Ilana Glazer on how ‘Good Night and Good Luck’ is Inspiring Her Own Writing

Ilana Glazer is Zooming in from her makeshift office, aka the fire escape of the Winter Garden Theatre. With her show “Good Night and Good Luck” now officially open, she’s settled into a routine of coming early to the theater on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and getting caught up on writing and other work. 

“I’m writing a couple projects and we started rehearsing [‘Good Night and Good Luck’]  in February, and it was only after opening on April 3 that I could start wrapping my head around my own life again,” Glazer says. “It’s been such a gift to not be the center of the project I’m giving everything to. It’s been just helpful and interesting — I do have to catch up on my work. So the empty Winter Garden is my office.”

Not being in control of a project is a rarity for Glazer, as is doing a dramatic role (not to mention Broadway — this is her debut). The writer and performer broke out with “Broad City,” which she created and starred on with Abbi Jacobson, and has gone on to write and star in “Babes,” “False Positive” and two comedy specials. 

Glazer got her first taste of what doing “Good Night” would be like while participating in a workshop last fall. She was already sold on the creative team involved — including director David Cromer and writers George Clooney and Heslov, when she finally got to read for the role of Shirley Wershba. 

“That day I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is a creative experience that my vessel needs,’” she recalls. “So far, the majority of what I’ve performed is what I have written, in a way that I love and I’m proud of. However, I tend to sometimes keep my head down and just do the work, and there was something about the leanness of only fulfilling the role of performer and filling the whole role. The whole space I was going to occupy would be filled with this role. I’m not so filled with tasks and improving it and communications. It’s just this craft, and it’s kind of like the Winter Garden being empty, the less output. There’s actually room for quiet and awe, and in these two days of this workshop, I felt that in just those two days.”

Shirley, who was a journalist at CBS, appealed to Glazer the more she dove into the character’s history.

“I love getting to portray brilliant, secure Jewish women when I can,” Glazer says. “She is not a household name and yet is one of the founding figures in broadcast journalism. It’s exciting to me to amplify the signal that she has put out into this world.”

Playing Shirley, off of Clooney and Heslov’s script, has also been impacting her own writing. 

“George and Grant wrote a funny, smart character who is complex. Sometimes she’s the security for her husband, sometimes she leans on her husband for security. She’s hopeful, I’d say, and the writing is just so graceful,” she says. “My own writing has so efficiently elevated from just three months of being inside of the script. I’m like, ‘no, no, no, no. This does not cut it anymore.’”

“Good Night and Good Luck” is drawing record numbers to the theater because of its star, Mr. George Clooney, but it’s captivating audiences further with its timely look at American journalism. Glazer has been getting friends and their parents tickets, and is most intrigued by the responses from those older than her. 

“Especially the people in my community happen to be white Baby Boomers and often white Jewish Baby Boomers from the New York area, and they’re not practiced in community organizing. They’re not practiced in protesting or demonstration, and I see this activating energy in these folks brewing,” Glazer says. “I’ve been developing a practice of activism myself for the past 10 years, but that’s been really interesting with the Boomers.”

“I grew up on Long Island and I’m seeing in the audience every night tristate area folks, from the suburbs of Philly, Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, coming in to see George Clooney and then getting a show they did not expect,” Glazer continues. “You don’t think you’re going to cry, which a lot of people are doing in the audience, and it’s a really important population to invigorate with the tenets of American values, or so we claim, of freedom of speech and democracy.”