Joe DiPietro
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
When do you want it? And they said, we want you to write a musical about Abraham Lincoln. I don't think I said this out loud, but my first thought was absolutely not. That is a terrible idea. I'm just thinking, like, how does Lincoln sing? What is it about? And the Civil War? It was so awful. I was just thinking, like, no.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
And then I thought, well, you know, so many great musicals start out as terrible ideas, right? Name some. A hip hop musical about a founding father. Terrible idea. A musical about the sinking of the Titanic. That's a terrible idea. A musical about cannibalism. And it becomes Sweeney Todd. So you're like, all right, maybe that instinct, you should be a little more open.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
There are more books published about Abraham Lincoln than anyone except for Jesus. And they're all, according to my calculation, about 800 pages long. I was like, I don't want to sit in my house during the pandemic reading 800 page books about the Civil War. Like that is not fun.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
She wrote a book called Leadership in Turbulent Times, which is about what she considers to be the four most effective presidents. I read this one chapter which said, during the last three summers of the Civil War, Mary Lincoln dragged Abraham to a place called the Soldier's Home, which was the first U.S. home for indigent soldiers ever.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
It had a little cottage that the previous president, Buchanan, used as a summer getaway from the heat in the swamp of D.C. So he spent his three summers there. And I thought, oh, well, that three summers gives you structure.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
And it turns out those three summers were really consequential because the first summer he came up with the idea and then at the very end of the summer decreed the Emancipation Proclamation. The second summer, one of his biggest critics said, Though on the same side as him was the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
And Frederick Douglass, who had been a thorn in his side, one day decides, I'm going to go to the White House and wait in line with all of the other people who are waiting in line to see the president. And I'm going to demand to speak with him and tell him that he's moving too slow and ending this war. So Frederick Douglass does that.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
And they talk, and they quickly recognize that they might not agree with their methods of how to end the war, but they couldn't deny each other's brilliance. And then the third summer, when things were really going bad, this time Lincoln calls Frederick Douglass because he has a mission for him that he thinks will help end the war.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
My question about this show is always, okay, fascinating historical thing, but how does it relate to today? How is it in conversation with activism today? And how is it in conversation with the presidency today? All of those questions. And once the Frederick Douglass aspect came in, they started to really interest me. Then I was like, you know, I'll write an outline. Pay me a little money.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Let me write an outline and see if I get hooked.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Given the subject matter of the show, I was like, oh, it would be great to have a lyricist who would look at the subject matter from a different perspective than I did. Daniel J. Watts was a star dancer in a Broadway show I wrote called Memphis back in 2009. He was fantastic and has been in probably dozens of shows by now.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
He also at the time was a spoken word artist, a budding spoken word artist. I went to see his spoken word performances and I was like, wow, God, he's really good. And so you thought, oh, he can write. I thought he can write. I think I called him out of the blue in the pandemic when theater was literally dead. There was no hope and no future. And we were all broke.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
I just was really excited when he said yes, because I felt like, oh, I am actually going to learn so much from him. Daniel is probably 20 years younger than me and from a very different background. In this particular collaboration, I am very much about story, story, story. How does the song start? What dramatically happens in the middle to change the trajectory of it?
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
And then how does it end in a new way? He's much more of a poet than I am. and he is much more of a linguist than I am. He loves the origin of words, so he'll often, like, break down a word, which is what oftentimes rappers do. It really opened my eyes, and we went to my house in Connecticut to start this together.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
We sat on my porch, and the first thing we wrote for some reason was a campfire song called Scarlet the Harlot. It's just basically a dirty song that Civil War soldiers used to sing, and then it becomes about Abraham Lincoln, and then Abe enters and interrupts them, and they're singing this filthy song about Abe.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
So as you're giggling now, we essentially sat around my porch and giggled for a day and wrote this silly song that we always liked. We kept putting it in drafts and cutting it and putting it in drafts again.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Here's DiPietro again. She had a self-titled debut album. And I was like, oh, I really like the sound of this. And I love what she does with melody. And so we had a chat and we gave her the script and we said, pick two or three songs and write something and send it to us. What'd she pick? What I very clearly remember her picking is the opening number, which is called 90 Day War.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Initially, the Civil War, everyone thought it would last 90 days. And so by the second summer of the Civil War, it was over 400 days. And the big thing is an opening number. You want to introduce the sound of the show. All of those people sitting in the audience say, OK, you're writing a show about Abraham Lincoln. Prove that this is a good idea. Prove that this isn't Hamilton.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Prove it's not 1776. Prove you have your own voice.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
The other song that she wrote was Pounding on the Rock, which now opens act two. That is a song when Frederick Douglass and his son are trying to recruit folks for the first black regiment.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
They're up in New England trying to get young black men to sign up for this war that young black men don't know why they should be fighting and dying for this country that has let them down at every place imaginable. It's this sort of rousing number. And I remember listening to her demo and being
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
minute into it without realizing it, I find myself standing up and like happily bouncing around my apartment. And the music was, you know, I wanted to join the army. It was just so exciting. I was like, I want to be in a room with this person for the next two years, three years, four years, however long it takes to create this musical.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Well, you generally get contracted for a series of drafts, and I think it just depends who you are. That's Joe DiPietro. Winning Tony Awards, my price increased, which was very, very nice. I always say the day after I won two Tony Awards, I wasn't a better writer, but everyone thought I was. Generally, the advances for theater are much less than for movies.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
You hear about writers getting $50,000, $100,000 for movie stuff. For theater, they're much more... Like 10, 20, if you're starting out, I'm at the point where I can ask for above 50 or so. And here is Crystal Monet Hall.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
The writer. My name is Joe DiPietro. I write plays and musicals. And on the new musical, Three Summers of Lincoln, I am the book writer, meaning I write the script, and the co-lyricist.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
It was the first show I saw as a 10-year-old. I can still remember where I was sitting in the mezzanine and the lights came up on the Continental Congress. I was like, put a fork in me. I'm done. I'm going to be a part of this somehow.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Three Summers of Lincoln picks up in the second summer of the Civil War when things are going terribly and there is no end in sight. It is a brutal, bloody war. Lincoln needs to figure out how to end this, and he just can't. The South is fighting stronger than he thought. Where'd the idea come from? Was this sprung from the brain of Joe DiPietro? It did not spring from my brain.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Quite the opposite. I was sitting at home in the first December of the pandemic. Theater was dead. I make my living as a writer on royalties from my productions all over the world, and there were exactly zero productions happening. It was a scary, uncertain time, and I got a call one day out of the blue from two producers I know and who invested in my shows named Richard Winkler and Alan Shore.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
And then we called Joe DiPietro. And they said, hey, Joe, we are commissioning some of our favorite writers. We just have a topic we'll give you, and then you can write anything you want about it. This was like a miracle. And I like Richard and Alan very much. So I'm just thinking, like, I'm going to do it no matter what it is. Juggling mermaids? Fine. I'll write that. That'll work. That'll work.