How Math, Science, and Engineering Bring Broadway Shows to Life,
A Podcast

[Music]

Host: Today’s audience has much higher expectations than the audience from 20 years ago, and they had higher expectations than the audience from 40 years ago.

Engineering is about math and physics, and it’s always about math and physics. That’s what we build our work upon.

I like the culture of Broadway. The folks on Broadway with whom I work are often the stagehands, the technical directors, the house crew, the people in the background—the scenic folks—the people in the background who are not getting Tony Awards.

Welcome to the Stage Link Podcast. Today, we are talking with Bill Gorlin. Bill Gorlin serves as the Vice President of McLaren Engineering Group’s Entertainment Division. He is a graduate of Cornell University and is registered as a professional engineer in 26 states. His 38 years of experience include engineering of scenic entertainment and amusement structures, staging, rigging, theatrical infrastructure, buildings, show action equipment, scenic elements, theme park attractions, architectural theming, sculptures, and other frameworks worldwide. Mr. Gorlin is a member of the ESTA Rigging Working Group, ASM Committee F24 for Amusement Rides and Devices, and the Structural Engineers Association of New York. Bill received the 2024 Backstage Legend and Master Award from the Broadway Technical Theater History Project and was named Engineer of the Year in 2018 by the New York State Society of Professional Engineers. Bill is the author of the Structural Behavior chapter in Entertainment Rigging for the 21st Century. Bill, welcome to the show.

Bill Gorlin: Thank you for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.

Host: We’re so happy to have you, and I’m personally very excited to talk all things technical and structural. With that said, would you care to introduce yourself a little bit in your own words? We’ve already read a magnificent bio, but in your own words, how did you end up working in entertainment? You’re an engineer and still do engineering, but now you specialize in entertainment.

Bill Gorlin: I graduated college and, like many engineering graduates, went into the type of field you were introduced to while in college. I worked for a small company in Connecticut designing buildings, and I was fortunate enough to have a client who walked in the door, who happened to be the owner of a scenic studio nearby. They wanted a local engineer, and my boss knew I liked unusual projects, so he pointed them to me and said, “Please work with this client.” They brought me into the world of entertainment, starting with theater, and I really enjoyed that work. I enjoyed the challenges, the work with the folks in the shop, and I was in the right place at the right time. The scenic studio happened to be peaking and helping transition the New York Broadway theater industry in how they build shows. I had no idea I was entering into a place that was really riding a wave, and I just went with it. I learned a great deal from the folks I worked with, and I haven’t looked back.

Host: That’s amazing, Bill. Could you tell us a little about what it means to be an engineer for entertainment?

Bill Gorlin: At the core, engineering is about math and physics. Whether I’m designing a building, analyzing a building, or designing an amusement ride or scenic piece for theater, it all still comes down to the basics—it’s still math and physics, and it’s all around us. The challenge is being able to pivot and work effectively in an industry that is not the same as the building or bridge industry. You need to learn the ways people build sets, the methods for rigging, the terminology, and function in that environment while keeping in mind your engineering background as a structural engineer. We’re taught to look at how forces work in the physical world, and it’s not just the structure of a building; it’s the structure of the chair I’m sitting in, the fence I walk by, or anything in the theater. I’m always looking for the way things behave more so than the numbers behind them. When I interact with people in the theater and entertainment industry, I discuss things in a way they can relate to. If we can find a way to connect in how we’re perceiving something, even if mine is more mathematically based, then we’re able to work together and produce something wonderful.

Host: That sounds like such an interesting way to collaborate, bridging the gap by thinking about the behavior of a thing. The artistic team has an intention for how they want something to behave, look, or act, and you’re the guy who’s going to help them make that happen, right? What does that process actually look like? Where do you come in the timeline of a show creation?

Bill Gorlin: We are brought in at a whole wide variety of times. Sometimes we’re brought in the moment they realize they have a problem, and it’s almost too late. That happened to us last week with one of the Broadway shows where they had a concern. We have to be very nimble in how we problem solve. Sometimes we’re brought in way at the beginning, during the early concept development stage, to help them develop ideas so that engineering is considered in the early stages of creative design. We don’t want to end up with a design that’s based on dreams, only to have reality ruin those dreams. We want to enhance the dreams, or we could be brought in anywhere along the way. When I was initially working with the shops, they’d call me in, and I’d go to the shop where the welders or carpenters would explain what they were working on. I was very intimidated at first. I wasn’t the kid who tinkered with cars or built things in a workshop, so working with these folks who were very skilled at labor was intimidating and inspiring. I felt like I didn’t measure up, so I just wanted to learn from the folks in the shop or the construction workers in the field. I tried to find a way to connect with them, sharing what I was doing in a way they could understand without having the formal engineering education. They, in turn, would share with me what they were doing because I needed to learn from them, as I didn’t have that practical experience myself.

