00:00Billie Holiday is you know as an icon. Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill takes place
00:11about four months before she passed away in 1959. She was only 44 years old and she
00:17was very ill at that time from years of drug and alcohol abuse but also her her
00:23heart was failing and she just was not in great shape. She was practically
00:26penniless and her voice was basically shot but she had to take any job she
00:31could get to sort of support herself and the playwright Lainey Robertson he had an
00:36ex-boyfriend who told him about the fact that one night he was in Philadelphia and
00:41he saw that Billie Holiday was playing this club so he thought I have to go so
00:47he went and there was only about eight to nine people in the audience and she was
00:53really sort of out of it and incoherent she kind of brought her dog up on stage
00:57she was she sang a few numbers was really kind of out of it and then kind of
01:02stumbled and mumbled and then just walked out and he said he was just so you know
01:07heartbroken and just kind of mesmerized by what he was seeing this incredible
01:11icon you know and then not surprised to hear that she died four months later and
01:15so the playwright's boyfriend told him the story and he just couldn't get it out
01:19of his head and so one night he said it was keeping me up for like the fifth
01:22sixth night in a row so I just got up and started to write what that night
01:27might have been so the play takes place in Emerson's Bar and Grill in
01:32Philadelphia and it's this concert as if the audience is sort of like they're an
01:36audience the night of that concert and he just sort of explores maybe what she
01:42might have said that night or what she's going through and he you know takes
01:45dramatic license with it but so we're just having sort of a moment with Billie
01:49her to see before she passes
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