631. Will "3 Summers of Lincoln" Make It to Broadway? | Freakonomics Radio

It’s been in development for five years and has at least a year to go. On the eve of its out-of-town debut, the actor playing Lincoln quit. And the producers still need to raise another $15 million to bring the show to New York. There really is no business like show business. (Part three of a three-part series.) You can find the transcript and show notes for this episode on our website here: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/will-3-summers-of-lincoln-make-it-to-broadway/ FOLLOW FREAKONOMICS RADIO: YouTube: https://freak.ws/3yIl6dl Apple Podcasts: https://freak.ws/3yAvQh0 Spotify: https://freak.ws/3TsdCmV ABOUT FREAKONOMICS RADIO: Discover the hidden side of everything with host Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the Freakonomics books. Each week, Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers to uncover things you always thought you knew (but didn’t) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) — from the economics of sleep to the future of education, from markets for marriage to the surprising utility of wolves. ABOUT THE FREAKONOMICS RADIO NETWORK: Freakonomics began as a book, which led to a blog, a documentary film, more books, a pair of pants, and in 2010, a podcast called Freakonomics Radio. Hosted by Stephen J. Dubner, it’s one of the most popular podcasts in the world, with a reputation for storytelling that is both rigorous and entertaining. Its archive of more than 500 episodes is available, for free, on any podcast app, and the show airs weekly on NPR stations. Freakonomics Radio is now the flagship show of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which includes the podcasts No Stupid Questions, People I (Mostly) Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. FREAKONOMICS RADIO NETWORK PODCASTS: Freakonomics Radio: https://freakonomics.com/series/freakonomics-radio/ No Stupid Questions: https://freakonomics.com/series/nsq/ People I (Mostly) Admire: https://freakonomics.com/series/people-i-mostly-admire/ The Economics of Everyday Things: https://freakonomics.com/series/everyday-things/ Special series: https://freakonomics.com/topics/ CONNECT WITH US: [email protected] https://twitter.com/freakonomics https://www.instagram.com/freakonomics/ https://www.facebook.com/freakonomics/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freakonomicsradio https://www.linkedin.com/company/freakonomics-media Subscribe to our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bKm0cf

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  In the first episode of this series, we heard about the creation of a new musical called Three Summers of Lincoln, as in Abraham Lincoln. The show is set during the Civil War and centers around Lincoln's relationship with the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The producers, Alan Shore and Richard Winkler, commissioned the playwright Joe Di Pietro to write the script. He brought along Daniel Watts as his co-lyricist, and then the composer Crystal Monet Hall. After three years of development, the Lincoln team held some workshop performances in New York that persuaded them they were ready to give the show its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. Or at least, almost ready.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  I just felt the narrative at the beginning wasn't as sharp as the rest of the show.

• 0:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's Di Pietro.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  The challenge in a musical like this is you're telling an epic story. I mean, how many different versions of the Civil War could you write? There needs to be a spine to it. How can we have the spine as clear as quickly as possible? We felt, for instance, that the character of Mary Lincoln, she wasn't in the score as much, especially given the actress, who is going to play that role.

• 1:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  That actress is Carmen Cusack, who has twice been nominated for a Tony Award on Broadway. And so Di Pietro had Daniel Watts and Crystal Monet Hall come to his apartment on the Upper West Side to work on a new song for Mary Lincoln, a duet with Abraham. Hall played a demo she'd made on her own, a song called "12 Rooms in Springfield."

• 1:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  The song has the Lincolns thinking about going back home to Illinois if Abraham loses reelection for the presidency, which, considering how badly the war is going, seems likely.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Okay. That was actually good to hear again.

• 2:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  The three of them are sitting around Di Pietro's dining room table. They've got laptops open to a Google Doc and to RhymeZone.com, the modern lyricist's best friend. They work together with the ease and trust of collaborators who've by now spent hundreds of hours like this.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  It could be something like, does he envision his life in Springfield? Like, and what's there in Springfield?

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Like, old dusty roads and grief.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  I'm trying to find a thing he would, what would he be do- who would he be working with in the office?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  He'd be settling lawsuits with farmers.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  You know, like he's a country lawyer.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Collection law, was a collection lawyer who handled promissory notes, which were common in frontier Illinois.

• 2:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  They spend a few minutes searching for the right word before Watts comes up with it.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Disputes, that's the word I was looking for.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Disputes is good.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  One more country lawyer for farmers' disputes.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  This is great.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  That's fantastic.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Do you want to do like a little sing-through of this?

• 3:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, man.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Ms. Crystal, see if this works.

