[0:00] What is Barba the Musical?Hello, the guest today is Kim Bixler, class of 1991. She is writing a new musical. It's it's performed all around the world. So hi Kim, what is a musical? Hello, Tony. Good morning. So my latest musical is called Barba. It's the Brazilian body percussion musical, and it's based on a true story of a Brazilian body percussionist. So the sounds are made with the body. Oh wow, was it like a performance? Yeah, so it's a full length musical. I we are still in development at this stage. I recently been back to Graduate School and I've been pursuing my musical theater dream lately, and this is the product of that experience. At NYU's Graduate Musical Theater writing program. I am a book writer and lyricist, but my collaborator who's also helping writing the book and he also is at the musician and he is Brazilian. And this is this is where the story is born from, this true story that comes from him. Oh well, that's so great. I'll tell you a little bit of about how the musical was born and when I was applying to NYU's graduate musical theater writing program, I was 52 years old. So this is definitely like a new act and quite a change. I've written books and I'm also a bookkeeper. And in order to get into NY US graduate musical theater writing program, they require an audition. And so the audition process is that everybody is set up with a scene in the song. You have a prompt and you have to write a scene in the song and present it to the other applicants and all the faculty members. Now, I was paired with a Brazilian, Carlos Bousies from Sao Paulo. We picked the prompt that was if you could remember what moment, what would it be? And he said, OK, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? And he said, waterfall. I said, OK, well, tell me what more about this waterfall and why was this moment so important? And he said, well, when I was 15 years old, it was my first love. And she broke my heart. And my sister saw that I was just inconsolable and said, let me take you to this waterfall and clear your head. So they went to they went to this waterfall. And he said it was just magical the way that the, the sound kind of coat off of the sides of the walls. And he was very, he was very moved. And I said, wow, this is, this is a great idea for, you know, audition like our little scene in a song. So I, I said, OK, can we do a song like in the round? Because I think that would be beautiful. Like the sound bouncing off the walls, echoes of The Cave. So I sat down. I was looking up Portuguese idioms and I found agua pela barba, which means water off of a beard. So it's kind of like water off a duck's back that they say here, but and I wrote up this quick set of lyrics and sent them to him. He crafted the song. We had like one more exchange in the middle of the night. He crafted this beautiful song. This that like is this layered song using echoes the word aguape la barba. And we both presented it in front of all the other applicants in the professors. And luckily for us, we both got into the program. But what Carlos did is he he said to me, he said, that's really fascinating that you use those words, Agua Pella Barba, because my best friend, his name was Fernando Barba, and he passed away recently. And he was the leader of this Brazilian body percussion group called the Barba 2 Case. And I was like, oh, OK. And he said, and I said, tell me more about that. And he said, well, he created this. He was a music educator and he wanted music to be very accessible. You don't required to purchase an instrument. You can your own instrument is right there with your body. And he had for decades had this incredible group. And then the group is named the Barbatu case, which means Barbara's drummings and unfortunately, Fernando Barba. He ended up having being diagnosed with a benign brain tumor. But when they did the surgery, he ended up coming out of the surgery completely dysrhythmic. And so Carlos is telling this story and he had just passed away the month before he had applied for NYU. And I was like, wow, that is really a compelling story. And that is the birth of how FARBA, the Brazilian body percussion musical, came about. Wow, so that all came about in like the first week. That was even when we auditioned for the program. But the way that it works in the program is that the first year of the program you are paired with are you a words person or a music person? And until each week you're assigned somebody in the program that your compliment. So if you're somebody's doing words you, they're paired with a different music person and and then you do a rewrite. And at the end of the first year, you will have worked with everyone in the program. Then you rank the people that you want to work with, your top ten people, your choices and what you would write with them. And then the faculty chooses and they decide who is going to work for whom. And I got paired with Carlos. We were both our top choices. We found out. And so during our second year of the program, our master's thesis was dedicated to writing Barba, the Brazilian body percussion musical. And since then, we've had, you know, an Off Broadway run. And we're about to do a workshop production in Costa Rica in September of 2025, around the corner. So I the rehearsal period starts in the beginning of August and then the show comes up and this is still an opportunity to refine the story, make it better. And what's fascinating is this version, the musicals in English, but this version is going to be in Spanish. And then hopefully we'll ultimately do it in Portuguese as well. But our true goal right now is to really get some traction in the US. But these are incredible development opportunities that we have to make sure that the story is sound and the music is working and to make sure it's a solid, solid show before it makes it to the big stage, maybe a Broadway stage one day. So that that's our ultimate goal. It goes starts off from NYU and

