Carole Schweid

I Survived Theatre School

Intro: buzzsaws and clean slates, rage, Where the Wild Things Are
Let Me Run This By You: Money
Interview: We talk to Carole Schweid about Juilliard, Phoebe Brand, John Lehne, Michael Brand, Midnight Cowboy, musical comedy performance, open dance calls, starring in the original cast of A Chorus Line, Bob Fosse, Pat Birch, Martha Graham, Minnie's Boys, Mervyn Nelson, playing Fastrada in the first national tour of Pippin, being a lone wolf in theatre, Lewis J. Stadlen, doing West Side Story at Bucks County Playhouse, Shelly Winters, Mary Hinkson, Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, playing Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof, Peppermint Lounge, Nick Dante, Michael Bennett, Marvin Hamlisch, Public Theater, Gerry Schoenfeld, The Shubert, the wish for a job vs. the real experience of working, Theda Bara & The Frontier Rabbi, Agnes de Mille, Play With Your Food, Staged Reading Magic, Albert Hague.
FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):
2 (10s):
And I'm Gina Pulice.

1 (11s):
We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later,

2 (16s):
We're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense

1 (20s):
If at all we survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet? As more space is actually a huge thing.

2 (36s):
Yeah. I have to apologize for the sound of buzz saws. What is going to be going the whole time I'm talking, doing well, you

1 (50s):
Took some trees down, right.

2 (53s):
You know, that's how it started. Yeah. It started with actually, you know, it all was a surprise to me, basically one we've been talking about taking down all the trees in the front of our house. And one day Aaron said, they're coming tomorrow to take down the trees. And I'm like, how much did that cost? Because you know, taking down trees is usually really expensive. And so he says, well, he's going to do everything in the front for whatever. It was $5,000.

1 (1m 22s):
Yeah. She was pretty good for more than one tree. Cause one tree we had removed was $5,000 at my mom's.

2 (1m 28s):
Well, and it's not like they have to extract the whole tree. It's just, you know, just chopping it down. Like it's not, I don't know if it's different when they have to take out the, yeah,

1 (1m 38s):
I think it is when they have to take the stump out the roots and all that.

2 (1m 43s):
So that was fine. Although I did think to myself, Hmm. We have $5,000 to spend and this is what we're spending it on.

1 (1m 54s):
I've been there. Oh, I've been there

2 (1m 56s):
So the morning, but I'm letting it go. And so the morning comes and he tells me to go outside so we can talk about the trees and, and, and I, anyway, we, we designate some trees and they're all in the lower part of the front of our house.

1 (2m 10s):
Yes. You, and by the way, for people that don't know, like you have a lot of land for, for, for, for not being in the super super country, you have a lot of courage. I mean, you got a lot of trees.

2 (2m 21s):
Well, yeah, we have an acre and it's a lot of trees and it's a lot of junk trees. What they call junk trees. Because the idea here is once upon a time, when everybody got their heat from wood, you had to have fast growing trees. So it's these skinny trees. Yeah. Anyway, so I thought we were sort of on the same page about what we were going down. This is where I'm getting with this. And I had a couple of meetings yesterday and I was hearing the sound pretty close, but it wasn't until I looked outside that I saw, they took everything out.

2 (3m 1s):
The, every living thing out in the, in the front, in front of our house, including the only tree I was really attached to was I have a beautiful lilac tree.

1 (3m 14s):
Okay. Oh shit. And everything out.

2 (3m 21s):
What's that? Why they

1 (3m 22s):
Take everything out? Is that the plant? I think,

2 (3m 25s):
I think what happened was for the first couple of days, the boss was here. And then I think yesterday, the boss was like, you guys just go and finish up. And I don't know that anyway, you know what, I'm just choosing it to be, I'm choosing to look at it like, okay, well we're getting to start over and it can be exactly how we want it to be. So yeah,

1 (3m 45s):
That is a great attitude because there's nothing you can do you really do about it? Absolutely. Zero. You can do about threes coming out.

2 (3m 53s):
The only bummer is that it sounds like buzz saws all day at my house and at my neighbor's house, I'm sure they're annoyed with us too. Well,

1 (4m 2s):
What are you going to put? It is. Okay. So, so, okay. The good, that's the sort of wonky news, but what the good news is, what are you going to put in? Like, is there going to be a whole new,

2 (4m 12s):
I think it's just going to GRA, I mean, I think it's just going to be grass, which is fine. I mean, my thing was actually, it does a little bit of a metaphor because when we first moved here, we loved how quiet and private and everything is. And part of why everything feels very private at our house is there's trees and bushes blocking our view of anything. I mean, all we can see is trees and bushes when we're laying on the front, which for a while seemed cozy. And then it started to seem like annoying that we could never see. And actually there's kind of a really beautiful view of the mountains behind us. So our mountains Hills.

1 (4m 51s):
Yeah. But I mean, small mountains, like small

2 (4m 53s):
Mountains. Yeah. So I realized that it does coincide with our psychological spelunking and trying to just be like more open about everything. Like totally. You know what I mean? Like this is just be open to people seeing our house. This is open to seeing out and let's have, and actually my kids were kind of like, oh, but it's just also open and we don't have any privacy. And I'm like, yeah, well you have your room and bathroom. I mean, there's, there's places to go if you don't want people to, to see you, but let's just be open.

1 (5m 31s):<...