• 3:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hall now sings Mary Lincoln's section of the song.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  (singing) We still own the deed. Twelve rooms in Springfield, that's all that we need. A side room for sitting, where I'll take up knitting. A pipe in your parlor, where you can play scholar. A bedroom for dozing, a statesman reposing. A porch for rations and curbside ovations.

• 3:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  And then Abraham's section.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  Back to Springfield, old Abe's obsolete. Abandon my poster, a coward's retreat. To what's there in Springfield but legal pursuits? One more country lawyer for farmers' disputes? And what's wrong with that life? Have some hope, have some faith. Our homes in Springfield on Jackson and Day.

• 4:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  I asked Joe Di Pietro how he was thinking about the show's premiere at La Jolla.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  The first preview in La Jolla, I will be as nervous as I am in a Broadway opening, because this is the first time the show will meet an audience. Hopefully, we got a lot of it right, but there'll be surprises. There'll be things the audience doesn't understand. There'll be things they don't react to. There'll be jokes that I think are hilarious that the audience does not.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I want people who sort of come in with their arms folded, saying, "A Lincoln musical, prove it to me." And to leave saying, "Wow, that was a thrilling story, thrillingly told, and it's made me think about the state of our country." The anger and the turbulence we feel in this country is nothing new. We've had periods where it's been maybe muted a bit, and we're in a very loud period of turbulence right now, but it's nothing new. And I think like both Lincoln and Douglas, you have to fight for the good. You can't just push your ideas through either. You have to actually make people understand why you're doing what you're doing and why the way you think things should be is the way that they should be.

• 5:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Creating a show like this is both high-wire act and marathon. Having tagged along with the Lincoln team for a couple of years, I came to see their project as a bit like war itself. Every breakthrough haunted by setback, every confidence tempered by anxiety. For instance, this new song, "12 Rooms in Springfield," was put into the show with great excitement, but then wound up being cut. And, as we learned earlier in the series, there was much worse news than that. The actor who had been playing Abraham Lincoln quit the show, exactly one day before tickets went on sale at the La Jolla Playhouse. This had me wondering, what's more surprising, that one person backs out

• 6:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  of a project that takes so long to develop, or that anyone stays in? Today, on Freakonomics Radio, in the third and final episode of our series, Broadway has always been the intended destination for three summers of Lincoln. Will it actually get there?

• 6:41Speaker 04

  This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 6:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  The La Jolla Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Mel Ferrer, and Dorothy McGuire, summer stock for Hollywood luminaries, as one producer puts it. There are actually four theaters on the site. It is set on the campus of UC San Diego, and it is a favorite out-of-town destination for ambitious new projects. Over the years, it has sent 37 shows to Broadway. But as part of its nonprofit mission, the Playhouse also collaborates with schools and the local military community. And producing a big new musical like Three Summers of Lincoln is expensive.

• 7:35Speaker 05

  It's very hard to develop a new musical without something participating beyond just our budget.

• 7:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  That is Debbie Buckholz, La Jolla Playhouse Managing Director.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  That can be foundation support, that can be individual support, or it can be a commercial producer.

• 7:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  As we heard earlier in this series, live theater suffers from what economists call "cost disease." Any industry that requires a lot of human labor, as opposed to automation, is bound to get more expensive over time, since human wages keep rising even while technology gets cheaper. For a nonprofit theater like La Jolla, that means collaborating with commercial producers in what's called an enhancement model.

• 8:18Speaker 05

  La Jolla actually started the enhancement model, going back to Big River.

• 8:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Big River was a 1980s musical that we heard about in part one of this series. It launched the career of Broadway producer Rocco Landisman.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  The commercial producer put more money into the show beyond what the Playhouse was going to spend to enhance the Playhouse's production to say, could we more fully develop the dance numbers? Could we more fully orchestrate it so we would hear what a full orchestra would sound? Could we give it more rehearsal time?

• 8:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Give me a sense of how much money a commercial producer might put toward a production like yours, dollar figures and/or percentage figures?

• 8:54Speaker 05

  It varies widely. It kind of depends at the moment that we're going to do it, what the piece needs that's in excess of the resources that we have at that moment to put into it.

• 9:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Could it be as much as 30 or 40%?

• 9:07Speaker 05

  Yes, it could be.

• 9:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  So when a show that originates at La Jolla does move on to Broadway, what's that deal look like from year end? Is it a dollar figure that you'd be guaranteed? Is it a percent of first dollars or after recoup? How does that work?

• 9:21Speaker 05

  When it moves on, the Playhouse participates in two levels. The reason that people come to Playhouse is because of that well-developed muscle of bringing new work forward. We are a creative participant, so we get a royalty percentage as well.

