"All Things Equal: The Life and Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg" is an intimate portrait of the the groundbreaking Supreme Court justice nicknamed 'Notorious RBG.'
The one woman play debuts in Spokane on Saturday, March 7th at the First Interstate Center for the Arts.
The week before she arrived in Spokane, SPR's Kyrsten Weber spoke with actress Michelle Azar, who plays Bader Ginsburg.
This is an extended version of the interview, but it has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Kyrsten Weber: Tell me about the connections between [Bader Ginsburg's] life and yours.
Michelle Azar: The first scene that I read, I remember just so vividly when she said, my mother was the first in her family to be born in this country. So I'm from an Israeli-American family.
My father is Israeli. My mother is born in America, but her mother was born in Poland. So I've been deeply aware of being a first generation Jewish woman living in a country that was not my family's origin.
Ruth talks about her mother having graduated high school at 15. And so did both my mother and her mother was 12 when she came to this country and lost her mother on the boat to Ellis Island and was put into the sweatshops in New York City.
She says, my mother would have gone to college, but it wasn't like that at the time. Instead, she went to the sweatshops and she was expected to turn over part of her weekly salary to pay for her oldest brother's college education and all this longing for education.
And so Ruth talks about when her mother died of cancer when Ruth was just in high school. They found out afterwards that her mother had secretly managed to save $8,000 of her own money just so that Ruth could get a college experience, everything that her mother had longed for.
You know, we finished this beginning part of the play saying it's just one generation, just one, between that and a woman being on the Supreme Court of the United States. It's mind boggling. And that's how I feel when I think about my father's mother being 12 years old when she was arranged into marriage and started having babies at, you know, 14 years old.
And I look at my 25 and 21 year old daughters who are out there in the world and creating change through art and how I'm just this conduit.
KW: How do you prepare for a one woman show, especially for someone as significant as RBG?
MA: It was very, very important to me to work on the physical. I wasn't so daunted about doing a solo show because strangely enough, this is my fourth solo show.
I have written two others and I still perform one that I wrote called "From Baghdad to Brooklyn."
But the aging, the play starts and ends with her as an older woman. And then the middle, we see her in her 30s and 40s and 60s.
And I'm a dancer and a mover by birth. I spend a lot of time in the physical.
My husband got me all the books on her. So I reread my favorite one usually, which is the Ruth Bader Ginsburg in "My Own Words."
And then the other thing I like to do when I'm preparing for her was realizing the parts of her that we didn't see, her at home, her maybe arguing with Marty or being silly with her kids.
She was a mom and she was a fighter. And she says I was quite humorous when I was a young woman. I know from Nina Totenberg, who I've spoken to when we did our show in D.C., she deeply also wanted to be liked by her peers.
We know her to be reserved and more sober and more process-oriented than, let's say, Marty was. He was the clown and made people laugh. She had this great force of humor and vitality and wit. So I allow myself the human spots as well that we don't know. We weren't behind the scenes.
KW: What is it like representing someone who is so significant in our very recent history?
MA: It's enormously humbling. I have to watch myself all the time from getting overly sensitive.
I feel lucky that I'm put to the test often. So people ask me, why didn't she sit down? They're so angry at her. Why didn't she fight for it this way and why did she fold this way? And I feel like I can take the cues from her to say what it's like for me is it's a great lesson constantly for all of us to stay calm and listen to the real question at hand, which is one of pain, which is one of how can we continue to believe and hope for a better future?
So she said, fight for the things you care about, but fight in a way that make other people listen.
If you look at her relationship with Justice Scalia, may he rest in peace, she said, we were the odd couple of Washington D.C., but we understood how to stay dignified with each other, how to listen to each other. In fact, she credits him with making her writing more cohesive, more coherent.
They knew that they could be opposed in their ideology, but it was deeply important not only for them, but for the entire country that they stay in the listening.
And I really also believe that what our show is doing is reminding each and every single person that comes that everybody can be a conduit for change and change for the good. Not that everybody has to believe the same thing.
KW: What is the range of audience reactions? I would imagine that you've got a lot of audiences that are just thrilled and embracing this. Are there audience reactions at the other end of the spectrum?
MA: I always think about that first month when we were incubating this beautiful play. You know, the title is The Life and Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So we're not trying to dupe anybody, but people would come and sit in that theater for a good 60 minutes, and then as soon as in the last half of the show I start talking about Trump or I start talking about abortion, and people get up in a huff and leave, or did.
Now we're in these very big theaters most of the time. So if people are leaving, I don't see it or feel like quite as much.
But I wanted to say in those moments, darling, please just take a moment and sit down. We'll talk about it in 20 minutes after the play. Meet me in the audience.
Some nights feel like a pep rally. Anything. People are on their feet applauding. The show takes an extra half hour because there is such joy.
And then some nights are definitely quieter, more measured. And I remind myself that it's not a reflection of whether or not the show is good or bad. It's what the audience really needs to hear.
KW: When you've spoken to audience members to hang in there and I'll talk with you afterwards, have you done that?
MA: Oh, yeah. Especially like when there's a child in the front. And they're really knowledgeable. I just can't get over it. How many great people out there are teaching their kids who this woman was? Oh, yeah. I bring them backstage.
I show them all the costumes. We talk about their trajectory, what they're interested in. Or sometimes I come out to the front and I meet people that are really crying.
They really just miss her and feel so unseen by the administration. I can't fix it. But I just try to hold space for them and try to answer their feeling state, not so much their questions.
But when they do have questions, I remind them of she was trying to stay on the court to keep the dignity of the court. The other thing that helps when I talk to people is it reminds them that we are better off than we used to be.
KW: For the audience members coming in, what do you hope that they bring to the theater with them?
MA: After doing the show in Sag Harbor, a man came up to me afterwards.
He said, I am so glad I came. I was so angry at her while she was fighting for women's rights. I really didn't understand. I was so angry at her that she stayed on the court. But I came tonight because my wife really wanted me to come. I'm so glad I came.
It answered a lot of questions and I have such deep respect for her. I hold that one with me. I hope people can come who don't think that they need to be there.
I hope people can come who feel unseen currently in this climate on any level. I hope people can come and stay just listening to the story of a human who saw her ability to read and write as a conduit for equality. If there's something that we see might be unfair, uncaring, or unequal, that there are words that we have every right to say: I dissent.
And maybe on a smaller scale and maybe with sweeter, calmer, more compassionate, hopeful ways. It doesn't have to be through aggression. That's what I want people to come to hear and to talk about anew.
That we can see each other without aggression and to slow down and build our endurance for the spots that we don't agree.