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Writers and composer-lyricists Matt Gould and Griffin Matthews barrel head on into the difficult and the uncomfortable. They want to find \u201cthe hardest thing to say\u201d and wrestle it into a piece of theatre. <\/p>\n
\u201cTelling a deeper truth\u201d is the goal, according to Matthews. \u201cIf it\u2019s easy to say something, you shouldn\u2019t put it onstage. The most dramatic is the hard stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those who saw their documentary musical Witness Uganda<\/i>\u2014or its renamed Second Stage Off-Broadway production Invisible Thread<\/i>\u2014or Gould\u2019s work on the Broadway-bound Lempicka<\/i><\/a> <\/i>know that firsthand.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to write something that keeps you up at night,\u201d Matthews says. What was keeping him and Gould up at night was their relationship. During the time they were dating and writing what became Witness Uganda, <\/i>gay marriage became legal. \u201cOne day we couldn\u2019t get married, the next day we could get married,\u201d Matthews recalls. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018Wait, we\u2019re supposed <\/i>to get married now? What does that mean?\u2019 The event sparked a whole conversation about, \u2018Who are we? What is this generation?\u2019\u201d The pair knew they should be writing about this because they didn\u2019t know the answers.<\/p>\n The two come from opposite backgrounds: Matthews is an African-American Christian man from Pittsburgh, Gould is a white Jewish-American man from New York City. As they grappled with the gulf between their respective roots, they found common ground during a trip to Germany when they took Matthews\u2019 grandfather, who had liberated Dachau, to visit the hallowed ground for his 80th birthday. Gould had lost ancestors to the Holocaust. Suddenly it hit them: blacks, Jews, gays, all would have been killed on that land 70 years ago. The branches of their family histories are intertwined. And so they began what would become The Family Project<\/i>, a musical told in vignettes as a song cycle. <\/p>\n Now married, Gould and Matthews served as artists on campus through Stockton University\u2019s inaugural Broadway Arts Lab<\/a>, visiting and lecturing in courses across departments\u2014from \u201cJewish Stories and Storytelling\u201d to \u201cBlack Lives\u201d to \u201cSmall Business Management\u201d\u2014and mounted a workshop presentation of The Family Project <\/i>with students in the theatre department on campus before transferring it to NYU Tisch. \u201cThe people who are most honest are the students,\u201d says Matthews. \u201cIf you get a group of students together and they\u2019re paying attention, we know we\u2019ve got something.\u201d<\/p>\n Below, Matthews and Gould unlock their artistic partnership, reveal some mistakes they\u2019ve made, talk about next steps for Witness Uganda<\/i>\u2014and why they\u2019re back to the original title\u2014and share details on The Family Project <\/i>and a potential next musical.<\/p>\n In terms of building a romantic and a work relationship simultaneously, did you two decide \u201cWe\u2019re going to work together as long as we\u2019re together, but if we break up\u2026\u201d?<\/b> At what point do you each say to yourself \u201cI\u2019m a writer\u201d?<\/b> Matt talked about finding the people that make you better. What is it that Griffin brings out in you and your creativity that you don\u2019t have on your own? And, Griffin, vice versa?<\/b> How hard it is to hold out and not smooth things over? At the end of the day<\/b> do you say, \u201cThis is the message I\u2019m sticking with and if that means playing smaller spaces, so be it\u201d? Or do you cede a bit so it can reach more people?<\/b> What is the kernel of the idea of the story for The Family Project<\/i>?<\/b> What are the emotional beats or moments that feel central to the story, even though you\u2019re telling it in vignettes rather than a narrative?<\/b>
Griffin Matthews: <\/b>It is a good question.
Matt Gould: <\/b>There was just a certain amount of faith around it. It was like it was a matter of survival\u2014for both of us, to some extent.
GM:<\/b> We unknowingly stepped into a business together. [In the beginning], we had a lot of conversations about, \u201cAre we writing partners right now or are we boyfriends right now?\u201d<\/p>\n
GM: <\/b>I don\u2019t just call myself a writer. I call myself an actor, a director, a producer. I think all of us are doing all of it. But the start of writing was because I found myself feeling frustrated with the jobs I was being offered. <\/p>\n
MG: <\/b>It comes down to truth, simplicity. I think pretty much all writers, I don’t care how brilliant the world hails you as. We need someone to reflect back at us and I just think this idea of creator as genius is kind of bullsh*t. I just don’t know many geniuses. Even the ones who everyone says is a genius. Griffin has a far more commercial sensibility than I have. But by that I don’t mean he’s just write fluff. He says, \u201cOK let\u2019s take this crazy idea of Witness Uganda<\/i>, this crazy idea about a musical about AIDS workers, but you gotta set it to a sick beat and that melody needs to be a little cuter.\u201d I think he has a far more pop sensibility than I have. If it was up to me, it would just be weird. He helped me reach more people and that was really important to me.