• 9:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can you put a number on that?

• 9:37Speaker 05

  I'd rather not. It's comfortably within the industry practice, what's classically referred to as the regional theater royalty, which can be anywhere from half a percentage point to three, depending on a lot of different things.

• 9:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let's talk about the Playhouse budget overall. What are the major contributors? Where does box office come in? Where does philanthropy come in? Government funding?

• 9:59Speaker 05

  About a third of our revenue comes in as ticket revenue. A little more than a third comes in through philanthropy. We get some governmental support from the city of San Diego and from the county and from the state. There was actually a fair amount of federal support that came into most regional theaters during the pandemic. That was inordinately helpful, and I would hope that there's a world in which that could start again.

• 10:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Three Summers of Lincoln would have its debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in February of 2025. That meant starting to assemble cast and crew, a big cast and crew, in January for rehearsals, costume fittings, choreography, tech rehearsals, and much more.

• 10:47Speaker 06

  The folks is now 1:30, 1:30. We'll start about the same, start about the same.

• 10:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  We flew out to see for ourselves and we checked in with Christopher Ashley, the show's director.

• 10:57Speaker 07

  As we're speaking now, we're just starting day one of the second week of Two Weeks of Tech.

• 11:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  For the past 18 years, Ashley has also been the artistic director at La Jolla, although next year he'll be moving to New York to take over the Roundabout Theatre Company. Ashley has already won a Tony Award for Best Director, and it would surprise no one if he were to win at least one more someday. He started directing theatre in high school, studied English and math at Yale, and afterwards went to work at a bank.

• 11:27Speaker 07

  I did systems analysis in foreign exchange, which I enjoyed for a while until I realized, oh, actually, my job is to figure out how to shield people's money from tax liability. And I was like, that doesn't seem like a way to spend a life to me.

• 11:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ashley took an internship at an off-Broadway theatre, and he won a National Endowment for the Arts grant for early career directors.

• 11:49Speaker 07

  I was a freelance director for most of my 20s and 30s. It felt like dating audiences all the time. My interaction with them was two hours long, and then they would move on and I would move on. Part of why be an artistic director for me was I didn't really want to date audiences. I wanted to have a relationship. I wanted to like, talk to them across six plays in a season. That's a much richer, fuller conversation about the world than one play for two hours.

• 12:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Just give me your, however you want to do it, day in the life, general job description. Artistic director feels like you're wearing a different hat every 10 minutes. Can you just tell me what that job is?

• 12:30Speaker 07

  There are a bunch of hats on my desk. You're totally right. Together with Debbie, we run the theater. Artistic directors are kind of the primary responsibility for programming and figuring out what's on the stage. At La Jolla Playhouse, it's also very much intended that I direct there and I do one or two shows a year. All the education and outreach also falls within artistic director purview. So we're out in the schools with a new play every year, which is an amazing experience to watch eight-year-olds see their first play, just like the flight of imagination that is happening in their heads. And then I also produce, along with our artistic producing director, each of the individual shows.

• 13:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  And when Ashley is also directing a show, as he is with Three Summers of Lincoln, there is another leveling up.

• 13:23Speaker 07

  It's maybe a little bit like being a general in a war. You're not making the individual decisions on the battlefield, but you're saying what the goals are and what the strategy is.

• 13:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  On an afternoon in early February, after four weeks of rehearsals for Three Summers of Lincoln, Ashley is now leading 130 people through tech rehearsals.

• 13:42Speaker 07

  We have two weeks in the space to add the technical elements. How the set moves, all the automation and actors moving chairs and tables around the scenery that you practiced in the studio. You add all the lighting aspects. Lighting designs are tremendously complicated, technical feats with these lights that move and change color. Everything is computerized, right? So if you stand on the stage and you look back at the house during a technical rehearsal, you'll see 40 people uplift by their computer screens. There's a lighting desk. There's a sound desk. There's a stage management desk. There's a separate desk where all the scenery and props folks are.

• 14:23Speaker 07

  It's full of technicians, all of whom are simultaneously watching the show and building The technical structure.

• 14:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  As Ashley describes the minutia of tech rehearsal, I feel like he's giving a perfect illustration of what economists mean by cost disease.

• 14:42Speaker 07

  You painstakingly, moment by moment, work things out. Let's do these three seconds. All right, now we know what those three seconds are. Let's do the next seven seconds. It's very incremental. It's very layered. It's very stop and go. And then by a week later, hopefully you can run a number. And by the end of the two weeks, the goal is that you can actually run the show.

• 15:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  They did get through all that and they pretty much were ready to run the show with a brand new actor in the title role. For most of the show's development, Lincoln had been played by the Broadway veteran Brian Stokes Mitchell. When I asked Ashley about this late change, he found a positive way to spin it.

