Let’s acknowledge the Big Tech elephant in the room. Midway through the new play Disruption — now playing off-Broadway through Oct. 4 at the Pershing Square Signature Center’s Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre — one of the characters in Andrew Stein’s timely drama casually name-drops Elon… as in Musk. While the Tesla founder isn’t a presence in the show otherwise, his shadow looms large over any piece of fiction that involves Silicon Valley. And invoking his name did inspire an audible reaction from the crowd at a performance that Gold Derby attended.
“It was definitely more about referencing him as a symbol of that world rather than digging into him as a person,” Stein tells Gold Derby during a conversation about Disruption with the play’s director Hersh Ellis and star John David Washington, the Ballers, BlacKkKlansman and Tenet leading man who is returning to the New York stage after making his Broadway debut in a Tony-nominated 2022 production of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, alongside Samuel L. Jackson.
“This play was always about more than one specific person,” the playwright continues, elaborating on why he was careful not to drop too many Big Tech-associated names like Sam, Mark, and Bill into his script. “I was always writing through a human lens, not a technology-centric lens. And I also wanted to the play to stand the test of time since tech is moving so fast. I kept thinking, ‘What will actually still be possible five or 10 years from now?'”
For his part, Washington says that he didn’t model his alter ego after Musk or his ilk. The actor plays Nick, a savvy entrepreneur who has devised an algorithm that purports to offer people a clear path to happiness, starting with his closest friends. But as those pals come to discover, no formula can truly fix what’s broken. “I thought about people that aren’t as famous,” notes the actor, who followed his Oscar-winning father, Denzel Washington, into the Hollywood game after pursuing a football career. “My north stars were people like Stacy Spikes of MoviePass, Paul Judge, and Tristan Walker, figures who are part of what they call the Black Silicon Valley.
“What’s brilliant about the play is that it doesn’t say, ‘Hey, look at this Black guy — we’ve never seen anyone like him make it this far,'” Washington adds. “Nick is just a person. But I’m also thinking that if he’s crossing a line and making history, is the audience going to support him because of that? Or are they going to be asking, ‘What the heck are you doing?’ at the cookout?”
Ellis notes that he encouraged Washington to think beyond tech titans like Musk. “He’s a little incendiary at the moment,” the director says diplomatically, tacitly alluding to Musk’s failed foray into politics and cultural commentary. “In our early conversations, J.D. and I said that we needed to avoid Nick falling into any Elon Musk patterns.”
Despite Musk’s divisive public image, the Disruption creative team indicate that he’d be welcome at a performance during the run of the show if he chooses to attend. “Come one, come all man,” Washington says with a grin. Read on for more of our spirited conversation with the star and his collaborators.
Gold Derby: Andrew, the show was originally staged in London, and Europe has a very different relationship to tech companies than America. Did you notice a difference in the reaction from those audiences?
Andrew Stein: Yes, but that also has a lot to do with how audiences relate to theater in general here in New York. These audiences that are there for the mess and are a lot more vocal. I give J.D. and the cast so much credit for staying focused, because the crowd does talk back. But that’s also what you want in live theater — you want that conversation to show that people are invested.
Hersh Ellis: Someone said something that nearly got one of the actors to break during a scene last night. I can’t remember what they said, but he recovered well.
John David Washington: Yeah, we hear a lot of “Mmm hmms” from the audience. Sometimes it sounds like we’re in church, and other times its sounds like we’re in a gladiator sport. Some nights I can feel them actively judging Nick, which is a good thing. Whenever I take pictures with people after the show, I’ll ask them, “Was this all Nick’s fault?” And last night, for the first time, two women said: “No, it wasn’t his fault, baby.” That was Show 18 and it was the first time I heard that! [Laughs]
Were there any major changes made between the London and New York productions, particular in regards to Nick’s characterization when John David came aboard?
