Between 2 Butts: The Podcast That Lets Nothing Slip Between The Cracks

After a flaccid start, our podcast springs to life when Jay, Becca and Tice join local actor-musicians Jonathan and Abbie Mulberg! They tell us about being a married theatrical couple but not necessarily a package deal, acting together in Assassins and Footloose (with Jay!), a maximum-driving-radius for theatre gigs, playing creeps and douches, directing vs. acting, and stage slaps. Abbie and Jonathan are also involved in the Washington Revels, which celebrates tradition and culture through singing, dance, storytelling and more. They additionally are members of the Whiskey Before Breakfast Band, an Irish  instrumental group, so we are treated to some samples of their song. 
After enjoying all their stories, we spoil the mood by playing Let's Make a Match, with personalized questions by Jay himself.

Jay, Becca, and Tice welcome actor, cosplayer, and Maryland Renaissance Faire prankster Maureen Dawson to the podcast! After a brief discussion about time management and procrastination, we learn about Maureen's background in biochemistry and law, and then her move to LA and switch to acting (which includes an explanation of being paid to look credible in daytime talk show audiences). Maureen then regales us with stories of her notorious pranks at the Maryland Renaissance Faire, and her becoming an audience favorite in various roles in the Company of St. Catherine's: Lady Somerset, Lady Mary Boleyn, Meg White, Madge Shelton, and, best of all, the Ninja Pirate! After all that, Becca and Maureen have a go at the Family Feud Fast Money Round, and as always, it's a journey.

Our episode gets off to a difficult start when Becca and Tice  start showing off their coffee mugs before Jay is finished with his intro, something they learn they are not supposed to do. Tice tells Jay and Becca a modern urban legend about "Covid dick", which opens up a whole can of worms about penis size. Then we get to our main topics. Jay's "Greatest Things on the Interwebs" series has now landed on the YouTube channel "Zack Morris is Trash" and their look at the very special Jessie Spano "I'm so excited" episode. He also recalls a principal from his school days who he actually admired: Mr. Outlaw.  Becca also has a very special episode, but it's from "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" and it  goes way harder than Saved By the Bell. Then emerging thespian Tice picks up a thread from last episode and asks Jay and Becca for their preferences regarding cold reads and monologue choices for auditions. Finally, Jay puts Tice and Becca to the test to see if they can guess punchlines to poop jokes and it's a race to not come out number two!

It's our second Mary Worth live table read!
But we cover so much ground before that. Before we even get to our main topics, we talk Valentine's Day rituals, high and low butt cracks, and goat yoga. Then Jay presents his latest Greatest Thing on the Interwebs ("Titanic 2: Jack's Back") and Becca presents installment 4 of "Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared" (RIP, Spaghetti/Squid Guy?).
And finally, Tice directs a gender-blind performance of the recent storyline from the funny pages' "Mary Worth", in which loathsome narcissist Wilbur Weston gets into a turf war with his lady-friend's cat and gets dumped for it. Will Mary Worth do the horrible thing and help patch things up between the two of them?  Of course, she will, but not without suffering through a karaoke fight. Becca Harney as Wilbur, Jay Tilley as Mary/Estelle, Tice as Various. Listen as we all increasingly overact thanks to the strip's erratic use of bold-face. You'll learn nothing, except maybe that interior monologue always sounds like Bane.

Local actor and Jay's football buddy Aimee Snow joins Jay, Becca and Tice to regale you with tales of the thea-tahhhh, including: Finishing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with a broken leg , monologues vs. cold readings for auditions (and making out in a callback scene!), judging her schoolmates for not projecting, dealing with visible bruises from fight scenes, and developing her love for Shakespeare. Aimee has acted in many Shakespeare plays including "Macbeth", "The Taming of the Shrew", "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "Twelfth Night", "Othello",  and "Romeo and Juliet", as well as productions such as "The Music Man", "The Crucible", "Rumors" and "The Quantum Suicide of Sophie Miller", and she wants you to cast her as Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing"!
Then, Jay dusts off his Don Pardo voice so Becca and Aimee can play Family Feud Fast Money. It's a nail biter!

It's our 50th show and we revisit two of our beloved recurring guests: music composer and new dad Matthew Scarborough,  and Jay's wife and B2B's creative consultant Melissa Jo York-Tilley! Matthew updates us on his progress on his and Jay's colab, "Butthurt! The Musical".  He also efficiently shares every piece of music he's ever created for our podcast. Melissa talks procrastination...later. Also: Theatre-specific dreams! Jay befuddles everyone with his pet name for Melissa! 1776 Jesus! Hippie Jesus! Disco Jesus! Musical mash-ups! And Match Game! 
A heartfelt thank you to all our listeners as we reach our 50 episode milestone! We've got more in store for our next 50!

We open the episode celebrating our successes with new catch-phases, marriages, and Jay fresh off the high of a production of Sweeney Todd, which had been postponed since before the Covid shutdown. Jay recaps his return to the theat-ahhhhh, including a production glitch that everyone handled *just right*. Becca has another lovely installment of "Don´t Hug Me, I'm Scared" for the boys to react to, and Tice reacts to the Pratt-ification of the upcoming Mario and Garfield movies, with Jay pontificating on which trendy phrases are douchey. We close out with another game of True Confessions about Jay and a brush with fame.

A wonderful episode to play for your family around the Thanksgiving table. We begin with Jay and Becca congratulating Tice on his recent wedding and chatting about the weddings of other friends in the Between 2 Butts social circle. Then Jay is up with his latest "Coolest Things on the Interwebz" series; this time, a Jersey Bro shows us his Most Alpha Back Exercises. Becca shows us Don't Hug Me I'm Scared 2, and we end up on a tangent about youth fads like "soaking" and "jump-humping", which again, is entirely chaste, so invite Grandma to hear. Before we go even further off the rails, Tice shares thoughts about the continued popularity and reincarnations of the Addams Family, and we wrap with an improv game as Becca warms up to perform with us in her first live improv show.

In this episode, actor AnuRa Harrison joins Becca, Jay and Tice to tell us how to make the most of small roles in the theatre. AnuRa has demonstrated that fact in numerous productions, including "Julius Caesar", "Barnum", "Cabaret", "Sherlock!" and others. As we go,  AnuRa discusses the story of her name, remembers the creation of "Ushanka", talks about singing in a musical when you don't really have the best voice, reveals which production helped her get her sexy back, and during which production she conceived a child (although, as Jay points out, it didn't happen on stage). Stay to the end and you'll hear us play Who Would Win in a Fight?    

We open in crisis mode, as the Between 2 Butts crew's beloved satellite member Echo may have asthma. Still, Becca switches on her tiny kitty-sized humidified and carries on as we catch up with Tice and Jay's old improv buddy Matt McDermott. Matt takes us all the way back to "Klinkenschnell, the Christmas Bell", his acting debut at age 12. Then it's on to his transition into the tech world and some mechanical misfires in a Titanic play. We then reminisce about his time in ComedySportz Improv, and his present-day activities of swing dancing, professional photography, teaching improv, and keeping a menagerie of animals in his home! Finally, we try to Make a Match together as Tice pulls out his best Charles Nelson Reilly impression in aid of an extremely time-sensitive joke.