Theresa Rebeck on Her Broadway Play, I Need That

I Couldn't Throw It Out
Season 2, Episode 18 - Theresa Rebeck on her Broadway play, I Need That

MICHAEL SMALL:
Coming up right now on this episode of I Couldn't Throw It Out....

THERESA REBECK
...It's very psychological and personal and neurotic and beautiful. You know it's all of these different things, our relationship to the stuff of our lives.

MICHAEL SMALL:
Those are the words of Teresa Rebeck, the author of the play I Need That, which is on Broadway till December 30th and stars Danny DeVito. This play asks a question that is near and dear to our hearts. How do you let go of the things you've saved for a lifetime? To hear Teresa's thoughts about that, keep listening.

[song excerpt starts]

I couldn't throw it out
I had to scream and shout  
Before I turn to dust
I've got to throw it out
Before I turn to dust 
I've got to throw it out

[song excerpt ends]

MICHAEL SMALL:
Hello, Sally Libby. Sally, are you there? If you respond to me, I promise I will throw out something right now. Okay, everybody, I'm just kidding you. I'm not throwing anything out, except maybe Sally's computer. Because we just discovered that it's broken. So she can watch us and she can listen, but she cannot answer back. We aren't exactly ready for this. It's not what we had planned. But on the positive side, I do have a copy of Sally's questions and I guess I'm the one who gets to share them with our very special guest, Theresa Rebeck. Theresa is the author of the play I Need That, which is on Broadway and stars Danny DeVito. He plays a guy who can't throw out his possessions. Sally, does that remind you of anyone you know? On second thought, I know you can't answer me. So everyone, let me say Sally is shaking her head vigorously in the yes direction, and I believe she is thinking about me. Meanwhile, this play also stars Lucy DeVito, who is Danny's real life daughter and his daughter in the show. Lucy's character really wants her father to throw out his stuff. In other words, she sounds a lot like Sally. While we're talking about familiar personalities, there's another character in the play, a neighbor played by Ray Anthony Thomas, and we accidentally discovered that his understudy is our high school friend, the very talented Lance Roberts. We've only known Lance for about 50 years or so. So I'm reading Sally's lips and she is screaming, "Go Lance!" Now that we got that out of the way, we're ready to talk with Theresa. She can help us dig deeper than ever into our favorite topic, which of course is throwing out the things we save. Welcome Teresa.

Theresa Rebeck:
Thank you, I'm happy to be here.

Michael Small:
Before we go any farther, I wanna let people know a little bit more about you. I believe your first Broadway play was Mauritius in 2007, is that correct?

Theresa Rebeck:
Yes.

Michael Small:
And I Need This is your fifth Broadway play. This makes you a record breaker. You are the female playwright with the most non-musical productions on Broadway.

Theresa Rebeck:
You can call them plays.

Michael Small:
Yeah, I'll call them plays.

Theresa Rebeck:
It's a very specific kind of record. It's like woman and straight plays. I trust that somebody came up with this stat and it's a good stat. I'm proud of it. I'm proud of it no matter what.

Michael Small:
Well, it's pretty impressive. Do you by any chance know who the record breaker was for men?

Theresa Rebeck:
Do you? Have you done it? The research?

Michael Small:
Yeah, I looked it up. I asked chat GPT.

Theresa Rebeck:
Chat GPT?

Michael Small:
Do you have a guess?

Theresa Rebeck:
I don't know who it is. I have no idea.

Michael Small:
Well, you won't be surprised. Neil Simon.

Theresa Rebeck:
Oh, Neil Simon.

Michael Small:
Thirty plays on Broadway.

Theresa Rebeck:
Okay, that's crazy. That's... Now that's prolific. People say I'm prolific. I'm like, I'm no Neil Simon.

Michael Small:
Well, along those lines, I counted 24 published plays on your website. Is that correct?

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah, I think that is correct.

Michael Small:
And then Sally reminded me that you had 22 one act plays also.

Theresa Rebeck:
Oh yeah, I have a lot of one act plays, sure.

Michael Small:
Well, that's almost 50 plays. That's pretty incredible.