• 15:23Speaker 07

  We were fortunate enough to have Brian Stokes Mitchell in each of the three readings and workshops that led us up to the first production we're about to start. And then he had personal circumstances that didn't allow him to be part of the La Jolla Playhouse production.

• 15:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Stokes, as everyone calls him, was extraordinarily popular with the rest of the cast and the creative team. He was always checking in on folks, almost like a player coach. So he had a lot of goodwill in the bank. Still, his sudden departure made people edgy. I asked Carmen Cusack how she took the news. As Mary Lincoln, Cusack had been working across from Stokes since the New York workshops.

• 16:03Speaker 08

  I had just come back from some heavy stuff, heavy family stuff going on in Texas that I was trying to help sort out. And as soon as I got back from that, because of that stress, I got the flu and was really in bed sick when I got the call from Christopher Ashley. So I was already down in the dumps. And then he calls and then he says that. And I was just, I was like, yeah, just throw it on the heap, you know, because. Who else could do this role? He's perfect for this role.

• 16:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you think the show might fall apart?

• 16:34Speaker 08

  I was concerned. I was concerned, but I have full trust and admiration for Christopher and just the whole group. I said, well, are we going to keep going? And he said, yeah, we're going to keep going.

• 16:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  We had tried several times to interview Stokes before he dropped out. We finally got him and the studio booked, but he canceled the day before. I didn't know what it meant to leave a show for personal reasons, and it didn't seem right to pry too much. But in the absence of fact, rumors flew. Maybe Stokes dropped out because he just didn't think the show was good enough. Maybe he didn't want to spend a few months living in a hotel room in La Jolla. Maybe in this moment of such fractured politics, he didn't want to draw attention as a black actor playing Abraham Lincoln. Or maybe at 67 years old, he just didn't feel up for a long out of town run.

• 17:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  He did perform in public shortly after quitting Lincoln. In New York, he starred in a five day run of Love Life, an old Kurt Vile, Alan J. Lerner musical. And he was a featured performer on a five day Broadway cruise from Miami to Cozumel. I went to see him in Love Life and he looked as good as ever. Whatever the case, or whatever the cause for his departure, three summers of Lincoln needed a new Lincoln ASAP. So they called in their casting director. Here's Christopher Ashley again.

• 18:00Speaker 07

  She's like, here's 30 people that we think would be fantastic to consider. So we all bat them around, champion various names until we winnow that list down to, I think we ended up with six people. And then you start figuring out, okay, who's actually available to come and join us in a month.

• 18:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  And then what do you do? You send the script to all of those six?

• 18:21Speaker 07

  No, no, no. You very much go one at a time. And most of those six, someone in our group has worked with before, and all of us have seen many, many performances by them. It's a very known group. You're not just basing this on an audition. You're also basing it on a body of work. And very, very excited that we're being joined by Ivan Hernandez as Lincoln.

• 18:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tell me about Ivan.

• 18:44Speaker 07

  For La Jolla Playhouse aficionados, he was the Zhivago in the La Jolla Playhouse production of Dr. Zhivago about 20 years ago. If you Google him, you'll see him all over film, all over television, and all over theater stages. He's super smart, beautiful voice, has a kind of center of gravity that I think is a necessary part of Lincoln.

• 19:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  Looks good in the top hat.

• 19:09Speaker 07

  I've not tried him in a top hat yet, but I did draw one on a picture of him to sort of see what he looked like in my imagination.

• 19:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  And what number was Ivan on that list?

• 19:18Speaker 07

  I can't tell you that, but he was high.

• 19:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up after the break.

• 19:23Speaker 09

  Hi, I'm Ivan Hernandez, and I'm playing Abraham Lincoln in Three Summers of Lincoln.

• 19:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back.

• 19:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  With Brian Stokes Mitchell out as Lincoln, Ivan Hernandez was in. After several weeks of rehearsal, the director, Christopher Ashley, declared himself pleased with the new casting.

• 19:51Speaker 07

  He's got Lincoln-iness, which is a hard thing to define, but you know it when you see it.

• 19:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can you describe it at least? What do you mean by Lincoln-iness?

• 19:59Speaker 07

  It's a gravitas. It's intelligent use of language. In rehearsals, I was like, yeah, he's really capturing something about Lincoln. And then we put the costume on and I thought, wow, he's really Lincoln. And then we did a last thing, which is he'd been rehearsing with a beard and mustache, and we just shaved the mustache, which is unique to Lincoln, right? You don't see a lot of beards, no mustaches in the world. And there was something about, like, all of the work that he'd been done and created in the character, suddenly with that tiny gesture, got all the way across the finish line for me.