So that’s a lot of the background. No matter where we plug into a project, a key thing is figuring out how to make the solution work for the endgame. If it’s something at the last minute, you can’t spend three weeks doing a complicated mathematical analysis. You have to find a solution that can be done here and now, which pertains to the physics and math but also to what materials they can get on hand and what they can physically handle on that site, given the conditions they’re contending with. Often, it’s about figuring out the key things that drive this project and make it really work, which can be a very wide range compared to building or bridge design. We try to key into folks when we’re getting into these challenges, but we get involved all the time. For a Broadway show, we have a very good relationship with the technical directors, so we’ll be invited in towards the beginning when the technical director is brought onto the team by the producers. The technical director is the one pulling together everyone—the technical crew, the scenic shop, the specialists—and figuring out how to get the show actually built based on the designer’s original drawings. We’re one of the specialists who get invited in at that period of time on a Broadway show.

Host: I’m going to ask for more specifics. We’ve been talking about broad, general examples or big scope ideas, but I think it’s a little vague. If I’m a small theater company or dance company, I’m not going to call an engineering firm. Sometimes I don’t even call a technical director, but when do you come in more? What kind of projects do you take on, and which projects do you think might not require an engineering expert?

Bill Gorlin: We’ll take on a whole wide variety of projects, from those that take two hours to those that take three years. We’re happy to be involved in any project. Sometimes they just need some guidance on how to get through the process, which in New York City, where I’m located, often involves the administrative process and red tape with the building department. That’s the big challenge, and they’ve been told they need approval for a set to satisfy the building department. We’ll help with that process. We have a job coming soon with a black box theater where the rigging team looked at it and said, “We’re not sure we understand how the forces are working in this existing condition.” They bring my team in to take a look at those structures. I’m sensitive to the fact that an off-Broadway budget is generally very sensitive to extra costs, such as bringing in an engineer. On this one, we’ve priced it so that we’ll come in, assess what’s happening, discuss it with them, and then determine how much farther we should take our services. It may be that we’re just advising the technical team rather than producing a design.

We’ll generally want to become involved in a project as long as we can have a positive influence. If there’s a creative design that can be constructed conventionally, like a lot of the scenery on a typical production, we won’t be brought in for that. If it’s an unusual piece or if there’s a regulatory requirement, like needing to submit to the building department, we’ll be brought in. Sometimes the owners have requirements where they want to know there’s a design professional who will sign off on the loads on the building, for example. It’s a wide variety.

Host: You mentioned some off-Broadway work, and I know you have a wide range of work, but I’m curious about the theater work you do. Do you find any specific challenges that are different between older and newer theaters in terms of your assessment? You’re nodding—could you tell us what the difference is?

Bill Gorlin: For example, if you go to a modern university theater built in the 1970s or more recently, they will have lots of structure, rigging capabilities, space for storage, good electrical systems, and a lot of bells and whistles to facilitate the production. Then you go to the old theaters, typically pre-Depression, built before 1920 or 1930, and that’s a whole different class of structures. There was a lot of theater construction in the 1920s, right after World War I ended, and people were thrilled at the time. There was money, and many theaters were constructed all over the country. I’ve seen theaters in all corners of the United States with a similar style of construction from the 1920s, with waves in the teens and prior. In those days, the scenery was either built on site out of wood and fabrics, or heavy scenery was brought in on a pushcart or pulled by horses. The stagehands would carry it onto the stage and use hemp rigging, like what you’d find on a sailing boat, to rig everything. The loads they contended with were much less than today, and they didn’t have the electric lights we have now.