Theresa Rebeck:
Yes, I have to say, when I get bored, my brain... starts to attack me. So if you give it something to think about other than how I suck, it's happier and so am I. I always feel like every writer has some version of a neurosis that's wound in there and that's mine.

Michael Small:
Well, I honor and revere that particular neurosis and I'm just going to go over some of what you produced during all that time. One of them is Ominium Gatherum, which was nominated for a Pulitzer in 2003, and Seminar, which was on Broadway in 2011 with Alan Rickman, and Bernhard Hamlet on Broadway with Janet McTeer in 2018. Pretty amazing people to have in your plays. You wrote and directed the 2018 movie Trouble with Angelica Houston and Bill Pullman. You got great reviews, and it is now on my Amazon Prime viewing list. And you've written a lot for TV. You created the 2011 series Smash. You wrote for LA Law, NYPD Blue, Law and Order Criminal Intent, and other shows, correct?

Theresa Rebeck:
All of this is true.

Michael Small:
Wow. And you did a lot of directing. This is why Sally told me she was exhausted when she looked at your resume. And you wrote three novels and a memoir. And you won many playwriting awards. And you're on Newsweek's list of 150 most fearless women. And you produced two children. And now you're talking to us, which is amazing.

Theresa Rebeck:
Yes, and this is the most exciting thing that's happened to me all day. So I really appreciate it.

Michael Small:
You are very nice to say that, and we're very excited about it too. Unfortunately, Sally and I could not get to see the play before talking with you, and we are very interested in this play because our podcast is I Couldn't Throw It Out, and your play is I Need That.

Theresa Rebeck:
This is your play. I have to tell you, you have to come see it. You're gonna be so happy.

Michael Small:
Can you talk us through... enough of the plot that you feel comfortable without giving too much away?

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah. Danny DeVito plays Sam, older dude who lives in the house that he's lived in for many, many years. His wife passed away, like, three years before, and the place is just full of stuff. And there's the threat of the neighbors calling in the health department, the fire department, and they're trying to get him to clean his house up. I did all the research about how this happens. And so his daughter and his best friend are trying to help him get rid of stuff, but he's sort of standing in a kind of addiction to it and an inability to let anything go. He doesn't have to throw everything out. The heart of it is impossible for him. And it's very funny. And you get to see what his life is like when he's there alone with his stuff. And you also get to see the argument about, you know, it's time to move on.

Michael Small:
I've heard that the set is really amazing. Can you describe it to us and talk a little bit about like what is in the set and how it was assembled?

Theresa Rebeck:
Well, the set does a really cool trick.

Michael Small:
Don't tell the trick because everybody listening to this is going to see it.

Theresa Rebeck:
Okay. It's also pretty much a whole house, built on the stage, you only see the downstairs, but he's in the middle of having been told again and again and again, you've got to get rid of some of this stuff. He's moved it from the upstairs rooms to the downstairs. And so it really is like a creature that, you know, the things that he has there -- old board games, like an old tennis racket, his wife's clothing, which has been there for three years. Everything you can imagine, all the stuff of his life is right there on the set with him.

Michael Small:
What was the process for casting Danny DeVito? How did you get hooked up with him?

Theresa Rebeck:
The director, Moritz von Stuelpnagel, and I -- we were talking about kind of this area during the pandemic. And he said to me, before really I had even started writing, he said, "What do you think of Danny DeVito?" And I said, "Oh, I'm obsessed with Danny DeVito." And he said, "He and his daughter Lucy, the great Lucy DeVito, were looking for something to do together." So we thought this might turn into something they could do together. And so I talked to them even before I started writing.

Michael Small:
So in a certain way, it was written for them?

Theresa Rebeck:
To them, yeah, certainly.

Michael Small:
That's so rare that any playwright could be able to do that.

Theresa Rebeck:
Right? What an opportunity. It just never happens. And sometimes you think about things like, you know, Moliere did this, Shakespeare did, like they had a company that they wrote to and we just don't get that opportunity. So it was really thrilling to be asked to step into that relationship with them.

Michael Small:
Did either of them ever talk to you about the fact that they have saved things or not saved things?

Theresa Rebeck:
No, well, actually they didn't. A lot of the information about holding on to things came from me because I am the person who does that. My inner monologue seems to be, "Why have one of those when you can have 20?" I have an arrowhead collection. Yeah, I have, like, a lot of stuff.