• 20:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hernandez has a strong musical theater background, including on Broadway. But in recent years, he's been doing mostly TV, movies, and commercials. He played Carrie Bradshaw's love interest on the recent Sex and the City reboot. I sat down with him backstage at the La Jolla Playhouse to see how he is adjusting to Lincoln.

• 20:51Speaker 09

  Normally, I don't do regional theater anymore. I mean, I'm married, I have kids, I live in Los Angeles, but I just kept thinking. I can't turn down this part. I mean, this is a once in a lifetime kind of a role. It's just an incredible story, part of history. So I felt like if I still want to be an actor, I have to do this. And I love doing musicals. I don't get to do them as often as I used to when I used to live in New York. It's incredibly hard work and it takes all of you, but it's very rewarding too if it's the right piece.

• 21:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  I asked Hernandez what tech rehearsal is like from the actor's perspective.

• 21:29Speaker 09

  They're long hours, but it's sort of relaxing too because you're going through everything slowly. So you're just on stage getting the lights done. It's kind of the quiet before the storm of actually performing the show, which is nerve wracking too because you're like, I still need to run these lines and go through the show.

• 21:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Especially you. You're the late addition, yeah?

• 21:45Speaker 09

  Yes, that's true. It was a lot of words to learn.

• 21:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Are your fellow cast members particularly sympathetic to your situation?

• 21:53Speaker 09

  Yes, all of them have played giant roles on Broadway and they know exactly what it's like and what it takes.

• 22:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  The dialogue is one thing. His Lincoln character also has nine songs, including an early establishing song called "This Impossible Position."

• 22:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  I also caught up backstage with Lincoln's foil, Frederick Douglass, played by Quentin Earl Derrington.

• 22:49Speaker 10

  My focus right now is depth and breadth of his complexity in this story to make sure that every T is crossed, every I is dotted, and done so with love, brilliance, and excellence.

• 23:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  How much of it is mental?

• 23:04Speaker 10

  I'm very intentional about what comes out of my mouth, especially through song. So there's a lot of thought and a lot of time with why I will place a certain thing a certain way, or what I choose to land on, what operative words or colors that I want to shape. It's like a scalpel, precision.

• 23:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Could you give an example? Could you?

• 23:25Speaker 10

  Yeah, there's a moment in the show where I'm grieving. And the grief that is expressed could be very uncontrolled and boisterous and loud and kind of have no form or shape, crying out. But we've been playing with it and we're doing just the opposite. It's almost a silent grief. I sing it right in the point of the axis between my eyes and my forehead, and I just leave it there and don't push and allow the sound techs to do what they do. And it just is received in a new way. You get used to the news you hear on the streets. More injured, more killed. Each day it repeats.

• 24:07Speaker 10

  You pray on your knees to your god up above that it's never you can invoke your blood. It's an interesting way of palatizing sound because you'll get a lot of force and power from me, and this is completely opposite. And it's perfect for the moment.

• 24:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I think when the average ticket buyer, especially someone that doesn't know much about the theater, maybe doesn't see a lot of theater, when they come to buy a Broadway ticket, you know, it's pretty expensive. I think when you pay that much for something, you just want to sit back and say, okay, entertain me. My sense is that many theater goers may not know or care or bother to think much, why should they, about what it takes to get this thing on stage in front of them. So for them, it's an entertainment that they've bought. But behind that ticket are, as we're seeing in the theater there during tech rehearsals, hundreds of people working for months and months.

• 25:08Speaker 10

  Oh, yes.

• 25:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  And when I look at it from the economic side, a $200 or $400 ticket, it's a lot of money, but it begins to seem like chump change when I look at what it takes to do this.

• 25:19Speaker 10

  Indeed.

• 25:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  So from the performer side, how does it work? Can you describe for me how it has been for you to earn your living as a theater performer?

• 25:30Speaker 10

  Woo, man, do we have enough time?

• 25:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  That I've got nothing to do.

• 25:36Speaker 10

  It's interesting how you said that about the ticket price versus what it costs to build the thing, right? It's a lot, and it seems like just a drop in the bucket. There are so many hours upon hours upon days upon years of our lives that we put into our projects. I asked myself many times, why do I keep doing this? For me, it's a calling. It's greater than me, so I keep going. And I just keep learning how to find peace, find balance, find resolve in the grueling aspect of it. I think that is one of the greatest successes of an artist's journey, is finding that balance,

• 26:18Speaker 10

  because you will always have devastating days and you will always have extremely joyful mountain top days. But it's how you, in the midst of all of that, continue to keep saying yes to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next. That's difficult.

