drama Book Shop with Thomas Kail & David Korins!

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

The iconic drama bookshop, which was first founded in 1917, has been saved by the Hamilton team

creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, director Thomas Kale, producer Jeffrey Seller, and theater owner James L. Niederlander

And we're here at their gorgeous new location of 266 West 39th Street

to give you a sneak peek and to catch up with Thomas Kale and the shop's designer, award winner, David Korins

Tell me what this whole drama bookshop means to you, Tom. It's really where my career started

in the basement of the old drama bookshop on 40th Street. I was down there with my friends

It was this little incubator. Alan Hubby and Roseanne Sealand gave us this space. And my little backhouse productions with three of my pals had a home

And as you know, working in the theater, you're always moving. You're always shifting. There's a real transience to it

And to be able to put your bags down and have a phone and a desk and a space it made us feel like we belonged and i met lynn down in that space in may of 2002 and

we have had a 19-year conversation it just never ended and that's where we you know started working

those really early days for heights i mean like that's where chris jackson saw veronica for the

first time in an audition and they met and now they've been together for 15 years and have two

beautiful children so i just have such a profound molecular connection to the store at so many

Many of us do. And I'm just, I'm one of, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands. So when the store was struggling, it just felt like it was a call to action

There was only one thing to do, which is to make sure that it endured. It found a new home if it needed one

And it could be something that was as inclusive as it ever was. So we wanted it to feel like a European cafe, right

We wanted it to feel like a warm space, kind of tin ceiling, or this kind of place where it was like the glow of, you know, old lamps

And really it was about feeling. right emotions because so much about what we do is we kind of trade in the currency of emotions

and like what does it want to feel like and so the warm woods the um the green carpet i just always

have these vivid moments in my mind these memories of going to a bookshop and sitting down on a rug

right what would it be if we found like a lot of great old furniture to sit and have these

conversations but wouldn it be great to foster a place where you could like sit on the floor and thumb through a book And so we wanted to make that kind of like wrap our arms around the community

And so it's about warmth, community, welcoming. And my hope and dream is that, you know, the future

Tommy Kael and Lin-Manuel Miranda find their way in here and, you know, create the way that those

guys did. When I first got to New York, it was still on 47th Street for just a little while. So

on that second floor. So I remember walking in and the radiators were hissing and a little bit hot

And it was like, the temperature was always a little out of control there. And I thought it

was heaven. I was like, does everybody know that this is here? And everyone looked at me and said, yes, it's not just you. And then I first went to the location on 40th street when it was just being

built because they gave us a tour because they walked us downstairs. This is probably in July of

2001. And the construction workers were there and they went downstairs to the basement with us. And

they said this little white room do you think it can be a black box and we said if you're asking

we'll we'll do whatever and they said great here's some black paint paint the walls we put up some chairs and we started rehearsing as they were still building the shop and that shop opened

December 3rd 2001 and I was there I mean I was there you know every day for years and years and

years really until 2005 2006 I was there running my company and we wanted people that had been to

that shop to walk in here and feel uh I know where I am and people that didn't even know about the

shop to say, why haven't I known about this? What was it like putting this all together during COVID

Well, we started before COVID and we had all these beautiful creative conversations together

Jeffrey sent articles about what he thought the inspiration could be. And, you know, I conceived

of this crazy twisting, winding bookworm. And then we all got sent home. We found a location

We started building. We were on a roll. We were going to open. And then we were sent home. And

then we slowly came out and with masks and a lot of fear, we finished. During COVID, we dressed all

the walls. I sent Lynn texts. He responded. I sent Tommy texts. He responded back and forth. And we

did all of it over Zoom. And then we finished last November. And we wrapped it up and locked the door

and waited until we could finally come back out and do this safely. There was a gentleman by the name of Gilbert Parker who is an incredible, incredible friend

and a really valued and honored member of the theater community. He ran the theater department at William Morris for years and he represented Terrence McNally and Pete Gurney and Frank Galati and like countless others and George Firth and Paul Zendel I mean like really reaching back for like the for the Richies and all of us And so Gilbert and I were introduced on December 3rd 2001 at the opening of the Old Drama Bookshop