Michael Small:
That actually is one of the things I was going to ask, which is that even when you're prolific, writing a play is a big commitment. I'm curious why you decided to write about saving things and the value of them and the difficulty of throwing them out.

Theresa Rebeck:
The play is very much about the value of them. I mean, I actually... like how the conversation curls around the comfort of these things and the value of them and also the need to move on from them. And I feel like the play really does cover the necessity. My parents are very frail. Their lives were starting to get smaller when I started writing it, and it's very much informed by that and by the fact that telling someone that you have to move at a certain point in life -- it's a stand-in for all the things that people give up when they reach a point in their lives where things get smaller. My parents really didn't have the obsession with stuff that I have. They lived pretty simple. During the pandemic, my parents were more and more isolated and we needed them to move into a smaller house. That was hard for them. And so for me, the challenges of growing older are reflected in the metaphor, so that the stuff on the stage is both literal and figurative, you know, the things you have to give up are finally the souvenirs of your life.

Michael Small:
And that's what makes it so challenging for me.

Theresa Rebeck:
Danny's character Sam is very eloquent in figuring out how to explain this -- there's a moment when he talks about how our memories don't just live in us, they live all around us, they live in the things that we have. So those things become like a tuning fork. You know, when you touch something, you remember where you got it, who was with you, and that the stories kind of erupt out of that relationship between the thing and the soul. And so there's something painful really about stripping that down that the play is, I think, very respectful of.

Michael Small:
It's exactly the theme that we discuss all the time on this podcast. Digging a little deeper with that, we save these things because we want to keep the memories?

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. But also, it sometimes feels like what really gets infused for me are things that are in and of themselves lovely. You know, like I also have way too many mechanical pencils. I love mechanical pencils. I love wider lead. And so I found these Pentel mechanical pencils with a number 9 lead. And now I have like a whole bunch of them, and they're not making them anymore. And I'm nervous about that because I feel like this is the perfect pencil. And so I also run around sometimes on Amazon going, "Hmm, that one looks like that might be good too." And I actually did just find one that's pretty good. I think with some of it, it is just specific to a certain memory and that makes it precious. But with other things, it's just kind of an excessive OCD kind of thing gets triggered. And then next thing you know, I have 20 mechanical pencils on my desk.

Michael Small:
You introduced an idea that we have not covered yet, which is that there's beauty in some of these things we save. And we save them because they're beautiful to us.

Theresa Rebeck:
Yes.

Michael Small:
That may sound obvious, but we have never really touched on that. And that's really cool.

Theresa Rebeck:
What do you talk about?

Michael Small:
We talk more about how difficult it is to let go of the things because of the memories in them. And we try to tell the stories of these memories in order to then throw it out. Like if you tell the story and preserve the story, can you throw out the thing? Haven't been too successful with that.

Theresa Rebeck:
I was gonna say, I don't think that would work. I think that would just make me wanna keep it longer.

Michael Small:
Do you ever try to throw things out?

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah, I do it all the time. I have to say, I still have way too many books. But the ebook actually stepped in and saved my health in a lot of ways. I still have too many books, but they're all like little files on my Kindle. And so that's much better, much healthier, because I used to, even when I was just going out for the afternoon, I would stick like three books in my shoulder bag, and they're heavy. For a while I was reading Clarissa. That thing is huge.

Michael Small:
Oh my God, yes.

Theresa Rebeck:
My husband still tells jokes about Theresa lugging Clarissa all over the place. I did do that, and now I do still have too many books, but not as many too many.

Michael Small:
Going back to talking about your parents. I also went through it. A thing that led to this podcast partially is that my sister and I went through my parents' stuff. They had made no plans on getting rid of anything, all their papers, everything like that. I'm wondering if there's some link between saving things and trying to stave off mortality. Or if giving things away is sort of what you were hinting at? Which is that it is the beginning of mortality when you give it away or throw it out.

Theresa Rebeck:
I find that those are very different acts, giving something away and throwing it out. And that there are a lot of things I'm perfectly happy to throw away, but there are other things that I would need to give to someone. You know, like my arrowhead collection or I have a lot of, here I can show you one.

Michael Small:
Wow.

