Stage Apart: Stranger Things – The First Shadow with Kate Trefry

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Welcome back to a very special episode of this podcast typically about the first draft secrets of great movies and TV shows. My name is Al Horner and this week we're doing things a bit differently. We're broadcasting from the upside down. Yes, grab your egos for a very special spoiler free conversation. All about Stranger Things, the first shadow, the first theatre production that we've covered here on Script Apart. I went to see it a couple of weeks ago in London's West End and honestly, this show accomplishes things I did not know were possible in a play. As a spectacle, the first shadow is breathtaking in the way that it conjures all manner of demagoguing related chaos live in front of your very eyes. Also staggering is what the show achieves as a piece of storytelling, which is why this week I'm delighted to be joined by the wonderful Kate Trey Fry. Staff writer on Stranger Things since the very early days of the show and writer of the first shadow. Working from a story created with Jack Thorn and the Duffer Brothers, Kate penned the first shadow as a prequel pulling the curtain back on how and why the upside down came to Hawkins Indiana in the first place. Set in 1959, it introduces us to younger versions of fan favourite characters like Hopper, Joyce and Bob Newby as a mystery unfolds in their hometown. The Loved Household Pets are turning up not just dead but grotesquely disfigured. This spate of killing coincides not just with the production of a play at Hawkins High School that Joyce is directing, but also with the arrival of New Kid Henry Creel. A kid that those up to date with the latest season of Stranger Things will know has a dark future he's about to inherit. Stranger Things is one of the biggest TV shows of the last decade by pretty much any metric. And in the conversation you're about to hear, Kate and I talk about why that is. We get into how the tale of Eleven, Hopper and Co has become almost a new American myth and discuss what the Steven Doltry directed first shadow does to extend and complicate that myth. Without giving anything away, we discuss how the first shadow ties the horrors of the upside down to 1950s racism and America's involvement in World War II. Listen out also for a brief tease at what season 5 of Stranger Things has in store as the show approaches its final ever episodes and for some moving conversation about Kate's experience with neurodivergence and how she's channeled her experience of obsessive compulsive disorder into the show. This was a wonderful conversation to be a part of. Thank you to Kate for being a fantastic guest and thank you as ever to our Patreon supporters for helping make this show possible. If you like what we do on script-a-part and you want us to continue putting episodes into your feed, the best way to get behind us is by joining our Patreon community over at patreon.com/script-a-part. In return, you'll get ad free episodes, early access to episodes and all sorts of other great perks, all for the price of a single monthly cup of coffee. If you'd like to get involved, that address one more time is patreon.com/script-a-part. Okay, with no further delays, let's get into it. This is the fantastic Kate Treyfrey discussing the first draft secrets of Stranger Things, the first shadow. Thanks so much for tuning in everyone, you're listening to script-a-parts hosted by me, Alhorna, and produced by Kim and Demet. Okay, so before we begin properly here, Kate, I just want to run something by you real quick. Stranger thinks the first shadow features a character who hosts his own radio show from his bedroom, Bob Newby. And Bob has all these kind of crazy sound effects and tin whistle noises and strange echoes and things like that that really liven up his show. Is that something you think I should be incorporating on script-a-part? Like, what do you reckon? Would this show benefit from me peppering in some awoga-type noises? I mean, if you're asking the question, you already know the answer. I can't wait to hear this episode and have it be like every five minutes be like boring-owing. I think it's going to elevate the show on an exciting experiment. Kate, it is such a pleasure to have you with us today. Huge congratulations on Stranger Things, the first shadow, which had an absolute blast seeing last week. How have the last few months been since it hit the stage here in London? Have you been keeping pace with people's reactions to it? Or have you almost been too busy as I know Stranger Things final season is shooting at the minute? And maybe you still have commitments to the TV show? I kind of like cut myself off from all of it pretty soon after opening night. Because I have this policy basically, which is it's too late. It's too late to fix anything. So the reviews are really limited in how much they're going to help you. I saw it a few times after opening, but I had seen it so many times by the time. We had six months of workshops and rehearsals and then we had like two full months of previews. So I saw I saw a lot and by the time I saw it for the last time I needed like to take a break so that I could start over again for New York, which is like what we're doing now. That's exciting. And I'm going to Atlanta next week actually to be on set for a little bit. But I'm kind of like just taking a little bit of break in general. I'm trying to not overstranger things myself because the show is ending. This last season is going to this fifth season is going to be the last one. And so I'm trying to remember what else I like to do and write besides the show. Yeah, because it has been a very long road for you with the show. You came on board, what in the second season was it? Yeah, it was the very beginning of the second season right before the first season had premiered. So yeah, I've been on for like seven years or something. And you're one of the rare people involved. You can now say you've worked on this story, the stranger thing story across mediums. The play, as I say, it kind of blew