Lincoln Center Theater Review

Lincoln Center Theater Review
Spring 1998 Issue Number 18

A few weeks ago, William Finn, the composer, lyricist, and co-librettisy, with James Lapine, of "A New Brain," and Malcolm Gets, who stars in the musical, sat down with the editors of the Lincoln Center Theater Review. The show grew out of Finn's experience with an illness that affected his brain; we talked aobut the show, and about intersections between art, memory, and family.

William Finn:
Though there's a story in "A New Brain" -- one with a beginning, middle, and end -- I think the real story here is the songs.
When I came out of the hospital, I couldn't sit at the piano without writing a decent song. At the piano, there was just all this gratitude that I was alive and all thie life spewing out of me -- the piano was singing -- and I was just there to write it down. ANd so I had a bunch of these songs and I started putting them together, making a show. But is it autobiography? "In Trousers," which was totally made up, people thought was real; and people thought "Falsettos" was autobiographical, which it wasn't. But this show is more or less based on fact. I write very personally, and that is why people think everything I write is autobiographical. It's also why actors like to do the shows, because, it they can find the place I write from, there is something to play.

Malcolm Gets:
It's strange to talk about it. This show has been so personal for me that at times I didn't want to talk about it, because I was afraid then I'd be self conscious about it. Put it this way -- the four or five people in the world who are closest to me have seen the workshops we've done of this show, and the can't believe how this piece has come into my life at this point in my life. The spirit of what the piece is about, everything that you've talking about, is so much what I've been through, even though I'm not going through it today.

Finn:
    And yet autobiography isn't always true. I was first told I had an inoperable brain tumor, but, later on, they found out it was indeed serious but possibly curable. Which it turned out to be.
    During the course of my real hospital adventure, half my face became paralyzed, I couldn't walk without tipping over, and hobbling with a walker ten feet so exhausted me I'd sometimes just collapse on the floor. But that's not in the show. Even though I love "ER" I was not writing a medical drama about whether I live or die (because, at least for the moment, I'm alive).
    "A New Brain" is about perception: how we perceive the world, or rather how we choose to perceive the world. Plus, Lapine and I changed the medical treatments. Musicalizing "embolization" and "gamma-knife radiation" -- while trying to explain them through lyrics an audience could immediately grasp -- proved ridiculous. We simplified. But yes, it's autobiographical. Most of the events are real.

Malcolm:
    "New Brain" isn't one of those plays that I went and did research on. For instance, before five years ago, I had spent my entire life sitting at a piano. So, to play a composer there was no research, it was just utilizing parts of myself that I came into this planet with. It seems "New Brain" has been developed around the music, and I'm more sure of my skill at playing the piano than of anything else I do. Occasionally music and acting would all come together, but it was rare.
    When I was 14, I started work for the Hippodrome Theater, in Gainesville, Florida, where I grew up. It already had Equity actors, which was a big deal. That's where I did Mozart and where I wrote a song with Tennessee Williams. One of the founders of the Hippodrome did an adaptation of "Baby Doll," "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" -- all of those -- and another adaptation, called "Tigertail." I was 15 and was in the kid company, doing plays like "As You Like It," and I always wrote the music. WHen they did this adaptation, Tennessee came up from Key West and wrote a lyric for the character Ruby Lightfoot, who was the prostitute in the show and is referred to in "Streetcar" and a couple of other plays, and I wrote music for her -- a blues song.
    I used to tell people that story and they didn't believe me. And it almost didn't happen. I'd been asked to set this thing to music, and weeks of rehearsal were going be and I hadn't done anything. I didn't know who Tennessee was, and my mother, who had acted briefly, and had played Laura, in The Glass Menagerie," said to me "He's one of the most famous playwrights of all time." So I finally wrote the song and Tennessee came.
    I feel like I got so disconnected from who I was then. My abilities were so plain at such a young age, but I wrenched myself from that existence and tried to live this whole other life.

Finn:
What other life?

Malcolm:
I don't know. Well, mostly I tried to get away from music for some reason. I don't want to do it anymore unless I enjoy it. I love that song you wrote, the one that goes "Yes is a good word." It's crazy in a way to be involved in a show for two years. I'll go to a party and sit down at the piano and play " Feel So Much Spring" [from "A New Brain"] and people will say "that's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard." The music is fantastic, and in my opinion that's what musicals are all about.

Finn:
I don't agree. I think good musicals, sucessful musicals rarely depend on the music; they're more often about the story. Great musicals, however, are always about both.

(We asked aobut Finn's and Malcolm's families' reactions to seeing work as personal as "A New Brain.")

Malcolm:
I did a one-person show in drama school, and I used a picture of my family from when I was 11, in the seventies, as the playbill, and they put posters of it all over Yale. That show ended up being one of the most important shows of my life. It was one of the only times I dropped all of my robes, and the lesson I learned from that was that people were just totally blown away by my just getting up and being completely myself. Anyway, so if there's one thing I've done that I've wished my family had seen it was that, and at the time I completely downplayed it, and basically told them they shouldn't come. But then a couple of years later my sister saw the poster and she flipped out. She said "You used this for the poster? You used this picture of our family?" I never thought about it.

Finn:
I've quoted my mother directly in her big song, where she said if she hadn't done what she did she would have thrown herself out the window -- which is very Barbara Finn. And Arthur [Finn's companion] said, when we sat down after the first reading, "I'm taking back my personal history." I said, "After 18 years together, it's my history too. So don't be taking so quickly."

Editors:
When we went to see a videotape of one of the workshops of the show at the library, we walked in, and, without thinking about it, said "we;re here for 'A New Brain.'" There's something nice about that ntion -- is that why you called it that?

Finn:
There's the part of the body the brain, and there's the act of thinking. My friend Chip Zien wanted it changed to "My New Brain." which amuses ,e nit spimds tpp ,icj ;ole a Reader's Digest article on the body.

Malcolm:
I want to get rid of my brain. That's what I think my problem is!

Finn:
But thinking always gets in the way -- that's what this show is about! It's about the songs. It's about perception. And it's about making everything easier for yourself; it's about seeing everything in a completely different light. Not over analyzing and not being cynical. When I had my final arteriogram, my doctor came up to me and said, "Ten years ago, you would have beed dead. You don't know how lucky you are." And I said to him, "Doctor, timing is everything. In music and in life."

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