Theresa Rebeck:
That's a Zuni medicine bear. They come from New Mexico. And there's a specific artist who I really like named Stewart Quandelecy. So I have a bunch of his bears.

Michael Small:
And so I'm going to describe it. It's... it's sort of emerald colored and it's got an engraving on it kind of, and it's circular and it's a stone, right?

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah, it's a stone. And that line in the middle of it, it goes to the heart. It's called the heart line. The bear looks both humble and strong to me. And the idea is that this will bring strength to your heart. I have a whole bunch of them.

Michael Small:
It is beautiful.

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah.

Michael Small:
And I think you've just helped us with another thing that we have not clarified up to this point, the difference between giving something away and throwing it out. And that both of them relieve you of the object, but in a very different way.

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah, they really do. I also have too many shoes. And every now and then, I have a couple friends who have the same size feet. And I know I have just stepped across the line in terms of I have too many. And then I invite my friends over and give them. I would never ask them if you want this, like, old dirty shoe. But usually they're something that I got and then never wore as much as I thought I would or something, and that always feels great. Yeah. It's, uh, it's really different from throwing them out.

Michael Small:
Do you save cards and letters? Because I have every card and letter that a person, that a friend has sent me. I've saved all of them.

Theresa Rebeck:
No, I don't. I don't save those.

Michael Small:
Why? Why not?

Theresa Rebeck:
Wow, that's interesting. It's got something to do with this, like, object of beauty. I mean, I love the feeling both that person had when they wrote the note and that comes to me, but it doesn't seem replicable. Like, if I read it again. My daughter is a really lovely artist. Even when she was very small, she would make incredible cards. You'd get an astonishing drawing with "I love you mom" on it. Those I save. But those really are the only cards and letters that I save, those things from my daughter. I think it does have something to do with their physical beauty. Yeah, like that's the right word for it.

Michael Small:
Wow. So different from me.

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah.

Michael Small:
One of my projects this year was... I actually sorted all of the correspondence of my lifetime by person.

Theresa Rebeck:
Wow.

Michael Small:
So I can say, here's everything Sally sent me in my whole life. She was one of my biggest correspondents. My wife was my other biggest and my mother and my sister Debbie sent me the most stuff. But any friend who sent me stuff, I have it. And I found that I do relive it and all these memories come back of another time when I look at those letters. I'm not gonna be throwing anything out today, but just to give you a hint. I rediscovered this letter. A friend's cousin was a playwright, and I sent him one of my plays in 1990. He wrote to me, "Dear Michael, Read your play. Thought on page 14 that you were working awfully hard and decided on page 39 that it wasn't going anywhere fast. So I think if I didn't know the writer, I would have stopped." That's how his letter started.

Theresa Rebeck:
You saved that?

Michael Small:
Yeah, because I think the humility of, like, realizing, okay, I'm a piece of crap -- it's a good thing every now and then. I mean, I saw value in saving that.

Theresa Rebeck:
Well, I see value in things and I see value in this moment. Like if somebody asked me to revisit this and go watch it again, I'd be happy to do that. But somehow... that's interesting. Oh God, I hope, I hope I don't get addicted to letters now. I don't need any more stuff around here, but...

Michael Small:
Oh no, oh no, I know I don't want to have any bad effect on your life.

Theresa Rebeck:
Honestly, on like opening nights now, they're hard for me to write these notes. Everybody gets a note on opening night, especially when you're the writer. They expect you to write a really good note. And I just feel like I'm wrung out by that point. I don't have any good notes in me. And so I tend to try and get some little thing that they can keep. like a cool little thing. Isn't this... that's interesting how this is folding over into what you talk about. And for I Need That, I got everybody... there's a moment at the beginning of the play where Sam is talking about a bottle cap that he saved. His friend sits on the bottle cap and he says, "Don't sit on that, I need that." It's one of the two times in the play where you hear the phrase, "I need that." And then you find out that this enormous, incredible story emerges from the bottle cap that's 67 years old and it's like a Fanta grape. And so I found online at Etsy these little Fanta bottle cap kind of enamel that's on a key ring. So I could actually give everybody a teeny, you know... they can hang it on their key ring or just put it in a drawer or throw it away. You know, that's not, they didn't cost that much. That's so interesting... that carries it. I don't need to write a note. If I find exactly the right little thing, little souvenir, it is sort of like stuff. But because I live in New York, and this happened over time, I was like... the presents got smaller and smaller because I know that everyone lives in a very contained space. And so I try to think up something I could give everybody on opening night that's very small so they won't have to throw it away because it's just too big.