[6:08] How does a musical make it onto Broadwayit goes all the way to the Broadway show. They all have different paths. I mean, this just happened to be our path and we were very fortunate to meet in that program and then we had incredible support and opportunities to really like focus on it full time. And so people, they all go different paths. This is pretty unusual to go to Costa Rica, but the we had the star of the show we had when we did it off Broadway, really wanted to bring it to Costa Rica and he ended up securing the funding. Also, it's a fraction of the cost to to mount something like this because it's a pretty ambitious musical. You know, I, I recommend if anybody wants to learn a little bit more, you know, you can Google the Barba Tuques BARBATUQUES or you can just go right on our website and it shows all about them and that's Barba musical.com and the musical. It's a very different sound. Tony has had the opportunity to see it. Oh yeah. That sounds great. Yeah. And he's he's like, I'm like, you've seen it while it was still like a little baby, it was still a little nugget of a musical. I mean, it was a full length. We did it there. But we keep on writing is rewriting. And that's one of the things that has been so magical. And for me, this, the process is it's incredible to to watch how this show is developed. And when you see it on a stage, you learn even more than sitting behind a computer or even just hearing it read out loud. I think I went to one of the table reads where people were just sitting at the table when they were reading from the script. Oh my God, what are the different stages of making a musical? Well, I think that what's really important is to hear it out loud. I spent a lot of time just sitting behind a computer screen in my head, imagining how to change things and what what works and what doesn't work. And then when you hear actors, performers speaking the words, that is incredibly helpful. It sometimes it's just their interpretation. If you get a professional, professional actors or even non professional actors, we'd like to sometimes give them very little direction and see where they take it. And you're hoping that the dialogue really does its job, that they can get an idea of what the characters like based on the dialogue. So we did a lot of just table reads and this is what you saw Tony and the table read. We just, we, sometimes we would do a very basic one where we would just gather my, our classmates and we'd all sit around a table and we would just go through assign parts. And we would not only read the dialogue, but we would also read the lyrics without music. And then we'd also do more higher level table reads where we would either get classmates or some, some actors sometimes in the NYU program that are starting out as well. And then we would also play tracks. It's harder when you have to get some people to learn the music because it's just going to take a little bit of time. And ours has an extra layer of complexity because the individuals, the actors are the musicians, they are the instruments, the bodies are the instruments. The sounds are made with the body claps, snaps, get thumping your chest, acapella music. And so a lot of times when we were at that that table stage reading, we would just play the tracks on top of that. And then we were very fortunate because we sometimes you can do like little cabarets where you do a little short part. We did a cabaret sponsored by NYU at the Public Theater, at Joe's Pub. And then from there, we we had a very ambitious director and choreographer in New York that decided to make it part of his educational workshop program for Latinos, Latinas, Latinas that are really trying to get that first break in New York and learning acting chops and dancing and singing. And so they decided to take on Barba. And so that is the and then we ended up having a little Off Broadway production of the show. And that also really helped us learn it's feasible to to mount this show is very ambitious body percussion show pretty quickly. We were able to do that and that was a full length show, like a little over 2 hours, 2 hours, 5 minutes. So it's an interesting process. I think the best thing is to see how it works. I mean, I've written books before as well. Reading them out loud is really helpful, even if you just read it yourself out loud because you really understand. But if you get someone else to read it, then you really know what's clunky and what's not working. So. Like how much changes between each of the iterations? So if you have a performance and you see how it's performed, like how much do you change it each time? Oh, that, that is really helpful. So one of the things that we do after all the readings and even after the performance is we love to solicit feedback from the participants who have seen it and also the participants who have read in the show. What's working with something confusing? I mean, trying to sometimes you don't want to get totally open-ended questions. So like are there any specific scenes that you were confusing to you? Did you were you able to track this character really more specific information? And and you can only take so much. Like I always say, you just can't take hours and hours of feedback because then your head is mush and everybody has their own opinion. So you really have to pick and choose. But if you keep on hearing the same thing again and again from people, then that's a problem. It's like one of those things where you have a boyfriend and everyone's like, he's bad for you. It's not working. You're like, no, no, no, but you don't know him like I do. No, everyone's like, no, he's bad for you. You have to listen to them. Because if everybody is saying that on the outside and you, then you're, you've got to take your blinders off and start saying, OK, this is I've have to fix this and work on it. But then at that point you can like, change the storyline a little bit to make it more clear about something. Yeah, I mean things are being changed on even on Broadway, right. So the last minute they, I mean it does get locked eventually after you have your like opening night. But I still think people are changing things and fixing things. And also if you bring in certain producers, we're really, really hoping to get like a big executive producer to kind of take on the project. Like if you end up finding, you know, everybody has their opinions. And then also if they're

