In his powerful theater piece Guac, Manuel Oliver honors the life and legacy of his son, Joaquin "Guac" Oliver, who died in the Parkland shooting in 2018. Manuel Oliver joins the podcast to share why he turned to theater to tell his family's story, what he's hoping audiences will take away from the work, and how he and his wife Patricia have found new ways as activists and artists to continue to be caring parents to their late son Joaquin.

Meet Douglas Lyons, the playwright of Table 17, a playful homage to Black rom-coms of the 90s and early 2000s like How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Love and Basketball. In this discussion, we explore the impact of those films on the play, the impact of a queer lens on shaping this romantic comedy, and the star power of Kara Young. Don't miss it!

Chisa Hutchinson joins the podcast to talk about her three plays featured in this season's AMPLIFY Festival at 59E59, especially Redeemed, currently running in Theater B. What's it like to develop three productions with three directors for one venue at the same time? How are these plays in conversation with each other? And listen to the end for Chisa Hutchinson's own list of playwrights whose work she'd love to see programmed in a three-play season!

Todd Almond joins the podcast to chat about why he's adapted The Odyssey for the stage four times, how living inside Bob Dylan's catalog while starring in Girl From the North Country impacted his own songwriting, and what it's like to write a musical commissioned by Audible for both stage and audio. Don't miss this conversation about his new musical I'm Almost There.

Playwright and real-life ACLU Associate Director of Planned Giving Matthew Freeman joins the podcast to talk turning the donor-fundraiser dynamic into drama in his new play The Ask. The conversation delves into the theater of fundraising, the challenges of building a two-person play, and the importance of typing in a font that captures the spirit of your play.

We're adventuring beyond the written word this week! Legendary puppeteer Basil Twist joins the podcast to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his work Dogugaeshi, back home at New York's Japan Society this month. Twist shares how he happened upon a dormant tradition of Japanese puppetry and how he collaborated to bring the art of sliding screens back to life in this surprising, non-narrative piece. Open the screen and see what's behind it!

Australian playwright S. Shakthidharan joins The Present Stage to talk about the North American premiere of his play Counting and Cracking which offers an epic exploration of the recent history of Sri Lanka through the lens of an undergraduate in Australia delving into his Tamil heritage. The conversation features discussion of the playwright's journey to telling a version of his family's story that transformed his mother's own relationship with her past, the challenges of telling a gigantic...

Composer-lyricist Neil Berg joins the podcast to talk about adapting his new musical The Sabbath Girl from his co-lyricist and bookwriter Cary Gitter's play of the same title. You won't want to miss this chat that ranges from discussions of how to find the right spots in the story that sing to a roundup of the musicals that come closest to perfect. And host Dan Rubins waxes nostalgic about a Neil Berg musical that inspired him in childhood way back in 2002!

What does it mean to participate as an audience member or as a performer or as a human being? Phillip Howze joins the podcast to talk about his new play Six Characters and the ways he plays with the notion of participation in bringing this metatheatrical exploration to life. Don't miss this thoughtful conversation about the costs of participation — for both actor and audience — and the need to center artists' humanity onstage.

Two playwrights, two political plays, one podcast episode: Mario Correa, author of N/A, and Catherine Gropper, author of The Meeting: The Interpreter, join The Present Stage together to talk about what it means to create political theater in an election year. It's a can't-miss conversation that explores how to put current events — and the figures who shape them — onstage.

Adapter/lyricist/director/choreographer Rebecca Martínez and adapter/composer/lyricist/music director/translator Julián Mesri hop aboard the podcast to share about their bilingual musical adaptation of The Comedy of Errors for the Public Theater's Mobile Unit. Hear from this multi-hyphenate pair about what it means to write for community, how they approached creating an adaptation that would be fully bilingual, and where they found musical inspiration in Shakespeare's text. It's a fascinating...

Rachel Bonds RETURNS to the podcast, alongside composer-lyricist Zoe Sarnak, to discuss their new musical The Lonely Few. In this episode, the collaborators share what it means to write queer musical theater love songs for two women and nerd out with Dan about the creative, complex use of "diegesis" — music that takes place within the reality of the characters — throughout the musical. Musical theater fans won't want to miss this one!