Michael Small:
Well, you succeeded this time. You found exactly the right thing.

Theresa Rebeck:
Oh yeah.

Michael Small:
It's funny. The plays that I've done, I've written a personal note to each person, and then I've received personal notes from them and I have every one of those personal notes and those are treasures to me. I get them out and I'm like, "I remember that actor now. I remember what he did."

Theresa Rebeck:
Wow.

Michael Small:
Along those lines, I'm curious what you save related to your plays. Do you print out copies of your scripts?

Theresa Rebeck:
I do.

Michael Small:
Do you have like 30 different versions of I Need That?

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah, I don't do that. I really don't do that anymore. The University of Delaware has my so-called "papers." I just can't imagine, like, why this would be interesting to anybody because I have the plays. The plays are mostly published and I have them on my bookshelves.

Michael Small:
But like for instance, in my mind when I thought I was going somewhere with this, I thought, "Well, what if I need to go back to an earlier version and I don't have it?"

Theresa Rebeck:
It stays on the computer. The computer has everything. What about all the memorabilia from your plays, like programs, call lists?

Michael Small:
Yeah, I don't save that stuff. I actually, I just don't. Isn't that interesting? I don't. I save other things. I have too many of other things. I don't know. You know what it is? This is what I think is part of it. I heard one time that Peter Brooks, when people want to talk to him about, like, that very famous "Midsummer" that he did or this, that or the other thing, that generally he doesn't want to talk about it because he feels like, "That's behind me. I'm not thinking about that anymore. I've already done that." When you're thinking about writing and telling stories all the time, like once you've finished something, it's like, there's some other things to think about. Does that make sense?

Michael Small:
It totally makes sense. It's just exactly the opposite.

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah.

Michael Small:
For instance, I had a salt and pepper shaker collection that my sister helped me gather and she would buy me the stupidest, most obscene. silliest, craziest, and then everybody heard about it, and everybody... Sally probably gave me some too. And I very easily dismantled that collection because it wasn't useful to me. They were funny to look at. There were two outhouses, I'm full of P and I'm full of S. There were two salt and pepper shakers having sex. There were all kinds of things like that. But then I've got several copies of programs from plays I was involved with, and I can't even get rid of the duplicates.

Theresa Rebeck:
That's a sign of how precious it was, obviously to you. And I would... these moments are precious to me. I think I just hold them in different ways. I don't know. There's like... one of the plays that I did in New York is called the Understudy. And it was so beautiful to me. It was just incredible. And I went to see it, like, three times a week for the entire run. I was surprised at myself, that I just wanted to sit in the back and watch it over and over. And I'm really grateful that I did that now because that was precious to me in some sort of very much deeper way than many times. And I love my little plays. My plays. But maybe it's just that, I don't know. I can't answer this. It's very provocative.

Michael Small:
Yeah. It's fun to think about it. One of the things that Sally has raised to me is the element of narcissism in my stuff. It requires a certain amount of narcissism, not only to think it's important, but to think that telling other people about it is worthwhile, that anyone would want to hear.

Theresa Rebeck:
Certainly what it says to me is that the theater is very precious to you and that every time you got to do it, that stayed with you in a really powerful way. And so when you revisit it, it still maintains that potency.

Michael Small:
Yeah. Part of what we want to do with this podcast is to help other people think about the stuff that they've saved and actually inspire them to look at it again.

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah.

Michael Small:
It's sort of like setting an example. Like, "Oh, I've done this, now everyone else can do it too." Because it's so meaningful. Otherwise, imagine yourself, you're gone, one day you're going to go, you're mortal. All these things that represent your life are going to be there. Someone's gonna lift them and throw them in a dumpster. And you might never have revisited them to try to figure out what it all meant. What did your life mean? What were all these things? What did they add up to?