me away from a narrative perspective as we'll get into across this episode, but also from a practical standpoint. Like people are amazed by like the visual elements of this show and some of the kind of visual spectacle. When you're writing Kate for a play that's going to break new ground in well in the way it breaks bones and creates these different spectacles of the upside down. Are you giving thought to the practical limitations of the form or in the case of the first shadow. Did you just let your imagination run free the way that you would do when writing an episode of the TV show trusting that there were going to be theatre effects wizards who would find a way to actualize. is what you might typically turn to CGI to do on the show. - Yeah, I, because I've not written for the stage before, I have no context for what the limitations even are. So I had no choice but to write it kind of in the only way that I know how to write, which is for film and TV. And it was, and I was given free reign to do that with no expectations that anything that I came up with was going to be practical in any way, deliverable, maybe feasible, possible. But it was really, it was really interesting when I was able to articulate really clearly what this shot would be in my mind. It became really easy for that to be translated as long as I could tell them exactly or show them a version of exactly what I wanted to do. Exactly the feeling that I was going, or being like, oh, if I could do it, like the way that I'm seeing it, it's a montage or it's a close-up or it's a jump cut or whatever it is. And so, yeah, from there, I was just like hugely supported by every department to like translate it basically into a stage play. And that was, we worked from there. And then as I, as we worked together, I started to understand the physical limitations, the like knock on effect that it has whenever you try to change something or, you know, the weird limitations and opportunities of being like, well, we have to have a scene here that is this size so that we can set the cat lock up behind it. That it needs to be like two minutes long. And you're like, what are you talking about? But I started to understand like what we need and where we need it and how we need to do it. And it was really fun. I mean, it was really collaborative. It was very challenging, but it was really a lot of fun. And before we delve into the play itself, Kate, let me zoom out for a second. Like as we talked about, you've been working on stranger things since almost the very beginning, collaborating with the Duffer Brothers. You've been part of that story as it's become arguably the biggest show in the world or at least one of them. What do you think it is about stranger things as like a piece of American myth-making almost that has caught people's attention and people's imaginations the way it has? Like after the first season, I think a lot of its success was kind of being credited to the nostalgia hit of like the 80s setting, but I don't think a show gets as popular as stranger things for as long as stranger things has been popular without tapping into something deeper. So yeah, what's your take on it, Kate, if you got a read on that? I mean, I've thought about it for sure. We don't talk about it very much in the room because we try to, I mean, this is where my not reading reviews comes from. It's like we try to create like a really insulated space where there's not a lot of like outside chatter that's shaping the narrative because I think that's really dangerous. But you know, there have been a lot of shows before, and since that have tried to capitalize on nostalgia core trend with varying success, and I think that it's red herring to think that the success of stranger things has really anything to deal with the aesthetic nostalgia. I mean, I think it's a part of it, but I don't think that that's, like you, I don't think that that can sustain, you know, a show that size. I mean, I can only really speak to what hooked me about it, which is just the mix of like very classic storytelling with very left field, but like still accessible sci-fi. It's my favorite version, that like eternal sunshine of a spot was mind level of like science fiction that is grounded, but very weird and unexpected. I think the developers, I have to give credit to for their ability to constantly be digging deeper, looking for the idea that you don't see coming, you know? And I think that that's very satisfying, and then I think probably beyond that, and probably more than that is that it is like the coming of age. It is stand by me. It is goonies, it is that like level of classic, like action adventure with heart. It's like, it's a very character driven shell, you know, and it's like it is old school storytelling. - And speaking of ideas that you don't see coming, I think a lot of people were surprised to hear stranger things was coming to the stage. From the sounds of things, you were amongst those people. In fact, you've described thinking it was kind of a stupid idea when it was first presented to you. - Yeah. - But why was that case, and how did you come around to the idea? When was it that it clicked into place for you, the amazing potential of bringing stranger things to the stage? - Well, as a totally, you know, uninitiated to the theater person, whenever somebody asked me about, whenever somebody talked about it, I had the same reaction everybody else's, which is like, is it a musical? Which is like, then it's just parody, then you're just in, I mean, as far as I can tell, somebody could do it, right, but not me. It was inconceivable. What it was hearing the, so brothers and Jack Thorne broke like the overarching like bones of it being about, being set in the 1950s in Hawkins when Henry Creole like first arrives and him having this kind of romance with a new character, Bob, newbie's little sister. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. Like, I know exactly what that is and that's awesome. And like, I do like young Henry Creole, like coming into his power and his darkness and the effect that his kind of like negative energy has on the town and, you know, all of that, I was like, this is easily an amazing story. I would love to do it. - It's worth saying at this point that there are a lot of theater productions here in London that straight up just recreate beloved films or, well, I don't think there's any that recreate TV shows, but there could be, you know, there's a back to the future play that is just the first back to the future on stage. There's a Groundhog Day musical. The Duffer Brothers and Jack Thorne, they could have done that. But instead, like, you know, a decision was obviously made to expand the story with this play rather than just port the first season of the show to the stage. Why do you think that was, Kate? Why was that more interesting than, yeah, just giving people a stage version of what they'd seen before? - Yeah, I mean, I don't think that the Duffers would have been interested in it if it was just a retelling, you know? And Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, were also part of those really early discussions, those early medians. I mean, it was Stephen Daldry's brainchild from the beginning. It was his, you know, mad, completely warped mind that came up with the idea in the first place. And I, yeah, nobody in none of these creators were interested in retelling a story that's already been told, which I would not have wanted to do either. There's already a bar that is very high and difficult to hit with the show itself. I think if you were trying to redo the show on stage, you would just constantly be trying to measure up to something that is inherently not for the stage, you know? You had to make something that would it work better for the stage than it would on TV instead of just being, I mean, not to cast shade on, you know, any of these, you know, other productions. I saw like a million years ago. I saw the stage musical of American Psycho and I was like, this great, I loved it. So yeah, I think it can work, but that was never there. That wasn't really even on the table at any point. - Well, the story we end up with instead, it kind of fits into this fascinating lineage of prequel stories that show the metamorphosis of child intervillain. So there's something about taking a character who, as an audience, we know is gonna go on and commit the most terrible of atrocities and, you know, seeing their descent into monstrosity from a starting point of innocence, that's kind of irresistible to audiences. Like, you know, the Star Wars prequels did it, the, you know, recently in cinemas, we had the Hunger Games prequel, which did that exact same thing. What do you think it is about that format of prequel, Kate? Like, what does that type of story force audiences to sit with as the story unfolds? Because, you know, I ask because I'm aware that when I was watching the first shadow, there were times when Henry Creel, who I know is gonna become Vecna, there are times where I'm finding him sweet and funny and I noticed like a fascinating tension emerge from that where you kind of catch yourself laughing and then remember, oh yeah, this kid's gonna do terrible, terrible things. - Yeah, I think that that tension is irresistible. I think that there's so much fun to be had in the challenge of having that inevitability, especially with, you know, the character of Vecna was conceived to be a kind of Michael Myers type of unknowable evil, pure sociopath. We had a lot of discussion. in the room during season four of who was he was he bad was he made bad you know is he a bad is he like a Damien from the home in like bad seed or is he you know did was he corrupted like Darth Vader or you know like nature versus nurture and fate versus free will you know we have all of these discussions and we kind of like dodged it you know but he definitely leans towards this kind of like epic evil and so it was such a fun challenge to be working backwards from that to try to introduce you to some of the you'll fall in love with and that you'll root for in this romance because if you don't love Henry you can't watch patty love Henry and then you don't have a show so when we were casting especially it was like really it was really difficult we saw like hundreds of kids because it's not it's not impossible to play the darkness but it's almost impossible to play both that awkward sweet kind of charismatic boy and this like really intense threat that is like starting to come in and overtake and start to have all of that weird you know what's the word I'm looking for kind of like he's kind of teetering on the edge of it I suppose well he when he goes dark you know it's like this you want to recognize the seeds of what was in there already and then you see a kind of flower into this misanthropic Meglomaniac you know like and and you see him being manipulated in these different ways but to me like I and I've so this before but I'm I was a terrible teenager I was a kind of teenager that people like really worried about and I think that it was and this is one of the reason I love training things is like it was the strength of the people that I connected to at that time that made me break one way instead of the other way and I think that the fragility of that moment in the way that you know young people are handled and or not handled in that moment of like true fluidity and maliability and is really important and misunderstood and so I that's what I wanted to talk about is like he didn't you know you can do bad things and not be a bad person you can be forgiven you know and so I thought that was all really interesting to me I'm not sure about the chronology of what you wrote when but a few years ago Kate you made a great short film called how to be alone oh thank you it's on my homework it's about a young woman who when left alone kind of really tries to suppress this darkness in her that's threatening to kind of erupt and and manifest in real life there are all these rituals that she has to try and kind of enforce upon herself a sense of I'm normal I'm doing normal things everything's okay but of course in the end it's not possible and I'm curious whether that