• 26:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you got a new Lincoln between when we last saw the show and now, right?

• 26:36Speaker 10

  Yes.

• 26:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  What's that transition been like for you?

• 26:39Speaker 10

  The transition was difficult because I was focused on where we were and what we were building. I'll tell you today where I am. We have our dear brother Ivan Hernandez, and he is brilliant. I cannot wait for audiences to get a chance to see him.

• 26:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  How did you have to adjust your work in this show to playing with a different Lincoln from Stokes to Ivan?

• 27:04Speaker 10

  One clear example are keys. We changed the keys of the show. Stokes has a beautiful, rich baritone. Ivan's a much higher singer, so we lifted some keys and arranged some things, duets. So I'm singing much higher than I was before, which is cool for me. My range is kind of all over the place, and it's fun. It's fun to sing there.

• 27:31Speaker 11

  He didn't even flinch as stubborn as a mule. But could the man be right on some finer points he made? I did enjoy the fight. Round two, another day.

• 27:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  The songs in Three Summers of Lincoln fit comfortably in the Broadway idiom, but there is a freshness about them. The composer, Crystal Monet Hall, is a first time Broadway composer. Here is Carmen Cusack, who plays Mary Lincoln.

• 28:09Speaker 08

  Crystal is such a sophisticated, interesting, soulful writer. I love singing her stuff. Just when you think you know what the melody is, you don't. She says, no, we're not going there. I kind of winked at her a few times when I knew I was hitting the wrong note. And she wanted this other thing and she would kind of look up at me and be like, I know, I know, I did it wrong. I'm sorry.

• 28:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  And here's Cusack at tech rehearsal, singing a song called "In Each Letter", where Mary Lincoln asks her husband to show mercy by pardoning Union soldiers who deserted their posts.

• 28:42Speaker 06

  Thank you. All right. Carmen, go ahead.

• 28:46Speaker 12

  You're more than a man, commander in chief. Save a life while you can, save a mother from grief. Each day brings back news. Don't let it harden your heart. Put your power to use and make mercy an art.

• 29:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  These tech rehearsals run for hours, sometimes late into the night. The pace is remarkably slow. The performers are in costume with full hair and makeup, but they spend most of their time just standing in place while technical decisions are made and memorialized and rehearsed. The creative team takes notes, notes, more notes. It's easy to find yourself asking, what exactly does all this add up to? Yes, it's a commercial enterprise, but what's the larger purpose of all this work?

• 29:39Speaker 13

  It tells a story that's important today.

• 29:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  That is Alan Shore, the producer in Boston, who came up with and commissioned the Lincoln idea.

• 29:48Speaker 13

  It talks about leadership. It talks about how one man, two men, could change the world. One of the lyrics, "There's a country out there waiting for us better than this." And there is, you know, we're a great country, but there is a country out there better than where we are today, and we should all strive to make this a better country.

• 30:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let's talk about the capitalization of this show. What do you expect it to be capitalized at or cost to get it to Broadway?

• 30:16Speaker 13

  As little as we possibly can. As a business person from the past and as a fiduciary, I will do everything that I can to keep cost at the lowest possible amount without sacrificing the art of the show. Today, an average musical costs anywhere from 17 to 30 million dollars. I think we'll be at the very low end of that number.

• 30:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Talk about how much you've raised so far and then what the plan is for the next 12 months or so.

• 30:49Speaker 13

  We're raising about $4 million to get us through La Jolla.

• 30:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  How many investors are involved in that?

• 30:55Speaker 13

  There may be about 20 to 25.

• 30:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can you just talk about the state of investing now? You know, what's a typically small investment and typically large investment?

• 31:06Speaker 13

  The smallest investment that most shows allow is $25,000. And it goes up from there. We've had people at this stage of our production coming in with $250,000. We're talking about pre-Broadway right now. Once a show has established itself as something that's definitely going to Broadway, it really has the potential to be a great show. Then you will see 250, 500, even a million dollars come in. My guess is things will go great in La Jolla because I know the product that we've achieved so far. This really is a special, special musical. I believe that after La Jolla, people will be throwing money at the project.

• 31:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  After the break, Three Summers of Lincoln opens, and maybe the future of theater isn't so bleak. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back.

• 32:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  In 2023, the culture critic Isaac Butler wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times with the headline, "American Theater Is Imploding Before Our Eyes." And he called for a federal bailout of nonprofit theater. There's certainly plenty of evidence to back up his imploding thesis. Beloved regional theaters shutting down, the donor class, especially younger donors, showing a lack of interest in theater. And live theater faces massive competition from Netflix and other streamers. In response to Butler's piece, the Indiana University Arts Economist, Michael Rushton, wrote this. "You cannot save an art form if people are not interested in attending."