Theresa Rebeck:
That's true. I think there are some people who don't have that opportunity, because they die suddenly or young or... That just means they didn't have that moment. I don't think that means their life didn't have the meaning that it had. It's just that they didn't revisit their life and didn't have the chance to do that. Now, I will say, like, my mom had no problem ever just getting rid of stuff. And before they moved into this really nice place that they live now (it's assisted living), she was giving away every one of her treasures, you know, like, you get this, you get that. And at a pace where we were all like, I don't want these dishes, do you want these dishes? You know, I have five brothers and sisters. And then, there would be things like, well, I asked and asked and asked for that little statuette and she gave it to so-and-so who didn't even want it. That was a bit of a problem. But the thing that my mom really saved and went over and over and over were her photographs. And I think that maybe photographs for some people have that kind of potency that your memos have.

Michael Small:
Yes.

Theresa Rebeck:
We still do that whenever I visit. The way to keep her happy is to say, "Let's look at the pictures." You know? "I want to look at the pictures." And then all of a sudden she's reliving her life and it's a good thing. It's a lovely thing.

Michael Small:
And the truth is, especially with photos, they don't have much value to other people when you go. It's true. But they have value to you. I want to go back to the play for a little bit more. Sally and I often laugh on this podcast. Most of the time we are laughing. Is there something funny about saving things? 'Cause you wrote a comedy.

Theresa Rebeck:
Well, there's plenty. There's plenty funny about saving things in this play for sure. But there's also a cage-like quality to it. You know, by the end of the play, you understand that too much stuff is not funny at all in the way it covers you with the past. It's dangerous. It's useless in a lot of ways. You know, it's memories in action, but they take up a lot of room. And they get in the way of the present. Yeah. That's very much at work in this play.

Michael Small:
I read about this wonderful scene where Danny plays a game of Sorry! with himself.

Theresa Rebeck:
Yes.

Michael Small:
What was the genesis of that? Do you have a Sorry! game or do you remember playing it?

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah, we played it a lot. I just found it, like, weirdly therapeutic. Like, you weren't just, like, running around and buying property. I never liked Monopoly or Risk. I never liked Risk because you were just killing people. Anyway, I liked Sorry!

Michael Small:
It seems like there's something metaphorical that you were looking for.

Theresa Rebeck:
Yes, that's accurate. Somebody asked me about it and I was like, it's the repetition of the sound, "Sorry!" which contains grief in it. You get so sorry about things that never get resolved or sorry that things have passed. So it was really great that this game that I knew so intimately was also called Sorry! And it was also great that Danny has the instrument. He really has the comedic know-how to play an entire game of Sorry! with himself. The stagehands put the cards in the exact right order so that Danny can take his cue off the card and remember where he is in the game. It's really extraordinary. Amazing. It's sort of like Beckett on acid. It's really funny and strange and heartbreaking to watch that man play Sorry! with himself. It's just beautiful.

Michael Small:
Have you saved any of your childhood things for your children? Are they interested in getting any of your stuff or do they want you to get rid of stuff?

Theresa Rebeck:
Oh, my kids are always going, "Can I have that when you die?" And then we just go, "Ah!" So yeah, yes, they're very fascinated, you know, and they actually discuss it in front of us. "I get that when they die." "No, she said I could have that when they die."

Michael Small:
And you wanted that figurine that your mother had.

Theresa Rebeck:
Oh, no kidding. I was like, "Mom, she doesn't want it. I want it." I got the dishes.

Michael Small:
I'm angry on your behalf. Did working on this project get you to think a little bit about the line between hoarding and archiving at all? Hoarding, I guess, is a disease.

Theresa Rebeck:
Oh, yeah. The character of Sam, played by Danny, is actually not a hoarder. It looks like it, but you do realize it's not like... those people are lost. There's a kind of mental illness and that's not what's happened to him. You know, I did watch several of those hoarder shows, they're really scary. And that's not what's going on. It's more, he's gotta just put stuff in bags and kick it out the front door. There's no, like, dead cats underneath or anything gross like that. So it's more on that side of the spectrum, not on the archiving side. You know, he keeps saying he's organizing and it's so clear that he's not organizing. I feel like archiving things is actually organizing. I know people who archive things and then put them in storage. So that they're there for posterity. But I don't do that. Whatever, when I'm gone, I hope somebody nice gets my bears.  They're precious to me. My stone bears, my medicine bears. I'm not kidding, 

Michael Small:
So you're a collector.

