Slave Play

And I think what was so great about meeting Pete at the moment when I met him is that, like, our lives were both starting to, like... like sort of like be surrounded by the same questions, right? Like we're both like young men of a certain age, right? Like we're still young, but we're like, but we're also like coming on to that space in middle age where most of the people in our lives are having kids and getting married or getting divorced.

And I think that like talking to Pete of when we started making the doc film, for the Slave Play doc about just like the changes in my life, the changes in his life.

And then as he invited me to be in our first collaborative film together, The Tribute to Being Bitten by a Tick, we kept seeing like this recurring theme of like domesticity starting to like rear its head.

And it was really cool to have someone to like sort of very quickly be able to parlay these questions with her, like, you know, have some sort of tennis match with these questions.

I think that, like, I'm really in a moment where, because I have to do so much, I have to be so controlling so much in my life, it's really great to be, like, subservient to someone else's vision.

And I think that one of the other things that's similar about Pete and I's work is that, like, while neither of us start with plot, we do start with metaphor.

Like, metaphor is, like, the pervasive idea that, like, runs throughout our work, right? think about, you know, a sugar baby, sugar daddy relationship, and I decide to, like, what does it mean to extend that metaphor to the very end in the play Daddy? With Slave Play, I'm like, what would it mean to, like, extend this metaphor and, like, look at it from every angle possible? And with Erupsia, he took the idea of, like, what happens if every time these two girls come together, there's a volcano explosion, or a volcano explodes, and was like, what's the, what, how can that, like, manifest throughout the story? And I think what as an actor, I kept saying was like, how can I serve this? While also knowing that I'm a producer of a movie that's happening in Warsaw, a country where neither of the key players like speak the language fluently.

And I'm like, if you don't need me to be in this scene today, I can just make sure that like the Nobu Warsaw doesn't kick us out, right? Because I am also the producer.

Yeah.

Like Slave Play.

I was reminded of that.

Yeah.

It's like Slave Play had come out a year or two before by Jeremy O.

Harris.

And that word play in there is probably intentional.

Can you imagine if you have a Pul-

He wrote Slave Play, which was on Broadway for years.

Does he have a Pulitzer from that?

I think so.