Flash forward to the modern era, and it’s a real challenge to keep shows relevant to a modern audience in these old antique theaters. It’s a constant challenge in the Broadway market, where there’s a lot of money available to put on productions and upgrade theaters. Upgrading them to carry the loads demanded by a modern audience is tough. In the late ’80s, the method of construction transitioned from wood to steel in the New York market, which was necessary to facilitate big productions like Starlight Express, Phantom of the Opera, and Cats. This coincided with bigger, stronger machinery and electronic controls. The weight on the grid and stage significantly increased, along with the dynamic forces associated with the equipment, but the grid and roof structures remained the same. There were a few mishaps, but a lot of effort went into reinforcing theaters. Sometimes theaters would be replaced entirely. I remember visiting a beautiful theater in Schenectady, New York, where they replaced the overhead rigging above the existing stage house, then removed the old stage house after the new rigging was installed. It was a beautiful modern grid in a gorgeous antique auditorium. Broadway doesn’t have that luxury due to space constraints.

It’s a big challenge for us, with a lot of educated guesswork in understanding the materials, connections, and working with the existing infrastructure. We’ve developed methods for gathering information from these old theaters and working with the owners or productions to find ways around the limitations or to incrementally increase them.

Host: How often do you find yourself having to tell a team, “I’m sorry, but the venue does not have the capacity to do what you want to do”?

Bill Gorlin: We get into that situation from time to time. Outside the major markets, that will often cause a redesign or reconsideration of the venue where they’re presenting the show. In the big markets, they’ll pump money in to find a way around the problem. We had a big show, The Music Man, one of the big shows that opened after COVID. They were building scenery for about a year. It had two great stars and was in a big theater. When they brought me in towards the end, with all the stuff already built but still in the planning stage for rigging, they showed me the weight of everything rigged in the theater. I looked at it and said, “We reinforced this theater about 10 years ago, less than 10 years ago, and you’re still more than 50% higher than what we reinforced it for, so you’d better put your show on a diet.” They did put the show on a small diet, but there was only so far they could go. We had to reinforce the theater, and it was a really challenging situation because opening night was already established, the scenery was already established, and the building was the building. Fortunately, we had an excellent lead designer with the scenic contractor and one of the finest house carpenters in the business, who was also the production carpenter, I believe. The three of us got together and explored ideas for how to reinforce the theater, bouncing ideas off one another. We ultimately came up with a reinforcing scheme that we hoped would not have to be removed. They were spending so much money on the reinforcing, and they’d have to spend a lot of money getting rid of it in the future, so if we put it back up, the next two… well, the representative for the scenic contractor said, “If we’re spending all this money, we might as well make something that will enhance the theater forever so you don’t have to take time and money to get rid of it.” We worked very hard on the design, and it worked out successfully.

Host: Nice. You’ve heard it here first, folks—if you have a big, heavy show, get your engineer in early.

Bill Gorlin: Yes. We also had an interesting challenge when we were doing Cirque du Soleil’s Ka production 20 years ago in Vegas.

Host: I worked on that!

Bill Gorlin: You did? Wonderful. Hats off to you for making it fit. It was a monster. The process was actually quite fascinating because the original design called for a bunch of very imaginative effects that couldn’t fit in the space. The creative designer, Mark Fisher, who was brilliant and open-minded, kept morphing what we were doing, and eventually, the team settled on two very large pieces in the theater. One of the mishaps in our design along the way was that we designed this huge stage lift that was suspended out towards the audience, raised and lowered, spun, tilted, and did all sorts of exciting things. We were about three-quarters of the way through the design and realized the brakes we selected did not fit, so we had to redesign the entire thing for the brakes to fit. That was one of those cases where it was really on us, and we worked extra hours and time to meet the schedule. But that was one of those situations where we really kind of got ourselves into a corner. Before that, the building kind of got itself into a corner because the equipment was so heavy that the roof could not support the weight, and the building did not have the earthquake resistance to handle the extra mass we had in the building. So, we essentially constructed an independent structure to support this big stage lift inside the building that did not rely on the building.

Host: And now, a note from our sponsor. The Stage Link Podcast is proud to be sponsored by ClearCom. ClearCom is the leader in voice communications for theater and the performing arts. Call your access with the simplicity and elegance of ClearCom intercom solutions. You can find them at clearcom.com. Go check them out.

From all those lessons and all this retrofitting of buildings, are there lessons you would pass on to a venue being built today? How do you look forward 50 years and make sure it’s prepared?