Theresa Rebeck:
Well, certainly I'm a collector of these little bears. Isn't that lovely?

Michael Small:
They're very beautiful and that brings us back to where we started, which is that you save things for beauty and I save things to humiliate myself.

Theresa Rebeck:
Yeah, I like my way better. Yeah, I think so. It's a little healthier.

Michael Small:
I knew that someone who wrote a play about this had given it some thought. And I was right.

Theresa Rebeck:
I will say it goes deep. This thing goes deep. It took a long time. And I think that your idea to do a podcast about it is really kind of brilliant because it's very psychological and personal and neurotic and beautiful, you know, it's all of these different things. Our relationship to the stuff of our lives is complicated.

Michael Small:
I never can quite figure it out, which is what keeps us going episode after episode. Like, it's always trying to figure out a little bit more about what's going on here. And so we really are so grateful for you. I just want to find out what's coming up for you next. As Sally would say, how many movies, TV shows, Broadway plays, and books will you write next month?

Theresa Rebeck:
I am not doing all that. I've been working on the book of a musical with Christopher Ashley and Cyndi Lauper and it's based on the movie Working Girl from the 80s.

Michael Small:
Yes, loved it.

Theresa Rebeck:
I loved it too. We all love it. And so in January and then a little after that we're doing a couple of big workshops of it. It's moving ahead and I'm a huge fan of Cindy's and so thrilled to be working on it with somebody who's like an icon to me.

Michael Small:
In the meantime, I want to urge everyone who is listening to go to Broadway and see I Need That starring Danny DeVito by Theresa Rebeck. It's at the American Airlines Theater until December 30th. And I checked online and there are still tickets available. So please do yourself a favor. Be sure to get one of those tickets and hold onto the stub and save it forever. And then get it out and think about how much you loved it and how grateful you are to Theresa Rebeck. That's what I say. Though she wouldn't save the stub herself, I guess.

Theresa Rebeck:
No, I wouldn't.

Michael Small:
Before we go, I just want to do a little listener appreciation. We're so grateful to everyone who listens to our podcasts. There are probably 10 billion podcasts out there. So we are especially thankful to anyone who tunes in. And if you want to find out what's coming next, you can follow us on Instagram at throwitoutpod. Or just go to our website. In the right column, you'll see a box where you can sign up for our newsletter. And that is at throwitoutpodcast.com. And yes, we will post photos from I Need That on the site, also at throwitoutpodcast.com on the page for this episode. Thank you again, Theresa, for sharing your insights with us. It was just so helpful and so interesting.

Theresa Rebeck:
Thank you.

Michael Small:
Sally is also sending her thanks silently. She's nodding furiously again. One last reminder, the next time you open your music streaming service, do not forget. check out this super amazing rock band, Life in a Blender. You will have so much fun listening to them, almost as much fun as you will have right now listening to our theme song, which is performed by Life in a Blender's Don Rauf, along with Boots Kamp and Jen Ayers. And that's it. Bye Theresa, and thank you, thank you, thank you again.

Theresa Rebeck:
Thank you. Bye.

[Theme song begins]

I Couldn't Throw It Out theme song
Performed by Don Rauf, Boots Kamp and Jen Ayers
Written by Don Rauf and Michael Small
Produced and arranged by Boots Kamp

Look up that stairway
To my big attic
Am I a hoarder
Or am I a fanatic?

Decades of stories
Memories stacked
There is a redolence
Of some irrelevant facts

Well, I couldn't throw it out
I had to scream and shout
It all seems so unjust
But still I know I must
Before I turn to dust
I've got to throw it out
Before I turn to dust
I've got to throw it out

Well I couldn't throw it out
Oh, I couldn't throw it out

I'll sort through my possessions
In these painful sessions
I guess this is what it's about
The poems, cards and papers
The moldy musty vapors
I just gotta sort it out

Well I couldn't throw it out
Well I couldn't throw it out
Oh, I couldn't throw it out
I couldn't throw it out

[Theme song ends]

END TRANSCRIPT