Offscript is American Theatre’s flagship podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts (including Spotify and Apple Podcasts), in which the magazine’s editors, writers, and special guests tell us what they’re up to and what’s on their mind.

This month we celebrate Pride Month with interviews of queer theatremakers and a queer arts journalist. First, editor Rob Weinert-Kendt talks to the team that is turning Ed Graczyk’s iconic play Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean into a musical, starting next week at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley. They talk about how they’re musically representing Texas in both the 1950s and 1970s, and about ways they’re adapting the trans representation of the original play to the language and sensibility of 2025.

Then Rob talks to Billy McEntee, theatre editor at the Brooklyn Rail, who was the first recipient of ATCA’s Helbing Mentorship for young LGBTQ arts writers. They talk about his approach to journalism and criticism, and about the controversial profile of inveterate theatregoer Nicki Cochrane that he wrote for American Theatre last year, which was 2024’s most read online piece.

Starting a new trend, we’re asking guests to recommend something they’re into, in any medium, and we got music and films:

• Ashley Robinson recommends the documentary Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, about gay actor Mark Patton’s experience as the first “final boy” in that 1980s horror franchise
• Dan Gillespie Sells recommends the brilliant, under-appreciated 1970s-era singer/songwriter Judee Sill
• Shakina Nayfack recommends the ebullient Miami R&B/pop of Corey Streets
• Billy McEntee recommends Walter Salles’s Oscar-nominated political drama I’m Still Here

You can listen to the podcast below.

You can download the episode here. If you have any feedback or suggestions for Offscript, please reach out to at@tcg.org.