And he said, look, I'm around. I just retired. If you have questions, if you want to talk about stuff, I don't think that he knew I was going to call him the next day and invite myself over

But when I walked in his apartment for the first time, I saw all these window. And I said, what are these? Why do you have Kiss of a Spider Woman

up and he said oh I I represented Terrence and I said oh Terrence McNally and he said uh yes do

you know his work and I you know sort of like yeah I'm cool I could and I tried to keep my chill and

I sat there with Gilbert for hours that day and he just started telling me stories he said you know

if you have any anything else you need like just give me a call and I just kept calling and he

would take me to see shows he came to every reading every play I ever directed every musical

he was he was instrumental in my life and towards the end of his he said I'd like to give you these

and have you keep them. And I, at that point, knew the bookshop was in process

And I got to tell him and his family that I wanted to bring them to the bookshop. And so we have 17 of those that were in his apartment

that were original from the shows that he worked on and represented. And so they're in the back corner of the bookshop

We have to talk about the bookworm. This is stunning. How long is the bookworm

What does it weigh? How many books are in there? So the bookworm started literally

in our first conversation. I said to Jeffrey and Tommy, I feel like we should make some form of sculpture or some kind of way to eventize going to the space

And like, let's make it out of books. It's so obvious. I said, I have no idea what this means, but let's make a thing that twists and winds around the room and up and down and around the stacks

And Tommy said, if we're going to do that, we should make a real decisive kind of story moment about it

And what would happen if we made it a timeline of theater history? So it's a timeline of theater history

It's about 2,500 books, 140 feet long. It weighs 3,500 pounds. And it spans over 2,500 years of theater history

starting way back as it breaks through the wall with the ancient Greek. And it ends up right over here, dyes into this platform behind me in 2020 where we stopped

And it's built and engineered by Hudson Scenic, the same scene shop that builds Hamilton

so we know a guy. And builds Broadway right And builds Broadway And they you know it one of these things like in a meeting with Tommy and Jeffrey and Lynn you kind of put something on paper and say well that be really cool like let see if we can pull it off and here we are and Tommy said to me this morning

geez it's way better than we thought it would turn out you know you have these conversations you

scribble on the back of a napkin or an envelope and then you see a drawing and then you see a

rendering and then you walk in and there it is you know hours and hours to put it together you know

hours to think about it. And now I think it also gives this bookshop something that feels like it's

a piece of art within all of these works of art. And so I just, I think it's to David's great credit

to have that be included in this and also to make the comfiest place you can imagine to come and

discover, to pull down that book off a shelf that you never heard about, but someone mentioned to

you just as you walked in and you want to plop down for an hour. Great. Like have a cup of coffee

and do that. And I feel like that's what David's made here. I love that it starts with the Greeks

in the back when it breaks through the wall and it ends here now up here with this beautiful piece

absolutely no and and i think that that's that's for us something that that also felt like it was a

way to uh to you know have a metaphoric representation of what we're all doing which is

you know taking what came before us evolving it thinking about it considering it and we're in

constant dialogue with it none of us that are making theater can do so if there wasn't escalus

None of us can do anything we're doing if there wasn't every theater maker who has come before us

So it's a way to acknowledge and say, we know you were there and we're here and we won't forget you

I don't feel the same way about sets, right? Sets, I'm like, oh, I know the actors are going to make it come to life, but I want it to stay this pristine and magical

This place is the inverse. I cannot wait for people to come in here and mess it up and ding it up and live in it and charge their cell phones and like, you know, don't stain anything with coffee

But like do their thing because then we're going to learn so much more and we're going to start writing the next stories

Right. And to me, I can't wait. Like this is great that we're here

But once those doors open on Thursday and people come barreling through, it's going to be really like in a way Times Square will come back to life

I just love that, you know, the old shops had like, you know, dings everywhere and everything else going on with the history of everybody creating in there

And you're going to have that here once these doors open. I know, it's going to start on Thursday. This is the most pristine you'll ever see it

So shoot this and remember this