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Yet Take Me to the World, hosted by Raul Esparza, did not air without a hitch.
To quote the man himself, art isnt easy.
Mary-Mitchell Campbell:I was on board instantaneously.
Of course, I never could have imagined what it turned into.
I think we had a goal of ten performers, 90 minutes.
Paul Wontorek:I think it was right after I had directed theRosie ODonnell livestream.
That was also based on people we thought we could reach.
RE:Who do you think has the best Rolodex of all of us?
RE:Meryl said yes in five minutes.
Christine said yes a few minutes later.
PW:So much happened in the last seven days.
Because we dont have much yet.
Among them were people whom wed tried, but through the wrong channel.
PW:Linda Lavin actually reached out to us.
I remember Raul and I both fanboyed out about that song [The Boy From …].
Every time Ive sung [that song], its moved me profoundly.
I love the desperate hopefulness in it.
Paul suggested getting somebody from every show, and so it just grew and grew.
PW:Late in the process, we were like,Are we getting too many ballads?
Lets get some up-tempos.
PW:Raul was like, What should Iain do?
Some performers were really adept.
Katrina Lenk put everything on Johanna together herself.
Michael Cerveris put everything together himself.
Chip Zien does voice-over work, so he had a setup.
RE:These are people who work to the highest possible standards for themselves.
Lin-Manuel [Miranda] said he sent me his 90th take.
[Mirandasaysit was only his 30th.]
RE:It took me eight hours [to film my take].
Later that day, I was on a Zoom call with Audra and Meryl and Christine for edits.
Christine had sent in 32 takes.
Audra had sent in ten or 12.
I said, I am so sorry that I put you through this.
Meryl said, … uh-huh.
Christines comment was, Oh, honey.
I love that you look so wild and overgrown.
I feel much better now.
Audra goes, We are all in the same boat, baby.
MMC:We got really ambitious [with the group numbers].
They could pick whatever information they wanted to perform with.
Thom Sesma said, What if we did it?
It was like a short film.
I also had the idea to do theMerrilyoverture inspired by theBolero from the NY Phil.
MMC: For the Im Still Here number, I spent two days talking so many actors through Dropbox.
PW:Most of the material came in from Thursday on.
Thats ultimately what made my weekend hellish.
RE:Wehad a cocktail partybeforehand so that everybody could see each other.
The best part about that call was Iain Armitage cheering every time someone else would appear.
I have nowhere near the computer I should have to be exporting these, like, 40-gigabyte files.
In between those, there were chunks of video that were about 40 minutes.
I never livestream files that large, and I was nervous about it not matching up.
If Donna Murphys gonna sing Send in the Clowns, you want it to look correct.
I did a test around six, and it was not good.
I went into a panic mode, and I started to break things up into multiple pieces.
If one starts to lag, the next one will be fresh.
Then he needed to reboot, because we didnt want the audio to un-sync.
Then, suddenly, the sound.
I still cant tell you what happened.
PW:I still dont know what happened.
RE:Friends are texting me Lin, Donna, like, Honey, your mic isnt on!
Once we realized it, I just froze.
RE:All hell starts to break loose.
PW:It was panic.
It was dry mouth.
It was like that.
It was like standing naked in front of 100,000 people who were slowly leaving.
MMC:Id never seen a virtual mob before.
Im gonna make some tea and wait to see what happens.
We briefly were like, Should we do it tomorrow?
My boyfriend said, What are you talking about?
You do it now!
Then we decided: Okay, cut the first monologue, upload the pretaped material.
RE:If wed been in a theater, someone would have come out and talked.
But live was no longer an option, becausewhat the fuck?What if it happens again?
MMC:It didnt go as planned, but we still had lots of people being very generous.
I started to relax.
PW:My heart rate only went down by Tuesday morning.
By the time I went to bed Sunday, everyone loved the show.
Maybe years from now that will be the story.
Now I can definitely consult for anyone who needs to know how to do this.
Theres things you cant control that sometimes might add to the wonder of it all.
