We leave the normal realm of human error and enter the territory of huge breakdowns. Prologue: Jack Hitt tells the story of a small-town production of Peter Pan in which all the usual boundaries between the audience and actors dissolve entirely. (6 minutes) Act One: Jack Hitt's Peter Pan story continues. (18 minutes) Act Two: The first day on the job inevitably means mistakes, mishaps, and sometimes, fiascos. A true story, told by a former rookie cop. (13 minutes) Act Three: Comedian Mike Birbiglia talks about the time he ruined a cancer charity event by giving the worst performance of his life. Here's a hint: He improvised. About cancer. (10 minutes) Act Four: Journalist Margy Rochlin on her first big assignment to do a celebrity interview: Moon Unit Zappa in 1982. Midway through the interview: fiasco! (7 minutes)
What could be more American
than the person who sees something they've never done before?
Dreams they could do?
It goes after that dream.
Well,
let's begin today with a woman who dreams
of directing a play in the small town where she lives,
a college town somewhere below the Mason Dixon line
in the hills of Appalachia.
A town which will remain, for our purposes today, unnamed.
I don't think she had ever directed and she claimed to have acted.
And it was never really quite clear just what her credentials were.
But she had managed to convince the local theater department
of this college that she should direct a production of Peter Pan.
When he was in the 10th grade in 1973, Jack Hitt saw her production,
and like everybody else in town, he heard about it for weeks beforehand.
Slowly but surely,
you began to hear sort of rumors about this production.
For example,
I know