[12:09] How to collaborate with people on creating a musicalinvolved financially, you have to wait their opinions as well. They might want something, the story to go a certain way and then you have to figure it out. All of this is really about collaboration. And I have learned so much about collaborating in the musical theater arena in the last decade with all the shit with the shows that I've done. And sometimes you have to do things. You may not love it, but it's just like in real life as well. There's a lot of people coming together for a musical, so you got to work together. Yes, yes, but in a lot of people who are on the creative team, so even that are on stage that they what about this, why don't you try this, do this and you just have to kind of cut through the noise. I just don't, I think I could have done this, went right out of undergraduate. You know, I applied to court to NYU when I was 52 years old and I really have a huge lifetime of experience in my back pocket. I've had a lot of different careers. I had a lot of chapters. And also having having had kids, that has helped me in terms of negotiating, figuring out what battles to fight, what don't, what not to fight. This is a world that I knew very little about. But I did have a lot of tools that I've learned along the way, even learned and taking from Cornell from when I was in school there. And that was really a long time ago. But it's all about how do you negotiate with a roommate? How do you negotiate with a class thing, life experiences under your belt. But it's pretty fun to, I don't know, just kind of pull the record and say I'm going to do something completely different that really excites me. And this is right now. This is incredibly creative and fun and and I'd love to have like an actual product to show for it. Well, what are like the different people to negotiate with? Like what's a producer in a musical? Different kinds of producers. You can have a producer who's like overseeing the old projects and can be like, OK, I'm going to get you your director. This is the director you're going to use. This is the theater you're going to do it. This is, this is the workshops you're going to do. Like they're, they could be like like Aceo of, of the musical. It's like almost like a startup. Each little musical is a startup project. And so one person can be more of the boots on the ground and overseeing it. Or you could be just a money producer on a show and they can be just saying, OK, I, I want to invest in this and I'm hoping that it'll take off. So some people really want to get their hands in deeper and be much more involved in the process and also in the creation of it. You also have a director of the show and you don't always get to choose who's the director. We've had two different directors. We have one in the Off Broadway, we have another one that's in Costa Rica. And the directors, sometimes the producer can say, well, I'm investing in it and I have this director that I want, or I have a choreographer that I want to bring on, or I have lighting design, set design. It really depends. These projects cost a fortune because you have a lot of it takes, it's a village to to create a musical. It takes a huge team to get something mounted on any stage, certainly. And a Broadway stage is even more expensive, exponentially more expensive too, because you have to deal with the theater. You're dealing with unions, you're dealing with just marketing promotion. It's just it's it's really, really a beast. And right now at this stage that I'm in with Carlos, my Carlos bows, he's my collaborator. We're kind of wearing all the hats and it's hard. It's like, OK, we need to update the website. I'm like, OK, let me go update the website. I've had to learn how to do everything. It's like, OK, we have to get another logo. Let's try and figure out, you know, how to do this. Let's post some stuff on social media. And sometimes I want to say no, I need to focus on the writing. I need to refine the story. But you have to do everything but one. One interesting story is when I wrote my first book, which is Get a Clue guide to Cornell and Ithaca, NY. And that was done in in 1993, The everyone's like, oh, my gosh, you finished a book. That's so amazing. What an accomplishment. I'm like, yeah. And now the work really begins. And that is really what it is with a musical. That's what it is with a book. Now you have to promote it. You have to sell it. I mean, yeah, it's great if you finish the book. But if nobody buys the book, it's like, you know, the tree in the forest, if it falls down and nobody hears it, I mean, if you write the book and nobody buys it, I don't know. So that's that. That is it's the hustle. So in musical theaters, people, creators have to be everything. And hopefully, hopefully you can find somebody, maybe an executive producer that can be that hustler for you if you're really, really lucky. And so, you know, you just got to find somebody passionate about the project that wants to take it on. Do the executive producer, do they like follow the project along from each show? Like if you have go to Costa Rica, the executive producer goes with you to Costa Rica. If you have another one Off Broadway, they come with you to Off Broadway as well. Like how who stays with the project throughout the whole lifetime? Well, it really I think it depends. Right now we don't have one. I mean, we don't we, we have had different technically different producers for each show. So in our situation, we had a producer, this educational program that was really producing the Off Broadway show. And then for the one in Costa Rica, we have a completely different production company. Well, it's like a producer and an executive producer, kind of a line producer, the one who's doing everything boots on the ground. And and then from there we don't know. I mean, we're just got to find that next step. I don't unless you sign, then you have to deal with getting a contract. If you really want to have somebody sign on and say, I want to get in on the ground floor of this, then you you have to go that direction. But I think there's no like formula. There's no one way that this has to be done. Different shows. That's why arts are amazing, because different shows come up and they all come up different ways. You may have never heard it and all of a sudden you're like, wow, this is a sensation or there's something that's been languishing forever and ever and ever. There's some amazing, amazing, talented people and they just cannot get anything up on stage. And then all of a sudden there it is something amazing. They brought it to Broadway and and Broadway is not you still, it's a long path to get to Broadway. And so few people, so few shows make it to Broadway and some shows make it to Broadway and they still aren't really successful, but they can make the money on the back end if they can license it to regional theaters, local theaters, community groups, high schools. And then then you'll get like residuals and then I'll have a continued life and like 1 less. How do you how do you measure your progress? Like do you like track like a number and say is this number increasing overtime? I think it's just really difficult because for me it's like I try and say I on the prize, our show has a very big international appeal, especially the fact that it's in Costa Rica, it's translated into Spanish, It's going to be in Portuguese as well for a Brazil production and it's already in English. I think that for me, I don't know if