short which I encourage everyone listening to go and watch by the way was that a useful apprenticeship for writing Henry Creole in the first shadow because when we meet him in this play he's kind of in a similar place yeah well it's very sharp very sharp of you I've got a makeup for not having those crazy sound effects somehow yes okay so everything that I so I have like really pretty like heavy duty obsessive compulsive disorder and everything that I write is let in some way colored by that and I was really able to connect to the story of Henry Creole by tapping into this you know I think not to make this about OCD because it's not but it's really a misunderstood disorder because it's at least in my case it's it's mostly manifests in intrusive thoughts and the compulsions come from a place of trying to control and eliminate intrusive thoughts that are so disturbing that they rattle your core identity because you can't figure out if you're thinking things because you're the kind of person that wants to do those things or likes those things or and so it makes you it's really destabilizing and so that to me was a real like a clear access point emotionally to get into what it might feel like to be Henry Creole and the story of it to me is about that and it is obviously isn't how to be alone of trying to find a way to cohabitate with the monsters that reside within because you can't get rid of them they're not they're part of you and so it's finding the finding the space I guess and the and creating the correct power dynamic of who's in charge but yeah no absolutely it's all part of my the same my same like super story and does storytelling help with that battle Kate with with your obsessive compulsive disorder like it is is writing an act that soothes it in any way do you think oh my god absolutely well it's all a mess like it's all like a fucking gumbo of being like you know I am I where I do work obsessively and I love one of one of the like the joys that we're going to play was my schedule was like 15 hours a day six days a week and I just literally didn't have OCD because there was no time because if I wasn't working I was asleep or like trying to get my kids dressed to go to school it's frustrating to feel I don't like to give any credit to the disorder but I can't be denied that like I I am like a perfectionist I do get really fixated to my own detriment but yeah it's all the way that I like have always been able to to cope the first time I ever figured out how to cope was to give my OCD like a character name and look and setting and like a whole different story to create like try to find some distance between myself and the terrible thing and make it not a monster but just like she's a confused librarian whose name is Wanda who's just like doesn't she's like in charge of running the brain but doesn't know how to do it because she's from the 50s so she's trying to do like the Dewey Decimal System but she's in front of like a super computer and that's like when I have like really bad OCD thoughts I just think of her like trying to put it on a slide show of like horrifying imagery and being like what is this I don't know why this keeps playing um so that's just way too much about me well it all does seem so pertinent to the play Kate because you know there's a particular scene in the first shadow in a church between Henry and this new character who we'll talk about called patty what you just articulated about intrusive thoughts and the way they can kind of make you think that you're a monster that's something that Henry says to patty almost verbatim in that scene all of which to say I can definitely see the echo between what you've just described and what you've put into the work what you've imprinted onto characters in this play yeah well I think like ultimately it's um it all works the same way like there's a reason in the archaeology of you know Beckman that you know that all has like some of my DNA in it so it's always there for a reason but um you know the disorder like uh blossoms uh with fear and the more you're afraid of something the stronger it gets um and it sounds like it sounds like fantasy logic but it's it's actual like physiological reactions where you get scared and your brain understands that and reacts and it's just like this looping thing and so it's like all about trying a short circuit that like the loop of that um and that's like you know what I feel like Henry is uh in the midst of this thing that is trying to consume him it's trying to co-opt his the scaffolding of his mind and his you know like wonderfully creative um brain is being hijacked by this dark darkness and it's only able to be so elaborate and so effective and so dangerous because um he's a such a special person beside aside from the darkness you know and it's like that like the tenderness of that like coin flip you know of being like he's he's really vulnerable because he's he's a very interesting like special person and so he's the perfect um he's the perfect host there are lots of other um great characters who we've met in the tv show before beyond Henry who we meet again here there's there's a lot of young versions of characters who who we know and love how did you approach the kind of echoes of their future selves that these characters would contain as teenagers Kate and um also i suppose the ways in which there'd be a little bit different from the characters that we know because for example the hopper that we meet in the first shadow. He has kind of a little bit more knuckle-headed confidence to him because, you know, when we meet him in season one of the show, he's experiencing grief, like he's carrying the loss of a child, and that's something that's weighing down heavily on him. He hasn't yet had that experience, of course, when we meet him in this prequel, so there's a slight different characterization. Yeah, I was so excited. It was one of the things I was so excited to do with this play is try to use the events, like the big central traumatic event of the play, to show how it completely altered the course of these, you know, periphery