Bill Gorlin: That’s the big challenge. Today’s audience has much higher expectations than the audience from 20 years ago, and they had higher expectations than the audience from 40 years ago. The big challenge is keeping theater relevant. There have been major advances in video technology, projection, and audio—all three of which have been incredible—but the audiences want more, and they’re going to continue wanting more. That’s a big challenge for my side, where we focus on machinery and structure. We can’t change physics—it’s still the same weight. The machine that was exciting to audiences 20 years ago may not be as exciting today, but it’s the same machine or the same cost of a machine, adjusted for inflation. It’s more challenging for the machinery and structures to keep up with the pace of all the electronic equipment.

What’s the future? I think the future will involve new theaters that can handle the loads and the electronic effects, audio, lighting, video, and projection. I also think the changing theatrical perspective for audiences is going to continue. Some theaters have tried to be successful, and others have not been as successful, but I think it’s an ongoing development in the business. We could be transforming theaters into different shaped theaters. We have a few in New York, such as the August Wilson Theatre, that we altered to become a theater in the round. There are several other examples of that. Those types of transformational changes for the run of a show are an area where we’re heavily involved.

Host: And who’s to say, maybe 50 years from now, the shows we’re putting on are actually lighter because maybe audiences are looking for some different combination of technology that isn’t as heavy. We have no idea, right?

Bill Gorlin: That’s an interesting point. Things may get lighter. The structural and civil engineering industries are generally slow to accept new technologies—they really want to see that they’re tested—but there is progress being made. I would say that 3D printing technology is in its infancy, and we may start seeing small structures like park benches made out of 3D printing in our lifetimes. We might also start seeing small buildings that are 3D printed, which may influence scenery. There’s also carbon fiber, which is an amazing material but expensive to use and fabricate, and challenging to repair if it gets damaged. We’ve seen some successful implementations of that, for example, with some lightweight, high-precision LED screen systems. The tough thing is justifying the cost of a very expensive structure to support something else, but it has a lot of promise. Aluminum has been the lightweight answer for many decades in the rock and roll touring industry, the temporary event industry, and to some degree, the theater industry. I don’t know if we’ll be able to afford titanium, which has some of the benefits of aluminum and steel, but it hasn’t gotten there yet. It has in other industries, so we may see some improvements in materials.

Host: That’ll be interesting to see. Now, you do a lot of theme park work as well. Can you tell us about the difference between the process you might use for a temporary structure versus a permanent structure, something that people are going to possibly be climbing on, walking by, touching, or walking underneath?

Bill Gorlin: That’s a great question. It’s been an age-old challenge for scenic studios to pivot from temporary, just-good-enough-for-a-show-on-stage, to something in a theme park that patrons will interact with. The differences are significant. One difference is the interaction of the public with the elements, or if they’re always away from the public and never touched, like scenery on a proscenium stage. The demands for patron interaction are significant in terms of fire resistance, look and feel, overhead safety, and the public’s interaction and potential abuse of the pieces. Then there’s durability. For example, The Phantom of the Opera was a temporary show that just happened to run for 35 years, and they had to fix and upgrade things over time. They did a wonderful job, but it wasn’t envisioned as a 35-year run. But a theme park attraction is envisioned as a 20- to 25-year run, and a roller coaster, instead of being used three or four times a day like a stage lift in a Broadway show, is used once every two minutes, 16 hours a day, for however many days it’s open. The durability is a big deal, so things like metal fatigue are critical. You’ve probably never seen an amusement ride made out of aluminum because aluminum doesn’t do well over many cycles of use. When it fails, it’s brittle. We like steel because it will fail in a more ductile way, and you can calculate its ability to resist repetitive loads. There’s also the durability of finishes—the paints used on an amusement ride have to handle the environment, corrosion from humidity, rain, snow, temperature changes, and UV exposure, which can dull the paint finish. The electrical systems are also exposed to the elements, so they need to be durable. The environments can vary from location to location. We had a Broadway show where one patron was invited up on stage by an actor, and I put my foot down and said this patron needs features appropriate for the general public, not just cast and crew. We had to have a proper guardrail and proper rise and run of the steps suitable for the public. The amusement park environment is very demanding, and the major theme park owners have developed their own internal standards that reflect the increased requirements for theme park attractions, both for the rides and for the theming. We have to be able to design for that level of demand.

Host: You mentioned something interesting about regulation and standards and how each niche of the industry is creating its own. Some are more regulated than others. For example, building construction must follow industry standards, but then we have touring events or temporary structures that might be in a bit of a gray area. There’s certainly an area of the industry trying to address safety in that regard, but we’re still talking about big loads, lots of people, a lot of movement, and environmental forces like wind and earthquakes. Is there something you can advise or that you usually address?