is there ever an end? I'm not sure. But our goal would be to have enough. Like the US is amazing because the US has a lot of soft power. So we could make on a big stage here in the US. You can really write your ticket in other places. Brazil would be like, oh, well, if that show was on Broadway, then I really want it. I mean, you think about the shows that they're producing now. They just did Funny Girl, they're doing like Sunset Blvd. and Donna Summer the musical. They're doing very US specific musicals. But it's it's interesting. They don't tend to do a lot really. Original musicals don't make it big like better Brazil specific. But I know that if we can have success here, then Carlos is like then we can write our ticket there. Not write our ticket, but we can definitely have a It will be a much easier path for us because it will have the soft power that US has with film and television and and media do. You see it as like bouncing back and forth, like you first had your New York City one, then you have your Costa Rica one, then you go back to another Off Broadway in America, and then you go to another Latin America. Do you see like bouncing back and forth? I think we go where the opportunities present themselves and we don't know. I think you have to be open to where it will go and you have to just weigh the options. This Costa Rica was a surprise for us. We didn't expect it, but it is. The timing is absolutely perfect, you know, on the heels of New York. And we can take what we learned, what was working and what wasn't there, and we can go to Costa Rica where it's a lot less expensive, but still expensive to produce or to mount a show and really have an idea. And then also the fact that we'll have the Spanish translations, it's fascinating. We also are allowed to have a much longer rehearsal period there. It's just too expensive in the US And so that'll give us a chance to actually change things, things and fix things while we're before the show goes up as opposed to locking it and then just moving forward. But I don't know where it goes. I mean, there are a lot of theaters in the US that are like the stepping stones. You have to take several steps to get to Broadway, for instance, like La Jolla Playhouse does a lot of new works, say California does a lot, Seattle, Chicago. And then there's other little theaters that are in New York that are kind of the stepping stones. These are like feeders into Broadway. Yeah, a lot of times. But a lot of it is really has to do with the producers and their connections and their their pocketbooks and their ambitions as well. I mean, I think this would be great in Miami as well. And then also that helps because Carlos lives there now. So that would be really, that would be a really nice place to to be because. They speak a lot of Spanish there and then you can go through that after. This version, yeah. And there's also a good sized population, Brazilian population, but Boston has a strong population. I was looking there as well. I mean, I this is, this is a written by a Brazilian and an American. So it has, we're trying to make sure that it appeals to a pretty wide, wide swathe of audiences and members. So we're not, you know, just making this. I mean, Carlos, I was a little worried about it at some point. I said, well, I'm not sure. Am I, am I right to tell the story? And he said, well, I want to make sure that it appeals to, you know, audiences in your demographic. I also know that you're a good storyteller. And, and he, he, it's been a very, very good collaboration. I'm very open to respecting different cultures. I'm very open to learning. Like I've been to Brazil. I went there to make sure that I met the family that the story is based on. And so, and I love, I'm deep dive research, but I, that's just one of the other things you have to make sure that you're, you're telling it right and you're doing the story justice. And all these readings and these workshops really help to do that because I certainly wouldn't want to do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing, especially like we don't say that. We would never say that in Brazil. I'm like, oh, OK, well then let's fix that, make sure it's correct. Gotcha. And you said Carlos was good friends with Barba as well. Yeah, like the real 1. So, yeah, so Fernando Barba started this group, the Barba 2

[23:03] History of the Barbatuquescase, this Brazilian body percussion group. They performed at the closing ceremonies of the Olympics in Rio in 2016. They're on the soundtrack of Rio 2 for Disney. They're on another soundtrack of a like a action film, I can't remember the name of it, Tropa something. And they when I first met Carlos, he said they are world famous. The Barbatuques are world famous. And I was like, I've never heard of them. No one here in the US has ever heard of them. I mean, not very many people have. And so, but we're hoping to change that for sure. But he was brought on. He he was, he is so funny. This is a great story about him. He was like a huge admirer of them in the in the late 90s, early 2000s, when he first they started in 1997. That was the first first official concert and he went to one of their concerts and he was just in awe when he saw it the first time. This is incredible. And then he went home and he is a music major and what he did is he created a original scoring system like to score the show. So he created so like if you have a different lines on the staff that are guitar or trumpet or drums or whatever, but he created like this is this series of claps, this is this series of thumps. And he created this entire system so we could score their music. And he took one of their songs and scored it. And then he went to one of their other concerts and he presented it to Fernando Barba. And the guy had looked at it and it was like, who in the world are you that did this? This is amazing because we've never written it down. It had just been. Done. It hadn't been like formalized like this. And so Carlos was brought on and he would, he was in one of their like study groups with body percussion. And then ultimately he was brought on as their music director to help with Run the Heart rehearsals because he was very experienced doing that. And so he became very close to Fernando Barba. He just said, it's amazing to work with my mentor. And then when Fernando Barba ended up, he ended up getting a having a benign brain tumor and lost his ability to perform. And Carlos was there during that whole process. And and the story is very touching because it's like, what if you invest everything in your life, your music becomes your whole life to the detriment