characters' lives, and to show how their reaction to it mirrors who we know them to become. So hopper is one person as a young guy who is kind of what I would imagine him to be before he's been, you know, ground up by the meat grinder of the world. And he is, he's super arrogant, but he's very confident, he's very, you know, scared, you know, as all very confident men are. And he has this terrible, you know, he's part of this terrible thing that happens, and that you can see in his reaction to that, the kinds of character flaws that that you recognize from the future. He goes to a place of guilt, he goes to this like, you know, desperate quest for redemption, which I think is something that defines him as a character in the show, is that he's constantly in search of atonement and forgiveness, and you can see all of that start to play out within his arc in the play. And I wanted to do, so it was, it was really fun, because it's like, I don't know, it's like, I've never done anything like it before, it's very backwards, you know, but it was so, it was so fun to like reverse engineer who he is to who he was, and how this thing that we see happen is the beginning of that, you know, like I wanted it, it was the same thing with Vecna, I try to do with everybody, which is say like, you know, this isn't just a villain origin story, this is the origin story of all of these characters, and this event was the defining event of their youth, and you know, is the reason that they are the way they are. I'm so glad that you used the phrase, I'm going to have paraphrase you here, Kate, but you mentioned wanting to mirror the show in the first shadow, and the play is doing some fascinating things in that regard, the kind of depiction of teenage joy, teenage hopper, and so on, we're meeting these guys at the same age, they're about that we meet Mike and Steve and the kids in the TV show, there is also a symmetry between the kind of structure of the play and the structure of the show, it seems like each season of Stranger Things seems to take our characters, you give them a kind of Scooby-Doo mystery to solve, and then you split them up, and you know, by dividing them into different parties, they kind of each kind of spark against each other in different ways, they find separate pieces of the puzzle, then they come back together, and that's kind of intact here, did you kind of, I'm guessing you did that very much purposefully, wanted to insert a symmetry? Yes, I have been working on this show for so long, I need to do other things because I don't even remember what it is to do a structure different than what we always do on the show, which is exactly what you said, and you know, in addition to that, we have, we usually do this time compression thing where the first few episodes take place over the course of a few weeks, and then as you get closer to the end, the time starts to collapse until you're basically in real time, by the end, and you're intercutting all of these scenes that are happening in real time, and that's very much the DNA of the show, and I don't think that you could do, you know, a stage show that felt like the show without, you know, paying respect to the structure that, you know, that they've established in seasons one through four, so it was, it was a choice, and it was also like, I don't know, it's just who I am at this point, and in terms of the mythology of the show, we start to get a real sense in the first shadow of how the bleed between the upside down and our world began, like, you know, in fact, the play kind of roots it in an American trauma, the horror is experienced by US soldiers in World War II, was there anything you were hoping to express with that cake? Like, what is the upside-down a metaphor for in your eyes? I suppose there's a better way of asking it, and how does the first shadow sort of double down on that metaphor? Ooh, this is a little tricky territory, because we deal a lot in season five with upside down, what it actually is, the origin of it, you know, I think that as much as I wanted to have an origin story of all these characters, I really wanted to, we kind of endeavor to talk about Hawkins as a place, which is the Samarits as a place, and why Hawkins, like if, you know, why is this town being punished, basically? And so I, you know, we did a lot of work kind of trying to dig into what the original set of this place might be in old school horror movie terms, that it is then kind of the trauma of these, these initial events is kind of echoing out from, but in terms of, in terms of the upside down and what all is going on there, I feel like I can't get too much into because I literally don't know how to talk about it without being like this is season five, here to here's one, let me start from the tab. Yeah, I don't want you to have any, you know, I don't want you to get off this call and have Matt and Ross calling you saying, you're in trouble. Yeah, I live in fear of it. Well, one thing I think is really interesting though about the first shadow, you know, speaking of Hawkins in its depiction here is, of course, the story is set in ninth, I think in the 1950s, I forget if there's a particular date, or no, is it 1961? Is that the date? No, it starts in 1959. That's right. Yeah. The approach to race within that setting is really interesting. We spoke at the top of this about how Stranger Things is a TV show that when it first came out was, you know, described as so nostalgic because of its period backdrop, but the the thing about nostalgia is one person's the good old days, those supposed good old days, they often had there was nothing good about them if you were a person from a marginalized community in that time, like the 1950s are often depicted in our pop culture as this kind of gleaming time of Coke bottles and diner shakes and rock and roll on the radio. But in the first shadow, you kind of dare to complicate that idea. We have this this new character called patty newbie who is mixed race, and she faces horrible racism in this story. She has this nickname mystery meat. That's the what the kids at school call her. Why was