GM:<\/b> Matt, he walks around with a specific kind of bravery that I don’t always have. And I think part of that maybe comes from his upbringing, and the acceptance of this is something that you should do. I didn’t\u2014not to say that my parents weren’t supportive. They were. But I feel like the world<\/i> is supportive of Matt. And he has become a champion of me. I don’t mean to make everything race-related but it’s been on my mind a lot.
MG:<\/b> But everything is<\/i> race-related.
GM:<\/b> I have to say, if you’re wondering why there aren’t more black musical creators, it’s not because we don’t exist, it’s because the business is not set up for us to succeed. He got to witness it first-hand certainly because we were in a relationship, where he was able to tell me stories about side conversations that were happening. … I say this so sensitively: I think there are a lot of false ideas about how far we\u2019ve come. I once heard Ava DuVernay talking about her career as a director and she said, \u201cIf the door closes behind me, the door never opened.\u201d<\/p>\n
MG: <\/b>There\u2019s always compromise, because it\u2019s about reaching a lot of people. I also think there\u2019s a point at which it starts to become inaccessible. That <\/i>doesn\u2019t excite me. But I also think it\u2019s about learning how to trust when you do actually know better. Everyone was telling us \u201cWitness Uganda <\/i>is too inaccessible a title. Nobody is going to want to see Witness Uganda<\/i>,\u201d and we kept going, \u201cI think that might be the title of our show, though.\u201d And we didn\u2019t trust our judgment. The smoothing became so much so that\u2014
GM:<\/b> We didn\u2019t recognize our show.
MG:<\/b> Now we get a chance to do it again in L.A.<\/a> with Griffin as the director and our vision getting put into motion. It\u2019s just about developing that third eye in such a way that yes, compromise, but no smoothing over.<\/p>\n
GM: <\/b>We were trying to figure out if we were going to stay a couple. Witness Uganda<\/i> tested every boundary that we have. When the commission happened, we were like, “I think we should write about our relationship because I don’t think we’re the only ones having relationship issues.” There’s a generation of us wondering what happens if I marry outside of my race, religion, culture. How do I speak your language? I always say, if this doesn’t work out, I’d go straight to a black man. I tell him all the time, “Go marry a Jew.” Relationships are hard enough, and now I have to figure out what you’re talking about? Now you have to figure out how to deal with my mother? By writing The Family Project<\/i>, it actually healed a lot of those areas because a lot of people were like, “Us, too!”<\/p>\n
MG:<\/b> It\u2019s about values. When you go, \u201cWe both believe in integrity. We both believe in having integrity in our relationships, in our work, in our friendships.\u201d So, where did that come from for you? Where did that come from for me?
GM<\/b>: There\u2019s a song called \u201cIntegrity\u201d in the show.
MG<\/b>: There’s a song called “Don’t Wait.” Which is about my parents dealing with my grandfather for going to a nursing home and it\u2019s like why did we f*cking wait so long? That was the way you start to break down these language differences. “OK, I\u2019m loud and scream all the time” and “I’m calm and make jokes all the time.”
GM<\/b>: Where did it come from?
MG<\/b>: Oh, you come from a legacy of slavery and a legacy of racism. And the coping mechanisms behind that were is A, B, and C, different than Jews who come from a legacy of getting kicked out of wherever we lived.
GM:<\/b> Side story: We were at rehearsal and we started an impromptu song called “Total Praise.” It’s a gospel song. One person started it and then built until the whole cast sang and the white people in the room were like, “How do you all know this song?” It’s like a ten-part harmony. And we were like just like “You don’t<\/i> [know this song]!” Black people have root in God. We’ve been on the run for hundreds and hundreds of years; the place we all went to was church. A lot of our work\u2014my work\u2014deals with God. The Family Project<\/i>, a lot of pieces are about God. My parents are like, “Jesus, Jesus, God, God.” Then I have this Jew and he was like. “I don’t know if there is a God,” where he was taught to question everything. We started unpacking that and thought, “This is a song.”<\/p>\n