of everything else, And then you've lost that one thing that's your entire identity. And that's what the story is. So the story also resonates really a lot with Carlos, obviously, because he lived it. So. And that's why I'm like, oh, the pressure. I know the family I'm working with the collaborator who with it, I'm like, yeah, just a little bit of pressure to make sure the story tells right. Do you want to know like sleepless nights, everyone next I wake up and I'm like, Oh my gosh, am I doing it right? Am I doing this is, you know, I just, I want to make sure that this story is told beautifully. But you also have to keep in mind that it's still a story for the stage, unless you have to fictionalize some things because real life is not always as dramatic and as interesting and fraught, you know, with things or compelling. And so you kind of have to have a balance. So we're working on that. Gotcha. And then when you were writing it, did you figure out how it fits into the zeitgeist of all the other musicals in the world? How it fits into that? Yeah, there's different Broadway venues. How does it fit into the focuses of each of the Broadway? Like how well mapped was it Winter right now? That's an excellent question. So for me, OK, I'm gonna show my bias here. I'm just a little tired of the musicals that are made from films and the musicals that are jukebox musicals. It's just become this genre is like everything you turn around. And I understand it. They have to do it for the economics of a show. You know, they want people that like, oh, I saw that movie and I now I want to see the show, or a lot of it is there's a famous person who's in a show that's a revival. So to me, I want to see something original. This is completely original, which makes it have a harder path. But an original musical on Broadway is kind of rare. You know, they're harder to get up there. They're harder for people to take a chance. If you're looking on a board, you're like, what am I going to see? I'm going to see Back to the Future, which I know, or I'm going to see Barba, Brazilian body percussion musical. Well, hopefully they'll be like, I don't know what that is, but maybe it's good some people will take. A chance and. Stuff will go on. It's it's riskier, but I think the payoff could be really great. And also we don't have to deal with getting the rights to the film. And we do have to have, we do have rights that he did write his story out. So we have those. We're working very closely with the family as well. But we really think that new and fresh, it's a, it's a harder path, but it's extremely rewarding for somebody to say. I have never seen anything like that before. I mean, Tony, have you ever heard music like that before? Oh no, I've never seen body percussion before. And you're making all the music. I mean, you're making the music like that. You're making a whole song with your bodies. Yeah. And. I like that the performance, how you had the interactive part where we could also in the audience members could do it too. Yes, yes. And I think that that and people who said I have no rhythm, I can't do anything. But if you break it down, you realize that it's this is not about one-on-one. This is about a collective. It's about when you work together how you can make this music. Each one maybe has a cell or a little component of it. But when you put all those components together, my favorite thing is to do these improv games that Carlos can run and everybody has just one little pattern, 1 little cell, and he like builds them in and out. I just sit there the whole time and I'm like, this is magical. And I'm like, wow, I'm a musician all of a sudden. So that's really pretty fun. Even Tony is a musician. Yeah, it was very easy to follow along and I made some music that day. Yes, awesome. Is there a interesting so so long term wise? Like how do you plan out your like musical career? Do you usually have one musical that you focus on or do you have multiple musicals over time? Like what's the typical musical career path? That's another great question. So most people have many, many different irons in the fire. They have lots of different projects that they're working on and they're in the hopes that some will take off. Often. Some people work with multiple collaborators, so they have different projects. You know, the people in my program, there's one guy I know, he's working with like 5 or 6 different people in the program. And then there's other people who work with the same collaborator on multiple projects. You know, they just really get along great. You know, they're kind of like a set package and then to a lot of people have to have multiple things going on. For me, my multiple things are in different arenas as well, because I still like, I just did a TE DX talk about why I couldn't become a musical theater writer until I turned 50 and that was down in Florida. And, and so I, I like to keep myself busy doing other creative things because I do have a Frank Lloyd Wright musical. I grew up in a Frank Lloyd Wright house and wrote a book about it and that, but that's kind of been on the back burner just because the right now Barbara is taking up all my time. And so I think of that if it would be really, really hard to try and do multiple ones of these projects. So I like to do these little one off things like this FedEx talks. I do Frank Lloyd Wright talks occasionally. So that's that's a lot of fun. So I'm also a bookkeeper. So I have a lot of work doing bookkeeping for a jewelry business. And so I'm constantly, I never AM, let's put it that way. But I think that in order to be really successful, sometimes you have to have multiple things going. I just, all of my focus right now is on Barba and, and I'm always thinking really far ahead, like, OK, I'm already thinking, OK, we're going to Costa Rica, but let's think what's the next thing that's going on after that? And there there are opportunities to do submission opportunities that you can write, you can do the hustle where you're writing to theaters directly, which that's not very easy. And a lot of it is connections, who you know and connecting with people. Hopefully someone will see it, or someone will hear about it, and then it'll go to the next, the next and the next, and then and the next and the next. World domination. We'll see. Gotcha. So it's like a picks up momentum over time. If you find like a good executive producer then that would bring it to the tension of a lot more like La Jolla Playhouse might hear about it as a result is that usually like you find like one that brings more. Well, because theaters are really struggling these days.