that something important to acknowledge that the kind of racism that did exist in that time that isn't often reflected in our depictions of the 50s today? And why was that background for patty, something that allowed that character to forge a very special connection with Henry Creel? In the same way that you were talking, you know, before about the trauma of World War II, like we wanted to treat the 50s in especially 59, which was such a transitional high tension, weird arrows, you know, not just all this fallout from World War II, it was kind of the birth of the teenager and the fear of the teenager, which is something that, you know, I am really hooked on this idea that this kind of reefer madness paranoia about these young people having too much agency, too much control, that there's, you know, that they're depraved in some way. And yeah, and we wanted to, you know, kind of take the take the metaphor of Henry and his darkness and his identity crisis to its logical conclusion and working backwards from that, trying to, you know, find a way to talk like honestly about this time period and American history without making a show that is about that because we don't have the luxury of being able to do justice to that story. So it's been like a real tightrope block to say we want to acknowledge this and we want to, um, try to be honest about it, but we can't. It's just a different show. It would just be a different show. But I think that, you know, Patty's inherent, like inherited trauma and her relationship to herself and who she is and how much control she has over that and how she's perceived by other people is in such dialogue with Henry and his struggle to figure out who he is. And so it seems like, we talked a lot about Injusted Martin, who's one of the directors is a doctor and we talked a lot about a dot like, you know, the tribulations and joys of being an adopted person and having this question of where you came from and how much that matters. And so we wanted to find a lot of like harmony between the two of them and, you know, having this essential mystery at the center of who their identity is and those two having very different ideas of how important that is and how dangerous it is to try to find the answer to something like that. I can imagine it was it was fascinating doing the research into the era that kind of informed a lot of those conversations. More broadly, I am very curious about the research that ended up kind of informing the story because, well, I've got to tell you, Kate, I got into the theatre and I sent my dad a little picture just to say I'm seeing the stranger thing show tonight. And when you go into the theatre, there are three words up on the stage and those three words are the Philadelphia experiment. And I was speaking to my dad the next day on the phone and he was like, yeah, the Philadelphia experiment, that's interesting because that was real. And I was like, wait, what? You explain for listeners who don't know what the Philadelphia experiment was and how that came to play a part in this? Yeah, we had so much fun and like just like tag if anybody is interesting, interested about the like patty newbie story that there was a moment in American history post-World War II that was like that is known as the baby scoop era because there were so many unwed women having children because their husbands were lost in the war and you know, whatever. So there was like this this like insane influx of completely illegal adoptions that were just basically like kidnapping. And that it was really fascinating because of its ties to World War II and race and all of these, you know, they all it all kind of comes together like in this very like dark moment in American history. Okay, so I just had to say that because that was really interesting to me and I spent a lot of time watching documentaries and reading books about that. Okay, so Philadelphia experiment is crazy. It's not real. It's not real, but it is awesome. It's an awesome conspiracy theory that has like in the most insane Wikipedia page you've ever seen. It really does. It really does. And you can like go deep, deep, deep, deep down that rabbit hole as I did. But the basic idea was that the American military was trying to perfect some invisibility cloaking method for their ships to protect them from German new boats during World War II. And in the process of experimenting on this ship in Philadelphia, they made the ship disappear because not because it turned invisible because it was gone. It traveled inter-dimensionally from one place to another. I think they said it went to Virginia for like a couple seconds and then came back. And in the legend, the conspiracy is that like, well, all of that is also obviously, but it had this like horrifying effect on the crew of the ship where it was like people were, you know, lost in the mix. I always think of like Charlie and the Chocobacteri when they're trying to do the like Mike TV thing of like they break up your atoms and then you get put back together again. But maybe you that put back together inside out or like, you know, your atoms have mixed with the atoms of the ships a year or like half stuck in the ship or whatever, you know, like whatever amazing horrifying stuff you can think of. And then the whole thing was like covered up. And this guy, the guy who started it like sent the CIA or something like his account, like his unauthorized like whistleblower like account of this happening, which has since been like pretty thoroughly debunked. But it's a great story. And so we kind of blew that that like myth from there into this idea of if it did travel interdimensionally, like what if it got stuck somewhere else somewhere that's not a United States that's not Virginia that's like somewhere else really out there. And that's where it got trapped. So for however momentarily. So that was like kind of you know, where we started with that. And it was such a fun. I don't know, just we come in, we came up with that idea really early, like really, really early. That scene, that opening scene of the play with the ship is like almost