Bill Gorlin: Absolutely. I’m heavily involved in that area of work. You mentioned that I’m involved with the ESTA organization—I’m on the Rigging Working Group Committee, and we write standards for the live event industry, utilized by theater, theme parks, and more. The regulatory environment varies all over the country and the world. In the United States, it’s challenging because we have 50 independent regulatory governments. The U.S. is like the European Union, just formed 250 years ago. Construction is governed by the states, not the federal government, so the laws in New York State are quite different from California, for example. If we have a touring production, we need to predict what the requirements will be in each state, plus Puerto Rico, Guam, or wherever we’re going. Generally, we have to comply with the most strict requirements. The challenge is you also have places like Los Angeles and New York City, which have their own regulations, different from their respective states. Some are more conservative in one area and others in another. The regulations for temporary structures are not well covered by the building codes. There’s been a big gap in the building codes for temporary structures where they leave it up to the building official to determine what to do. If the building official doesn’t say anything, the default is to build it like a permanent building structure, which is absurd when you have a temporary stage up for two or three days. The range of responses has been anywhere from building officials letting you do what you want because they’re just happy to have something fun come to town, to building officials scrutinizing and giving you a tough time because they’re not familiar with temporary structures, and anything in between.

The standards we’ve developed with ESTA over the past 15-20 years have really helped the industry gain some focus. There’s been a big development in the model building codes here in the States. The 2024 edition of the International Building Code (IBC)—I don’t know why we call it “International,” I think it’s American arrogance, but that’s what we call it—is the first one to include a very robust section on temporary structures. It provides provisions for reduced environmental loads for short-term use and other sensible provisions, including monitoring weather and wind, and taking action. For example, if you can dismantle a structure or evacuate it safely, they will allow you to do that. We’re heavily involved in that. We’re kind of at the beginning of the code cycle of codes actually acknowledging temporary structures. New York City has a code provision on it, and there are a couple of others dotted around the U.S. The 2024 IBC will start being adopted by states and cities in 2025, but at different times depending on the organization. Europe has its own requirements that differ from country to country. We tend to have higher wind requirements here in North America than they do in Europe for temporary structures, but we also look to the Europeans for things they do well, like health and safety requirements and considering the public’s well-being. The inconsistencies make it very challenging for us.

Host: Each region has its niche. The U.S. has vast lands where tornadoes form quickly, whereas I don’t think that’s very common in Europe.

Bill Gorlin: Right. The population centers in North America each have extreme environmental conditions. Houston and Miami are extreme hurricane locations. Minneapolis and Boston have a lot of snow. California, Seattle, and Phoenix have extreme earthquakes. Phoenix also has extreme heat. There aren’t many big population centers without challenging environmental situations, and global warming is making it worse. Tornado Alley is apparently shifting eastward, and extreme conditions are becoming a real concern. It’s harder to predict as well.

Host: Yes, it’s very hard to predict.

Bill Gorlin: The one tool we do have is improved weather forecasting. Hopefully, people are aware and respect the effects of global warming and the weather impacts. When I was a kid, you knew it was snowing when you saw snow, and that was about it. Today, the weather forecasting tools are outstanding. They’re never going to be able to say, “You’re going to have this tornado hit this location,” or “You’re going to have a hurricane go to this exact location,” but they can give you very good predictions to help manage an event. We had an event about a month and a half ago in New York City with an inflatable dragon on the Empire State Building for a television show. It was a marketing campaign, and it was wonderful. We had a weather information service out of Oklahoma who worked with us and gave us risk predictions. There were two levels of risk: one was risk to the event happening (financial and PR risk), and the other was risk to safety and not damaging the building. We had regular updates, starting a week out, with day-by-day predictions. The live weather monitoring was excellent. They told the crew, “You have a storm coming in about four hours that may come near you,” then “You’re two hours out,” so they timed their work to get the workers off the building into a safe location before the storm could potentially reach the building. That kind of tool is quite amazing, and if used well, it can help improve safety and avoid false negatives.

Host: Definitely. Real quick, I feel like throughout our conversation, we’ve covered different areas of entertainment, but I sense you’re more excited when talking about Broadway and theater.