[31:25] What are the financing options for musicalsAnd so unfortunately, a lot of those theaters don't have the financial resources to, you know, mount a show. They need to have a producer. Sometimes a producer comes in and says, I have the funds. And then the theaters like, OK, let's, let's do this. It's instead of the theaters doing it themselves, you know, independently. Where do these funds come from? Are there like a venture capital firms that invest in these? There's a lot of different I've I actually have had meetings with a couple of producers this week, which is interesting. And one was a former tech guy and he made his money in the tech arena and he, I was the one who said this is like a mini startup to me. I like to find shows. I'm not sure. I don't think this show is the best a good fit for him necessarily. But he and some don't sound excited, some don't. And what you really do is I hope people see it because to me it's so hard to explain like body percussion like that. This is how the music is made and this is what it sounds like. It's Brazilian music and body percussion. So even I was unfamiliar with that genre. So you have that kind of person. You have other person who's grown up around musicals and really he loves them and, and there are other people that don't have tons of money, but they have a good network. And so I don't know if you've ever seen like on the Tonys when people are accepting awards for producing, sometimes you could have here's the producers and there's like 50 people that are up on stage because they're all like small investors in there. Rarely. The one example I can think of is The Great Gatsby that just came out. I know the lyricist and the book writer of that. The lyricist went to NYU years ago and they had one producer that came came over and said from Korea, and he was just like, I want this show. And my friend Nathan Tyson, he said it was like a rocket ship. This rarely happens. Like the show was commissioned and it got to Paper Mill Playhouse and then it got to Broadway and now I know it's in London, but that is rare because number one, you only have one person who's making all the decisions and that person had a tremendous amount of funds. And so it that that's, that's the rare situation. And it could be a great situation or it could be hard because you're, you have to really do what they want in certain situations. But most of the time you have a lot of different people, a lot of different fingers in the pies. Are these people usually thinking in terms like return, like financial return or they also thinking about like this is something I want more story where they want to win the Tony like what are the what do they usually think about? I think a lot of it is if you're really in this for the money, then you're kind of deluded because it is so, so difficult. It's like just saying, hey, I want to be a professional tennis player. You're like so few people can make it, but what these producers do is they sometimes say, well, I will work on, I'll produce 7 shows in the hopes that one will hit it and then cover the cost of all the other ones. Kind of. You're gambling what's going to work what? What is not going to work. A lot of the people do they, they want to be in the room where it happens. They want to watch the process of being made, the show being made. They want to be involved in it. They also like the idea. OK, I get to go to the premiere or I can go to the readings. I can watch this process unfold in front of me and other people want the Tony Award. I know that there's like some television movie stars that are getting into the producing game because they want to have an E got. So they want to have like the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, the Tony. And so the Tony is the one that some a lot of them are like, OK, I'm missing this elusive Tony. So if I invest in some of these shows just just money, I still get it. I'll still get that, get that that last they. All have to perform it. They could just invest in it. Yeah, they just invest in it. You, you will get a Tony if you're a producer, a certain producer, there's different producers like the title of a show, you'll see producers names on top and then they're on the bottom. And that determine that is that's different depending how much money they've invested in it. So do you usually get like 1 like headliner producer and then that brings in like an anchor producer and that brings in a lot of other producers like what's the typical? I'm not. I still AM. I don't know. So I'm still navigating. I think it's different for every show. I know, like I use the example Great Gatsby. The other example is like Strange Loop that was just like Crowdsource. They had so many different producers on that show. So instead of having lots of or few producers had a big amount of money, they had a lot of producers and a smaller amount of money. And those people did get Tony's and I don't know. That's a. Lot of yeah, yeah, a lot of statues given out there, but I just don't know how. I don't know, Like for this show, for Barba, how how who's, which is who's, which path is ours. And we don't know because it's still relatively new. And we, and even if we had a couple different producers, we still have to figure out which one's a good fit for us. We can't just say, oh, you have money. OK, we're going to do it because we, it's just like working. It's another huge collaboration. But I've met some people that I've enjoyed and I want to keep meeting people. But also, how do you get out there? How do you breakthrough the noise? How do you get people to even know it, to hear about the show? And that is the, you know, the juggernaut. That's