identical to the first draft of the play, which is psychotic because the first draft of the play is different in almost every single other way. It was we cut a hundred pages from the first draft like every single thing has changed except for that opening scene. Well, I was going to ask because you said you wrote hundreds of drafts of this. So take me back to that first draft, Kate, how different was it and was it the same kind of bones of the story or were there kind of different different plot, different scenes taught me through it? Like the themes were all there. I mean, first of all, it was terrible and I just want to say that for the record. It was absolutely terrible. The themes were all there, the characters were all there. You know, it was the first draft. It was like there was there were things missing that were in it like there was there was more B story with Bob and Hopper and Joyce doing mystery stuff because that's so fun to me. So there was like a huge like subplot of their investigation that took them to like the quarry and like and like Hopper falls into the water. I mean, it was like the most the most expensive thing you can possibly imagine. You're saying that now. I mean, this is not a production that pitches pennies. I know. I know. This is the cheaper version of what they were dry. I didn't know like I truly paid no attention to the form. So I was like, oh, they're driving around in a car and you know, we're like intercutting between this and that. There was an exorcism in the first draft. Patty's dad was a priest and their and Victor Creel wanted the priest to come like perform an exorcism in his house. So it was like there was, you know, the kind of general things were still there, but it was very like I would call it overwrought. Sorry, overwrought. Was there much in that first draft from your own experience of high school in was it was anchorage Alaska that you went to high school? Yeah. Was there anything from your experience of high school there that you found kind of coming to the surface as you wrote those scenes? You spoke earlier about how you had like a difficult sort of adolescence perhaps or I think the word you used was was monstrous, which can't be true. Orifying, yeah. Talked me through what from your own experience was kind of filtering into to the story of that stage. Yeah, well, I mean, I feel and you know, we kind of touched on this earlier, but like I was a really spooky looking and behaving teenager. And I think my bark was a lot worse than my bite ultimately, but something that I feel like in retrospect, I recognize is I was handled with a lot of fear. People were really afraid of me. People didn't want me hanging out with their kids. I got in trouble at school a lot because I had a shaved head and I, you know, like, I don't know, didn't I tried really hard to be scary, I guess, and it worked. And I think when people treat you with fear, you start to fear yourself. I think that especially at that age when you don't really understand your identity. So, you know, and I was a total outsider. No, it's hard to believe with my description, but I didn't have a ton of friends. But the people that I did bond with wouldn't like save my life, you know, like really the people who weren't scared of me had a huge impact on me and how I viewed myself and the person that I was able to become. My best friend in high school is my best friend to this day, and we were terror, the two of us, but really showed up for each other. And I think ultimately that is the show. Is people showing up for each other? Kids showing up for each other. And not asking the same questions that terrified adults might ask. And being compassionate and interested in not patronizing and not a handling of kids' gloves kind of way. So that was a lot of-- that was all where a lot of it came from for me. You've described crying when you finished the play, Kate. And it's easy to imagine maybe why if you worked on this thing for two years. And it was ultimately a story of, again, without spoiling anything. Because it's the story of stranger things at large, like the TV show and the play. Missfits and people who don't necessarily fit in kind of being saved by other missfits and a bond for being forged there that kind of-- yeah, brings them some sense of community and kinship. Do you think like the eruption of emotion that came when you finished the play was rooted in that? Was rooted in your pride to kind of be able to represent that a little bit if you're childhood? I mean, I think it also had to do so much with in this something we haven't really touched on. But it was a huge part of this experience was the community that I've discovered in working on this of complete freaks. All the department heads are freaks, like me. But like, obviously, more talented and more accomplished. But they are the same kind of freaks. And this is such a cliche theater discovery to make. But it was wild to me, to be around. I've been in trying to work in this time for a really long time. I've never had the experience of being in the room with so many people who are so single-minded. Some would say obsessive. Many undiagnosed obsessives working together with this singular vision. And it was, yeah, I mean, it was, I don't know, it was like a support system that I've never seen before. And I do, I do miss it. But yeah, I mean, I think I'm finishing the play, which is not luckily, I guess, not really finished. Because we still have lots to do for New York and beyond. So, I'm really glad that, I don't know, that there's still more story to tell, because I don't think I'm, I don't know, fall ever be done with it. But I do feel like this was an experience unique to play writing, which is just, you can literally just do it forever. Like, I worked on for so long, and it felt like I could just keep doing it. I could just keep messing with it and making it better, but maybe a little bit worse, but then maybe better again, for like the rest of my stupid life. - Does your ongoing involvement in it, then, soften, you know, the kind of pain, I suppose, to be leaving this show? Because, you