Bill Gorlin: I love all the various things I’m involved in, but I have a special connection with Broadway. It’s not that I love Broadway shows—I’m not a Broadway show fanatic—but I love the culture of Broadway. People have asked me, “What’s your favorite project?” The dragon was a great project, and Ka was a great project, and there were others that are cool to discuss at a cocktail party, but the most rewarding project for me has been the hundreds and hundreds of little tiny Broadway projects collected together as a portfolio to keep Broadway relevant. Fixing one little ladder to make it safe for the stagehands, or improving one little thing so you can put lighting in the right place—I love the culture of Broadway. The folks on Broadway with whom I work are often the stagehands, the technical directors, the house crew, the scenic folks, the people in the background who are not getting Tony Awards. They seem to be a group of people who really care about what they do because they love what they’re doing and the community they’re in. They don’t need public accolades or to brag about being on tour with a pop star. They’re just happy to be part of their own group and do their work well. I love being part of that community. I remember years ago going to the grid of a theater, and they said, “You’re an engineer, what are you doing here?” They didn’t get me, and we had to learn about each other. Now, when I’m in a theater, they say, “Oh, you’re here, good, we have something to show you,” or they’ll say, “I’ve been wondering about this thing, what do you think?” Or I’ll explain something to them that I didn’t like and ask if they could try doing it differently next time, and the next time, they’re like, “Hey, look, I did it this other way.” I love the culture, the people, and the fact that we’ve created something wonderful together. That’s why I love theater.

Host: You’re talking to two backstage people right now, and I think we’ll both agree—they’re the best people in the whole world. This leads me to my next question: What is your favorite thing about your job or the industries you serve as a whole?

Bill Gorlin: My favorite thing is I get to create things that are meaningful to me. I get to work with wonderful people and make wonderful things happen. “Wonderful” doesn’t need to be a great, sexy thing that impresses a non-technical person, but rather something useful, meaningful, helpful, and that provides safety. I think in 3D, visually and behaviorally. When I’m creating something and working with a team to create something, that’s the most rewarding experience. I can have a phone conversation with someone I’m well connected with, and we can have a full three-dimensional conversation and almost finish each other’s sentences, really understanding that whole 3D behavior in our heads together. It’s not about the math or the formulations, but about visualizing the behaviors and making them happen, then seeing it for real. I like to say to the folks I work with and collaborate with, “Look what you did—you made something really cool, really great that people are going to enjoy.” Often in what we do, if the public doesn’t notice it, then we’ve done our job well. I get very excited about this, and I have to tell you, I was never a good math student. I think that may have been a blessing because I didn’t get caught up in the numbers.

Host: Interesting. So, if you could change anything about your job or the industry, what would you change?

Bill Gorlin: I don’t know if I’d change anything about my job. I’m a realist—I know there are frustrations with any profession. What I would change is the increasing virtual nature of things. As the world progresses, more people spend time seeing things that are virtual and becoming disconnected from reality. What I love about theater is that people are doing things that are real. Theater for elementary, middle, and high school children is vital—not necessarily to make them theater people, but for the experience of doing something real, like sports or music. These activities allow you to learn problem-solving and create things that are real. Too often, things are done on the computer. I’ve coined a phrase that my staff or I, using our computers, can quickly develop a computer-aided catastrophe. When I started in engineering, we did a lot of things by hand, and you couldn’t create a catastrophe quickly by hand—you might make a little problem quickly by hand. The expectations of designers today seem more tied to what they’ve seen in the virtual world on a computer than to reality. That makes it challenging for us to fulfill their dreams because sometimes they’ll come up with a design that has no connection to reality, and we end up ruining their dreams because they can’t realize them. I mentioned Mark Fisher earlier, who was perhaps the greatest rock and roll designer I ever worked with. He was always connecting to reality—all his dreams were right on the edge of being doable if you worked hard. He was also an architect, which helped. But some designers have an incredible connection to the real world, and I worry about design being pushed by those who may not have practical experience with the real world, just with the design world, and have difficulty connecting to what can actually be made. Creating a movie with CGI is different from creating a show with live performance, and that live performance can’t be replicated.

Host: Thank you so much, Bill. This has been fantastic. Thank you for being here with us and sharing your time and knowledge with us tonight.

Bill Gorlin: Thank you both, and thank you for asking wonderful questions. This was a great session. I appreciate your time and the invitation to your podcast—it’s a real honor.

Host: So great to have you, Bill.