José Rivera joins the podcast to talk about excavating his childhood memories in The Hours Are Feminine, the possibilities of translation onstage, and the distance between this play and the magic realism for which he is best known. (He also shares a bit about his upcoming adaptation of A Hundred Years of Solitude for Netflix!) Don't miss this enchanting episode.

Laura Winters joins the podcast to talk all things All Of Me, her new play with The New Group. The conversation explores the impact of her protagonists' use of AAC (alternative and augmentative communication) devices on playwriting process, the challenges of staging accessible stories, and her approach to the responsibility of bringing representing disabled experiences in a theatrical rom-com. Don't miss this delightful discussion!

Three days after becoming Pulitzer Prize finalists for Here There Are Blueberries, Tectonic Theater Project's Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich join the podcast to talk about the rich theater of archival research and what it means to dramatize and animate a story of archival detective work onstage. Don't miss this essential discussion about the boundaries of documentary theater, the ethics of centering the perspectives of perpetrators, and the power of paying attention to what's just outside...

Peregrine Teng Heard, Artistic Director of The Associates Theater Ensemble, joins the podcast to talk about her new play Redemption Story. Check out this wide-ranging conversation focused on how the playwright navigates the surreal ambiguities of the story, negotiates the play's multi-layered themes of representation in Hollywood, and constructs characters who are themselves performers.

"You can have the fame, Phyllis," and you can also have this podcast episode! TikTok songwriting star Oliver Richman, creator of the viral groundhog musical, joins the podcast to talk about his score for Soft Brain Theatre Company's musical adaptation of the commedia dell'arte play The Fake Husband. We investigate the craft of rhyming, the quest to find a contemporary sound to musicalize a 400-year-old theatrical art form, and the pressures and pleasures of a musical theater writing career...

We're traveling this week out of New York City to the wild west (of New Jersey) for Paper Mill Playhouse's premiere of Gun and Powder. Bookwriter and lyricist Angelica Chéri joins the podcast to talk about drawing on her own family's lore and legends to bring the story of her outlaw ancestors Martha and Mary Clarke to life. She guides listeners through the ten-year developmental process and explores what it means to represent Black women in the white male-dominated western genre. Don't miss...

De-funded arts programs, school buildings without nurses, school closures based on test scores: these are some of the challenges facing both public school teachers and students that Kia Corthron tackles in her new play Fish. In this episode, we explore how theater can advocate for social justice and how Corthron hopes her work will empower audiences.

Is this, to quote JT Rogers on this episode, "the last podcast of recorded history of all mankind"? Probably not, but this IS the first episode of The Present Stage to be recorded during an earthquake. Hear Tony winner JT Rogers react to that geological incident plus share more about his own earthquake of a play Corruption on this episode. You won't want to miss this *groundbreaking* conversation about a decade of research, a powerful creative collaboration, and an inventive way to tell a...

Liza Birkenmeier joins the podcast with some questions of her own about her play Grief Hotel. This exciting conversation explores how playwrights think about their audiences as they write, why an inventively formatted script can invite adventuresome staging and performances, and just what Liza Birkenmeier's always wondered about her play. Don't miss this scintillating episode!

Join Pulitzer, Tony, and Oscar-winning playwright and screenwriter John Patrick Shanley on The Present Stage for a delightful conversation about his two plays currently running concurrently in New York: the off-Broadway premiere of Brooklyn Laundry and the Broadway revival of Doubt. We'll dive into how it feels to have to two shows open in NYC in the same week, what these two plays written twenty years apart might have in common, and why Shanley invited readers of Doubt's published script to...

Tony winner Adam Guettel (The Light in the Piazza) joins the podcast to talk about his latest musical Days of Wines and Roses, currently running on Broadway. This conversation is a song-by-song deep-dive into Guettel's score, featuring fascinating insight into how he builds character through song, interweaves orchestration throughout the composition process, writes for specific voices (stars Kelli O'Hara and Brian D'Arcy James), and so much more! Don't miss this one!

Mona Pirnot joins the podcast to talk about her solo play I LOVE YOU SO MUCH I COULD DIE, in which she performs original songs in between stories spoken by a text-to-speech digital voice. The interview explores the intersections of trauma and performance, the varied responses to the play's challenges to traditional theatrical storytelling form, and Pirnot's collaboration with her director and husband Lucas Hnath.