keep

going.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Well, Issa, wasn't it around that time that you two met? That's right, that's right.

So I went to see In the Heights when it was off-Broadway.

I was in a show called Passing Strange.

Yes, my other favorite.

it like to grow up in that?

On the first day of rehearsal, Eisa sat down with me to discuss the production, which was inspired by the music school she attended in Berkeley, California when she was a teenager, and the profound ways that the experience shaped her life and artistic journey.

So this play is inspired by the music program that I went to from age 10 to 17 in Berkeley, California, where and I studied classical piano there, studied musicianship and theory and composition.

And it really just laid the groundwork for who I have become as an artist, not only as a musician, but also it's infused all of my work as an actor and as a writer.

And so when Pam McKinnon, who's the director of and also the artistic director of ACT in San Francisco, she came to me eight years ago when she first came into that role.

And she asked if there was a play about the Bay that I wanted to write.

And this was the first thing that came to mind because since San Francisco right across the Bay from Berkeley where I grew up, she wanted to really forefront those Bay Area voices in her first year.

That was one of the first things that she did.

Yeah.

Do you, do you feel like, especially in writing this play, did you feel like there was an element of chance in the actual construction of the play for you versus like how, how thoroughly plotted was it from the beginning?

Yes.

So glad you're asking this question.

And we really, I'm so, I'm going to come back to this whole Elizabeth legends thing.

And I want to know more about your whole musical background.

That's really wild that you actually did a piece of hers.

Um, but as regards the element of chance, um, The way that I thought about this piece in the very beginning when I was just kind of really thinking Big Sky and Pam McKinnon had commissioned me to write about the Bay and I thought, okay, I wanna write something about, that's inspired by this music program that I went to and it'll all be invented.

I'm curious sort of how you landed on the actual sound of the language for them and sort of came to those phrases, which are composed and not improvised for the most part, is my understanding.