Every other week, the editors of American Theatre curate a free-ranging discussion about the lively arts in our Offscript podcast.

This week we have a very important guest: Jane Chu, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Managing editor Suzy Evans sat down with chairman Chu during the 2015 TCG National Conference in Cleveland, and they talked about arts funding and that time Chu played Bloody Mary in a high school production of South Pacific.

In other conference news, editors Suzy, Rob Weinert-Kendt and Diep Tran return from Cleveland and discuss the highlights from the conference. We also go through the new Kilroys list of underproduced work by female playwrights.

This week’s recommendations:

• Men on Boats by Jaclyn Backhaus, from Clubbed Thumb.
• A New Brain by William Finn at New York City Center, as part of its Encores! Off-Center series.
• The series of blog posts, curated by Jacqueline Lawton on the TCG Circle about the TCG National Conference, particularly the post “We Come After” by Isaac Butler. Also, Butler’s follow-up to that post on his own blog Parabasis.
• This video of Jimmy Fallon and acting out Magic Mike, the short plays, written by elementary school children.

Download the episode here. Subscribe via iTunes or RSS.