know, as you mentioned, it's coming to an end, the final episodes are being filmed at the minute. It's a story that's clearly meant a lot to you to be involved in and to have a hand in telling. Is it helping? Is your involvement in the first shadow helping with that? - No, totally. It's like totally my training wills to come away with, but it's good. I mean, I'm really happy that the show is gonna go out with a bang. And I think the season is gonna, you know, when it comes out in 20 years, it's going to blow people's minds. But I'm excited for the next thing. I'm excited to do my own thing. I have a lot of really weird personal stories to tell that don't fit into the stranger, you know, cake mold, I guess. Which is saying something, 'cause it's a pretty weird shape. But there's more. There's more all over. So yeah, I'm excited. I am excited to do my, I have a lot of stories to tell still that are not, you know, we can leave Hawkins. We've been in Hawkins for a while, we can graduate. - When you say it's gonna go out with a bang, there are countless listeners now, like shouting at their mobile phones or whatever it is they're listening to this ongoing. I bang, what do you mean by that? Like what's in store? People are so on tenter hooks wanting to know how this story comes to a conclusion. Is there anything that you can tease at all, like thematically about where these last episodes go that perhaps we haven't been before in Hawkins? - Oh my God. The end is so, talk about crying at the end of something. We finished this show and it was Niagara Falls. It's so, it has such a beautiful melancholy, classic spielberg, you know, that like sweet loss of innocence, but like, you know, bolstered by the community forge. I mean, it's like the like the sorrow of an adventure ending all of that. And then it, yeah, it goes out with a literal bang. There are literal bangs and figurative bangs. That sounds gross now that I say it like that, but I'll just leave it there and you can go crazy. - Let me come back to something you said a moment ago about like what comes next for you, Kate, like outside of the Stranger Things cake mold. I remember hearing a story once about you being age 10 and being in Italy. And I think you were in a chapel and you were surrounded by all these great works of art. And the notion of legacy hit you. You've described kind of like suddenly being aware that you know, art is a vessel to leave a mark on the world and leave a little imprint of who you were. And I'm wondering like when we, when you look forward to what comes next and some of these even weirder stories that are to come that hopefully you're directing as well as writing, like how does that idea of legacy come into play? Like what sort of stories do you want to tell in terms of like the message that they'll carry? - Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I have become in my time less fixated on legacy and more fixated on like very personal connection. Things that connect very personally, it's really important to me. I think there's a lot of stories that are completely untold. You know, like I have, how to be alone, I directed when I was pregnant, I was like five months pregnant. It's about pregnancy and anxiety as much as it's about anything else. I think that there's a lot of story there in the, especially in the like postpartum world that is just, there's just this blank space that I as a writer and as someone who's had two kids could not believe the lack of available stories about this universally completely destructive like psychotic meltdown of a moment in human life that is just like uninvestigated. I have a whole horror movie about it that I have already written. But yeah, I think that there's, you know, I ultimately, like, you know, connected with other people about, you know, like that, those kind of like really and very sci-fi and very gruesome struggles. But like, you know, I want to make stuff that, you know, my dream for this horror movie is that it is something that moms will go see with their teenage sons and no one will know who loved it more because it's so fun and so gross but so honest to the experience. I want to, I don't know, I want to like, I have really specific like boxes I want to check, really specific like letters that I want to send out into the universe about death, about birth. You know, just, you know, like everybody else. - Well, please do make those projects and please come back on the show to talk about them. When you do, Kate, I'm going to have some Bob Newby style sound effects for the occasion. - Please, for me, just for me, just slide one into this episode. Just like, you don't have to address it, like some people here, some people want, but just like put a little, a little, a little, a chow. - Oh, my producer is probably already sort of preparing some all-year kind of noises. - Yeah, he's ahead of the game. - My favorite is that Boeing noise, that's like, this is, you can cut this 'cause we're at the end now, but we, like, not gonna always make fun of this. like, boner. It's like a boner sound. It's like, "Wang wang wang wang wang wang wang wang wang wang wang wang wang wang wang wang." So that's my vote. Please put a boner. That is the quickest, um, segue, I think, in podcast history, from the horror of birth to the hilarity of boner noises. So this day's end-kate. This is in. This is how we got into that mess in the first place. One moment, you're laughing at a boner. The next moment, you're in a full post-partum spiral. The straight line. It's a straight line for me to be. Well on that note, Kate, thank you so much for coming on script-a-part. This has been a total delight. Oh my god, thank you so much for having me. It's so fun to talk to people who are interested in the other side of the ship, magic. You've been listening to script-a-part. Thank you so much for tuning in. A reminder that if you want to help the show continue to grow, you can join us on Patreon by visiting patreon.com/script-a-part or clicking the link in today's show notes. Thanks again for joining us. 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