• 32:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  But Rushton, when we called him up, noted that Butler's claim is not new.

• 33:05Speaker 14

  If you read cultural commentators in the 1920s, they talk about the death of theater because of the invention of cinema and the radio. It didn't really happen. It may be that there is going to be a natural downsizing in theater. Industries ebb and flow. And the fact that some theaters are closing and some theaters are finding, "We can't do as many plays per year as we used to," does not mean that theater is dying.

• 33:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  I've seen data from the Broadway League that the average annual household income of a Broadway ticket buyer is... Do you want to guess the number?

• 33:42Speaker 14

  I'm going to guess the average household income is going to be over $100,000.

• 33:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, it's over $250,000.

• 33:48Speaker 14

  Okay.

• 33:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  $250,000. How do you think about the population of Broadway ticket buyers then? Are they just rich by definition? Is a Broadway ticket therefore a luxury good? And if so, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

• 34:04Speaker 14

  I'm not sure I would call live performance a luxury good because it's not necessarily that expensive relative to other things that people spend money on. So yes, a night out at live theater is going to cost one a lot, but people do spend lots of money to go on trips or go to amusement parks or go to live sporting events. So I think that live theater needs to be thinking about how do we turn this into something people really want to do. Our biggest selling point is that there are live, breathing individuals on a stage right in front of you.

• 34:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  You recently published a book called The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts. What can you tell us about cause and effect with cultural institutions? Is it that successful economies and cultures have the wealth to support these institutions and that's why they exist? Or do those cultural institutions contribute to the success of an economy and culture?

• 35:07Speaker 14

  I'm not sure whether we can say that high culture necessarily leads to economic riches, but it can lead to riches in other ways, in terms of greater understanding, greater insight, greater appreciation of beauty, those intrinsic goods that make our lives better.

• 35:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you feel that the arts in the US have contributed to a greater culture of understanding and insight and appreciation of beauty?

• 35:33Speaker 14

  One would hope so, and one would think that our greatest playwrights have given us insights into social dynamics and the family. If you think of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams and all of our great authors and poets and composers, they have helped us understand ourselves somewhat. And I think that has made our lives richer.

• 35:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  I happen to be on your team, Michael. I feel very much the same way personally that you're describing. That said, when I look at the relatively tiny number of people who attend theater, who attend opera, who attend classical music, even who go to museums, I think, well, there is a small portion of any population that likes that stuff. And the vast majority in our country at this moment in time simply don't. So what's your best argument that it does deserve public funding, even though the share of the population who partakes is relatively tiny and

• 36:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  That share of the population tends to be able to afford it themselves already.

• 36:38Speaker 14

  The justification for public funding for the arts, even though the audiences tend to skew towards the well-off, is that you want to preserve the very best of our culture for future generations. You want to preserve it for current generations who may not have discovered it, but who might find real meaning in it. So just keeping that opportunity alive and not letting those opportunities die out so that all we have is whatever commercial culture finds it can make a dollar out of is important.

• 37:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  What's the last thing you saw, a live performance, that moved you?

• 37:15Speaker 14

  Last live performance I went to was a very, very low-budget, outdoor performance of Henry IV, Part I, and it was wonderful.

• 37:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Where was this and who were the performers?

• 37:27Speaker 14

  This was in Bloomington, and it was just a local amateur theater company. The audience was very diverse and sitting in lawn chairs or just on the grass. The costumes were really makeshift, but the actors and the audience alike were just so involved in the performance and all the action and the sword fights. There were no star performers at all. It's not Shakespeare's best-known play, and yet it was just a terrific night out and something that I will not forget.

• 38:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Musical theater is a magic trick. That's Jeffrey Seller, a lead producer on Hamilton, Rent, and others. When an artist lines up in the perfect way, music, dialogue, lyric, movement, character, and story.

• 38:24Speaker 15

  In a way that makes me go from the back of my seat to the front of my seat, that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up and makes me cry and fills me with joy and affects me in my, to use a Yiddish word, kishkas, my guts. We can get you in your guts. We're gonna entertain you and inspire you and do it with illumination and education, but most important, we're going to lift you out of your chair and take you to a place you've never been.

• 39:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Will Three Summers of Lincoln be able to do that, to lift people out of their chairs and take them to a place they've never been? We're about to find out.

• 39:17Speaker 16

  I'm Christopher Ashley, the artistic director here at the La Jolla Playhouse, also the director of the show. Thank you for your patience tonight. We're about to get started. So tonight is our very first public performance of This World for Derr Music.