it. Gotcha, that makes sense. Did you do the producers you stay on with the show from different stages like they they join off Broadway and then once you get to Broadway they come with you to Broadway as well. Is that usually like the? They usually follow you along. I think it's different. I think it's different with regards like another show. Oh Mary, it, you know, had some producers that did the Off Broadway run and then when it wanted to go to Broadway, it needed more financial backing. So then they brought on more producers. So new people came on, I assume some of the old ones, original ones stayed there and they're, they're going to get a bigger cut and a bigger percentage because they were kind of kind of the way the tech is, You know, they were the initial investors and they have like the a round, C round, B round or what you know, like you're, it depends on when did you get in and on the process as well. But I, I think that this is, this is unlike, well, maybe it is a lot more like tech. I really liked when I talked to that one person, he's like, some of these startups work, some of them don't. If you're like an Angel investor, some will work and some will not. And investors can be money or they can be somebody who's really, really involved in in what's going on. But Broadway, it's a business. I mean, it really is a business. And, and being on the creative side, I absolutely love it. And sometimes I just want to pull my hair out with this business side. I'm like, how do I, this is, I don't want to spend all this time doing all these things, but these are the essential things or else it's never going to, it's never going to take off. Yeah. And more. How big are these rounds? Are they like a couple $1,000,000 each? Like if it goes on Broadway, is that like $10 million? Well. To put a show on Broadway, especially something like ours, you know, you're talking fifteen, $20 million at least. But shows are, they're really expensive. And then you have to think about it. You have the run of the show. And This is why some of these shows that have big names in the shows have trouble recouping their money because they have to pay so much money to this big name to be in the show. And then when the big name leaves, then the show either has to find another big name or it's struggling. But the, as soon as you start selling tickets, think you still have to recoup all that money that led to it. It's like R&D. There's, there's all these different factors, but you know, I, I think that the investors you have to just love musicals. You're not doing this as a business necessarily, but it is very similar to startups and tech people. And you're just hoping that one of their things, you know, strikes a big and really works. It is a fun, fun adventure just to see like I'm sitting there, I'm in the audience and to watch something, the words you've written up on stage and sung, it's pretty magical. I'm waiting for that day, one day that you're sitting there in the car and you hear it on the radio and you're like, that's something I wrote. So we'll see. So talk about like the overall

[39:11] Switching careers over the decadescareer change. What was it like switching careers when you were in your 50s? Well, a lot of it. I would have to say that COVID made me do it a little bit. I am a restless soul. I have so many ideas and enthusiasm for complicated projects. And both of our kids were graduating from school, so they were no longer in the house. And I was just kind of going a little bit crazy. I was I was taking my Frank Lloyd Wright musical and I took it and I broke it up into these little videos 35 and it documentary style music videos. And then people would pay me to do presentations all over the country and for schools. And it was fun. It was like kind of feeding this this creativity because I'd have to come up and edit videos and put the songs to them and then to try and tailor to a fifth grade class versus a bunch of architects. That was that was great fun and that kind of sparked this. Really want to keep going with this musical project. And then I decided to apply kind of on a whim. I thought, where could I meet other collaborators and also get this, the right tools and experience to do this, do this right. And I think I was at the perfect juncture in my life that I had the energy, I had the freedom because the kids were gone and my husband had recently retired. And so I was like, can we move to New York City from California? He's like, no, but he ended up, we ended up moving and he ended up loving it. He ended up going and teaching at the Cornell Tech campus for the law school. So he did his own little, I don't know, reinvention at his age because he hadn't been a law professor. And I want to tell 1 funny story about him. So he at the very beginning of his classes, he taught venture capital funding and high growth corporate transactions. And then one of the one of these things he said, he said, OK, let's all go sit down and we'll decide what are the three things you want to get out of this class? And people were broke. They put people in groups of three and then they had to present what they want, wanted to go to class and they were all going. And one guy just kind of a smart aleck said, I want one of the lessons to be done in song. And he's like, my husband's like in song. He's like, yeah, I want you to do the whole lesson in song. And he's like, have you looked at my LinkedIn? And the guys like, no, he said, well, because my husband's in a barbershop, of course. So he's like, that's kind of funny. The guy said, no, I he was just being joke. He was joking. But my husband comes home and he said I need to do a lesson and song. And this was