The Oscar-winning actor/director has a new play, “Topsy Turvy,” about a chorus that loses its ability to sing together after COVID isolation."Things that I had held sacred or had held as truths were challenged," Robbins says of the pandemic. He talks with Tonya Mosley about ‘Shawshank Redemption,’ ‘Dead Man Walking,’ and how working with Robert Altman changed the trajectory of his career. Also, David Bianculli reviews the new Netflix miniseries, ‘Death by Lightning.’Follow Fresh Air on instagram @nprfreshair, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter for gems from the Fresh Air archive, staff recommendations, and a peek behind the scenes. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. And my guest today is Tim Robbins, Academy Award-winning actor, director, and founder of The Actors Gang, a theater company he started in Los Angeles back in 1981 with a group of fellow UCLA students. We sat down in October in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, after a live performance of his new play, Topsy Turvy, at the Kohler Art Center.
Sheboygan itself is a small lakeside city right next to Kohler, a place with a rich art scene. The performance was part of the city's first film festival, which wrapped with a 30th anniversary screening of Dead Man Walking, the second film Robbins directed.
Topsy Turvy is about a chorus that's lost its ability to sing together after the pandemic's long isolation, a metaphor that hits uncomfortably close to home for many. And in a way, it connects to what Robbins has explored for more than 40 years, impossible reconciliations between people with opposing beliefs, between guilt and redemption, between isolation and connection.
From the Shawshank Redemption to Bob Roberts to his prison theater work with the Actors Gang, he circles around one question. How do we find harmony when we've forgotten how to listen? Robbins and I talked about why he's taking an experimental play on the road instead of making another prestige TV show. And I asked him about how the COVID lockdown and the isolation that followed affected him.
Here's our conversation.
Well, in many ways, the lockdown was illuminating to me things that I had held sacred or had held as truths. were challenged during that time. And what it made me do was it made me question myself and question what my beliefs are. And I think that's a very healthy thing. As a writer, I need to do that all the time. As an actor, I have to do that.
So drama is about finding the complexities and the conflicts that we all have within ourselves. I think that's the way to approach these discussions about society at large. When you're dealing with them in a play or in a movie, you have to give respect to the other side.
So for your writing process, how does the idea of the chorus, because Topsy Turvy, they're a chorus, this collective voice, help us think about the division. What was it about that particular way of being able to tell the story that you felt was a way to be able to get at that division?
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