The new play High stars Kathleen Turner, who's been with it since its first tryout in Hartford, Conn. How has the play has changed in three stagings across the country?
MELISSA BLOCK, host: How do you get to Broadway, not as an actor but as an entire play still trying to work out a few kinks? You could go to Hartford, Connecticut, and Cincinnati, Ohio, then maybe drop down to St. Louis, Missouri, and you wouldn't necessarily be lost.</s>MELISSA BLOCK, host: That's the route that a new play called "High" took on the long road to Broadway. From St. Louis, Jim Dryden reports.</s>JIM DRYDEN: Kathleen Turner has appeared on Broadway as Mrs. Robinson in the stage adaptation of "The Graduate," Maggie in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." But with "High," Turner hopes to finally make it to Broadway as a character she created, Sister Jamison Connelly, a formerly homeless recovering alcoholic nun who works as a counselor at a Catholic rehabilitation center.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): I've always wanted to develop more new work and add to the lexicon of theater, you know, not just take what has already been proven but to create a piece.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): (As Sister Jamison Connelly) Sit down, let's chat.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): Unidentified Man #1 (Actor): (As character) Yo, look, lady. This is stupid. I mean, why do we gotta keep seeing each other if I don't want to get clean?</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): (As Connelly) All right, first of all, you call me lady one more time and I will make you cry.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): (As Connelly) Second, did I or did I not make it abundantly clear at our first meeting, I do not care what you want. So sit down. Let's get to work.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): Unidentified Man #1: (As character) But...</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): (As Connelly) Shut the (BEEP) up.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): Unidentified Man #1: (As character) You creep me out when you do that.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): (As Connelly) Do what?</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): Unidentified Man #1: (As character) When you swear, it's creepy.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): (As Connelly) Oh, too bad.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): Unidentified Man #1: (As character) Yeah? Well, you're a nun. Nuns don't swear.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): (As Connelly) And 19-year-old boys don't try to kill themselves.</s>JIM DRYDEN: "High" opened in Hartford over the summer, and director Rob Ruggiero says in retrospect, that might not have been the best place to launch.</s>Mr. ROB RUGGIERO (Director, "High"): You know, you just want to kind of get it up and see what you have, see how the audiences respond. And the objective is to understand that so you can take it to the next step.</s>Mr. ROB RUGGIERO (Director, "High"): But having Kathleen Turner in Hartford, close to New York, it was a little less protected than we thought and rightfully so. People are going to come.</s>JIM DRYDEN: Among those who came were two critics from the New York Times, but playwright Matthew Lombardo says the play wasn't ready for review because it wasn't even close to being finished.</s>Mr. MATTHEW LOMBARDO (Playwright, "High"): That's one of the reasons we take a play to regional theaters across the country before bringing it to New York because we're looking for that safe and comfortable environment where we can nurture our baby without critics coming in from New York or some of the big newspapers.</s>JIM DRYDEN: One review was positive, the other mixed, but at that point in early August, Lombardo, Ruggiero and Turner weren't yet happy with the play, either, and Turner says it has been extensively reworked.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): In between Hartford and Cincinnati, we almost completely rewrote the second act. We got it down to just the last scene needed work.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): (As Connelly) (Unintelligible). I couldn't handle it. I ran away.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): Unidentified Man #2 (Actor): (As character) What did he tell you?</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): (As Connelly) Nothing you don't already know.</s>JIM DRYDEN: St. Louis was the third of three stops for the play over the past three months.</s>Mr. MATTHEW LOMBARDO (Playwright, "High"): There's just certain things that you don't know that time will help you develop the play.</s>JIM DRYDEN: Playwright Matthew Lombardo.</s>Mr. MATTHEW LOMBARDO (Playwright, "High"): I've been dealing with clarifying the story arcs or deepening the characterizations. And there's just some things that you don't know in the first city that you find out in city number two or three.</s>JIM DRYDEN: But you have to be careful about changing too much too soon, according to director Rob Ruggiero.</s>Mr. ROB RUGGIERO (Director, "High"): There's a certain point where you do have to leave it alone because if you react too quickly to things, the actors have no opportunity to get it in their bones, to make it work. So sometimes you could remove something of a great value. And we're at that point now where he might tweak, I might tweak, but we're about to let it alone.</s>JIM DRYDEN: At this point, director, playwright and star say the script is pretty much finished. And Kathleen Turner says its development over the past three months on the road has been crucial to the creation of her character.</s>Ms. KATHLEEN TURNER (Actor): Every bit of information I need, I should need and should have, should be in the script, though I have actually met a lot of ex-nuns in the last few months and been told by many people that they've met nuns exactly like this woman. Who knew?</s>JIM DRYDEN: Turner, Lombardo and Ruggiero hope to open "High" on Broadway early next year.</s>JIM DRYDEN: For NPR News, I'm Jim Dryden in St. Louis.