when Elon Musk was doing this takeover Twitter several years ago. And he said, I need, hey, this is you're the lyricist Kim, can you write a song for me for my class that I can sing to the class? And I was like, really, what do you want to do? And we happen to be watching a little shop of Horrors. And there was a song suddenly Seymour. And he goes, that's it. Suddenly Elon. And so he ended up saying, OK, let's write some lyrics. So we sat down for a minute and I said, well, why don't you write down one, write one verse and then and tell me what you what, what directions you're trying to go in. He wrote a verse and I went, oh, no, no, no, you don't need my help. This is excellent. OK, You write the lyrics and then I will proofread them. I made some tiny little tweaks. Then I came into class with him that day. He didn't even tell anybody who I was. And I had like, the karaoke. And we did. He sung the class, the class. He sent the song to the class. This is hysterical. And I didn't realize it when somebody filmed it in the back and they put it on Instagram. So I was like that there's a riot. So there's my husband teaching, teaching. What is it? Venture capital funding to a bunch of LLM students on the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island. And he's singing. So that was that was my. So cool. Yeah, that's my fun, my fun New York moment. So both of us, him and I both are just love Cornell and it's been a great. I live out here and I moved back to LA after after school and we're just going where they where the musical theater adventure brings at this point. And did you find like when you're reinventing yourself in your 50s, did the networks and the skills you built up earlier career, did that help you like after the reinvention too? Absolutely. I mean, I don't even know how somebody who's right out of school can make it unless they're really relying on the network of their parents network. I mean, you just, you, just your network is so much bigger. You have to also keep in touch with people and kind of foster this network. I love people. I find it fascinating. Every time Tony comes, I'm here, here, I'm like, OK, let's go out, let's do something. Or if I'm in New York, I'll try and go and go to these incredible Lexington Ave. you know, meet and greets. Then the food court. I just love those because you just meet such interesting people and you just never know. I really think, and this is what I say to my kids who get you, you know, in the door, but what keeps you on the other side of the door. So sometimes it's so hard to break in, but a lot of it is these, these relationships you've had most of your life. Somebody's going to trust me more. That's known me since I was in high school and elementary school. Then somebody who I'm just having a first meeting and I'm trying to get this producer to put $10 million into the show. They're like what I've known you for an hour. But if my friend from high school or elementary school calls, that person already knew that person and said this is my solid friend. I've known her since since I was a kid. I promise you can trust her. That guy's going to be like or woman or whoever. OK, You're right. I believe you based on this. Those are really, really helpful. And then the last thing about Cornell too, is that I, we've moved around a lot. My husband got transferred a lot for jobs. And every time I moved to a new city, I would join the Cornell clubs because we had that one thing in common and I didn't know anybody. It was like a brand new place. And it's been extremely helpful. And the people that I've met at Cornell have been some of the best, the best people that I've met in my life. And I saw a lot of Cornelians at the performance of Barbara in New York City. Too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wearing red. No, they weren't wearing red. But anyway, so good. Yeah, this is a lot, Kim, But for the closing question, I always ask the guests what's the

[45:10] Closing questionkindest thing that anyone has ever done for you? Wow. I need to like a narrow down in terms of in what area of my life. I would say that recently I'll just think of the most recent thing that I really loved is that this friend of mine about this Ted talk, he asked me, he was really interested in me doing this Ted talk. And I have horrible stage fright. Like it is bad, it's terrible. And despite being a public speaker and he was like, I think you can do this. And it's kind in that he said, I like your story and he pushed me to do it. And and what it did is it just it's so nice when somebody believes in you. And that's one of the things that to have. And I've had that in my life a lot, but I like to believe in other people. But this was a moment where he just said, I really believe you can do this. So we're going to do this together. And I went on that stage and I blew it. I mean, it was a disaster. I was so bad at the beginning. So I'm up there on the actual stage during this FedEx talk. And he finally has to come out. He came out a couple minutes and he's like, OK, Kim, let's relax. Let's calm down. We're going to start again. And I mean, and luckily it's edited, but he just, he just kind of, he's like, I believe in you. And then I showed him that I was not an actor and, and he kind of helped bring it together again. And we and then then it was magical. And once, once he just, he literally held my hands and he was just like, OK, take a deep breath and let's start again. And so that was a great example of somebody showing me kindness, but then giving me a second chance when I met it and to doing it in a very personal way. So that's it. That's beautiful. Thanks for sharing, Kim. Thank you, Tony.