• 39:34Speaker 16

  And Dumbies, you are the first audience for this musical ever, and we're delighted to meet you.

• 40:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Audiences at the La Jolla Playhouse loved Three Summers of Lincoln. Tickets sold very well, and Christopher Ashley told me that the Playhouse's surveys showed that roughly 95% of the audience was either satisfied or very satisfied with the show. The San Diego Union Tribune called it "a thrilling and handsome production" and noted that the show seems to kick into a higher gear whenever Quentin Derr Darrington is singing as Frederick Douglass. Carmen Cusack as Mary Lincoln and Ivan Hernandez, the last minute Abraham, were also well received and well reviewed. Although, to be honest, I did find myself missing Brian Stokes Mitchell as Lincoln. And I did hear some audience members grumbling that they had come to see the show expecting Stokes

• 40:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  in the lead role, but who knows? Maybe he'll be back in the show if and when it makes it to Broadway. The producer Alan Shore told me they hope to bring the show to New York in 2026, provided they can raise the rest of the roughly $20 million it costs to mount a show this size and provided there is a suitable theater available, neither of which are guaranteed. Between now and then, there will be more rewrites, more streamlining, more reconsideration of everything. Here's Christopher Ashley again.

• 41:32Speaker 07

  I do think there's something about the process that is insane and also the most satisfying thing you can possibly do with your life. It's intensely collaborative, the process of making a new show together. Every day you say something and then someone does something with that thing you've said that is better and richer and more exciting than you had in your head. And that keeps on taking the process further, higher and deeper into the center of the story. Once you've had that experience, it's a little bit like crack and you don't want to give it up.

• 42:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  For now, everyone in Lincoln is back to juggling their other projects. Quentin Darrington is producing a show called I Dream about Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy. Joe Di Pietro wrote a play that recently opened in Kansas City called An Old Fashioned Family Murder. He told us that murder mysteries and comedies are what regional theaters are looking for these days. And how about Daniel Watts, the super energetic co lyricist and co choreographer on Three Summers of Lincoln?

• 42:39Speaker 02

  There's a piece about Pele that I have been writing. That started what I thought was just a piece about him and his story, which is fascinating.

• 42:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is that for you to perform in as well?

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Yes, I ended up going to Brazil during the last World Cup and ultimately ended up being at Pele's bedside, watching the World Cup final with him 11 days before he passed away.

• 43:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're kidding.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  I'm not kidding.

• 43:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  How did that happen?

• 43:07Speaker 02

  See, now that's a whole other podcast.

• 43:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is it a whole other podcast? I've heard worse ideas. This series was a blast to make, and I'd like to thank everyone for letting us watch them work. The entire Three Summers of Lincoln crew, the La Jolla Playhouse crew, and all the producers and academics and others we spoke with, including a lot of people who were very helpful, but whose voices you didn't hear, including Jane Abramson, Sue Frost, Frank Rich, Michael Riedel, and Scott Zeiger. Big thanks to everyone.

• 43:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up next time on the show. You take a film like the Martha Stewart film. I'm told between 30 and 40 million people saw that movie. Documentary film used to be thought of as the unsmiling cousin of its flashy Hollywood counterpart. Thanks to streamers like Netflix, that has changed. And the director, R.J. Cutler, is one of the biggest beneficiaries. We talked to him about celebrity culture, life lessons from baseball, and what he won't do for his art. I'm not going to make a propaganda film about anybody. That's next time. Also, we need your voice if you are willing to lend it.

• 44:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  We are working on an episode about how seemingly obsolete technologies like the candle continue to thrive. So tell us about something that you are not willing to let go of and why. Use your phone to record a voice memo and send it to [email protected]. Make sure to get yourself in a quiet place and include your name and where you live. Again, send that voice recording to [email protected]. Subject line obsolete. We will be back next week. Until then, take care of yourself and, if you can, someone else, too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire

• 45:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  archive on any podcast app, also at Freakonomics.com, where we publish transcripts and show notes. This series was produced by Alina Coleman and mixed by Jasmine Klinger with help from Jeremy Johnston. Thanks also to Jason Gambrell for field recording in New York and Alec Moore for field recording in La Jolla. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abouaji, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, John Schnarrs, Morgan Levy, Neil Carruth, Sarah Lilly, Teo Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski. Our theme song is "Mr. Fortune" by The Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening.

• 45:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  My big takeaway is that podcasts make the world go round.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Yes, I promise you, that is literally my belief system.

• 46:07Speaker 04

  The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.

• 46:14Speaker 05

  Stitcher.