Stein: The play was always set in New York; I think there were a couple of lines that were so specific to the city that we toned them down a little bit over there. Coming back to off-Broadway, when you have people who are this smart and experienced, they teach you a lot about the show. And J.D.’s instincts are razor-sharp; from the beginning, he saw that Nick is only doing this because he cares about his friends, and doesn’t lie to them. That clarity makes the play a much more interesting conversation piece, because the audience can see the good in him. In the London production, Nick’s final monologue was actually written as a little more tongue in cheek. But in this version, J.D. made it more grounded, and the play’s better for it. I would say that was probably the biggest change from London to here.
Washington: That monologue is so stressful, too! There are a healthy amount of words in there. [Laughs] But there was one line in particular that stood out: “Faith has always guided me.” Once I saw that, I was like, “There it is.” That’s when the whole monologue started clicking for me.
There is a moment early on in the play where Nick does something that seems guaranteed to turn the audience again him — he tells his friend that the algorithm has determined he needs to divorce his wife. How did you navigate the weight of that moment?
Washington: That’s a huge moment, because it puts him in competition with his friends and the thing he’s building. He even says the word “legacy,” because that really means something to him. But it’s also a real moment in that friendship that I can relate to personally. I’ve had to tell my own friends things like, “I saw her cheating on your,” at the risk of losing them as friends.
Ellis: The thing that Andrew does so well with the writing of that scene and the structure of the play overall is that the things that Nick asks of his friends get harder. The first is about a marriage that we more or less see is already on the rocks, which makes it a lot easier to look at what the algorithm is saying and think that it makes sense. But it progressively harder from there, and that challenges your faith in the algorithm. Each time, it becomes more and more like jumping off a cliff.
There are some striking moments throughout the show that involve a kind of impressionistic choreography. What was the thinking behind the staging of those moments and what were they like to perform?
Ellis: The play moves so quickly from place to place to place that to stop in between any of those scenes would ask the audience and the actors to invest in one scene only to fully reset into the next space, and that would be doing it a disservice. So we had to create a style where it could always keep moving; I’ve got to give a huge shout-out to our movement coordinator, Ryan Vandenboom, who took a thankless job and made it work. And the cast have been such good sports about it; no performer is ever like, “I wanted to be an actor so I could wheel a table around a stage!” [Laughs]
Washington: The movement keeps the play active, and with the way the stage is set up, it feels more immersive and alive. I love that we’re all ready to go instead of having to go back and reset. It’s a huge advantage for the momentum of the dramatic stakes.
Ellis: It’s a New York play, so it’s got to move with New York energy.
The central question of the play is whether an algorithm can engineer happiness. Obviously, you want the audience to answer that for themselves, but do you personally think it’s possible? Or are humans simply too unpredictable in our behaviors and choices?
Ellis: I will say that the play deals with success, power, and wealth and there’s a reason why we gravitate to those kinds of stories. I think about The White Lotus and Succession, for example. When people have the stuff they need, why are they still unhappy? Ultimately, Disruption is a play about happiness as you age amongst the people you grew up with. Asking technology to define happiness isn’t possible, not necessarily because of the limitations of technology, but because of the limitations of what happiness is.
Washington: I remember somebody saying that technology is at its peak power when it goes from being a convenience to being a necessity. The reliance we have on it can become dangerous when you’re saying things like, “Oh, I’ve gotta check Instagram right now!” But that’s also when you know that technology is truly working, when you can see a significant impact on human nature itself.
Stein: We’re still in the early days of what all of this technology will amount to, and I think it’s really important that we retain a certain amount of agency. At the same time, there are so many unbelievable tools available right now. The access to information and leveling of an often un-level playing field could be a real power for good. But we always have to stay in front of it.
John David, since you’ve worked with Christopher Nolan and The Odyssey is in theaters right now, I had to ask if you’ve taken your co-stars on a field trip to see it.
Washington: I think they’ve all seen it individually, but we haven’t gone as a cast. I’m glad that everyone is talking about Christopher Nolan right now. What he delivers on every film is consistency and a reason to go to movie theaters. His casting is inclusive and he plays by his own rules. It’s phenomenal what he and Emma Thomas [Nolan’s wife and producer] have achieved.
