Hi, everybody. Welcome to The Librarian is in the New York Public Libraries podcast about books, culture, and what to read next. I'm Gwen.

I'm Frank. And we're super excited to be joined today by Sharon Washington.

Hello.

Sharon Washington plays nearly 20 characters in her own true story of growing up in the custodial apartment of a Manhattan library.

Her show is called Feeding the Dragon and she is an actor in the one woman production.

In this library, her father toils night and day to load the fiery furnace with coal or in the eyes of a fanciful little bookworm

to feed the dragon.

Shrouted in family mystery, Sharon's story boldly examines how both the power of forgiveness

and her love for the written word have helped her battle dragons of all forms.

So the 20 different characters in this show, do they all sound different?

They all sound different.

I hope so. That's amazing. They all sound exactly the same. So you're totally confused as to what she's doing because she's just a name. They're all me. But they're all her. They are all me. So they all sound a little like me. But no, but it's interesting. I usually ask this of the audience members in the talk back, or I did early on.

Now I'm confident that they sound different, that you can follow the story because when I storytell, when I'm talking about my father, I start to sound like my father because that's what you do, or my mother who had a very distinct accent.

And so I want to make sure sometimes I'm speaking as both in one scene,

and I want to make sure the audience can follow who I am without saying, and now I'm my mother.

And now I'm putting on a hat or I'm putting on a scarf. So it's been tracking very well.

People seem to be able to know who I'm talking about. That's great. Well, I have to say, first

of all, this show has, and you must know this at this point,

just taps into so many fantasies that librarians, book lovers, book people have engaged in.

I mean, I talked about last week from the mixed up files of Mrs. Basley-Frank,

Wiler, and I was impacted profoundly as a kid about hiding out in the museum,

but I wanted to hide out in the library.

...