I don’t know about you, but I find that the podcasts I follow, like a lot of news sites (including this one), are strictly weekday affairs. So what are podcast-philes who’ve burned through all their latest shows on their weekday commutes supposed to do to tide them over the weekend? If you’re a theatre lover and you don’t already subscribe to/know about these shows on the lively arts, consider this post-holiday catching-up edition of Top of the Pods your audio infotainment hookup. We’ve even got a new one to tell you about. So without further ado…
Bernardo Cubria’s New York-based podcast Off and On did not take a holiday break, so we’ve got a number of episodes to tease here.
First, actor/director Felix Solis, who tells tales of the early days of the LAByrinth Theater Company and talks about staying true to yourself and what it means to be “hard to work with.”
Next, improviser Timmy Wood compares and contrasts improv to theatre and UCB to Off-Broadway, and talks about growing up in a very religious home.
Finally, Nina Mehta and Dave Hanson of the Collective NY talk about why artists join collectives, about L.A. vs NYC, and about how our partners put up with our careers (or don’t).
Our other fave NY-based podcast, Maxamoo, didn’t slow down much either, storing up an amazing double-header year-end wrapup that is really worth a listen all the way through. We posted Part 1 before the vacation break, but to keep them together, here’s Part 1:
And here’s Part 2:
But wait, there’s more: This essential January festival preview episode (which is mostly but not exclusively about the many festivals this month in NY).
In our own New Year’s edition of OffScript, we look back at the year, including some of the shows we liked best.
We somehow missed putting Born Ready‘s year-end episode up here, so let’s redress that. This was a table-turner in which regular sidekicks Ray Hobbs and Duncan Wold interviewed host Rob Ready about the construction of the brand-new Piano Fight building in the Tenderloin (something we noted as part of a larger trend here).
In the spirit of catching up, we neglected to note this in-depth interview from last year with Kathleen Turner for Theatre Bay Area’s Theatre Process podcast. Turner spoke to Stacy Ross when the one-woman show Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins was at Berkeley Repertory Theatre; she’s always worth a listen.
The Indiana-based, community theatre-focused podcast Theatre Geeks has been doing some catching-up. Their most recent episode features a chat with Ron Ziegler of the American Association of Community Theatre with tips for states or regions mounting their first festivals, along with some interesting tidbits about the festival process—and the reasons behind some of the rules.
We said we had a new podcast to tell you about, and it’s a borderline case, given that it’s Broadway- rather than nonprofit-focused. But it’s worth noting the debut of Ken Davenport’s Producers Perspective podcast if only because his first guest, press agent Rick Miramontez, is not only a giant in the field—he also happens drops some wise and savvy advice with application to theatre everywhere. Plus, we all want to hear him dish about Spider-man, don’t we?
Finally, in the un-embeddable-but-still-worth-mentioning department: D.C.’s Exit the Stage Door has been very busy, chatting with two behind-the-scenes workers at Shakespeare Theatre, stage carpenter Catherine Russell and assistant stage manager Maria Tejada; with Forum Theatre a.d. Michael Dove; and with actress Emma Jackson. And L.A.’s Anthony Byrnes keeps Opening the Curtain with a year-end Best Of and a New Year’s look ahead.
