Half Hour to Curtain

This month we do things a little bit differently. A Q&A about the theatre with Dan & Mark prompts lively discussion about theatre, favorite shows and moments, and the state of the art. Dan asks questions of Mark and Mark asks questions of Dan. Banter ensues. It's fun, it's lively, it's a little silly, but we think you'll enjoy it! Take a listen as we discuss everything from Theatre History to questions of diversity, the current climate on Broadway, and more.

Beowulf Boritt is currently represented on Broadway by Sankoff & Hein's Come From Away directed by Chris Ashley and Freestyle Love Supreme directed by Thomas Kail. He designed the Tony Award® winning set for James Lapine's Act One. He has also received Tony Award® nominations for his designs for Evan Cabnet's production of Therese Raquin and Susan Stroman's production of Kander & Ebb’s The Scottsboro Boys. He designed David Thompson's Prince of Broadway and also Alfred Uhry’s LoveMusik on Broadway for Harold Prince. He designed Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sondheim on Sondheim and Finn & Sheinkin's The Twenty-Fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee both directed by Mr. Lapine. He designed Steve Martin's Meteor Shower directed by Jerry Zaks and Menken, Slater and Palminteri's  A Bronx Tale co-directed by Robert DeNiro and Mr. Zaks. Other Broadway shows include the New York and Russian productions of Chaplin for director Warren Carlyle, John Rando's revival of On The Town, Hand To God directed by Moritz Von Stuelpnagel, and the long running Broadway and international hit Rock of Ages directed by Kristin Hanggi.

He and his work have been called "feverishly inventive" (New York Times), "Visionary" (Playbill), "miraculous" (New Yorker) and "a genius guy who does crazy sets." (Mel Brooks).

Off-Broadway, he has designed over one hundred shows, including the current Fiddler On The Roof (in Yiddish) directed by Joel Grey, the original production of Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years for director Daisy Prince, Mike Birbiglia's  The New One, Sleepwalk With Me, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, and Thank God For Jokes for Seth Barrish, and Strindberg’s Miss Julie for director Scott Schwartz.

He has designed scenery for Lincoln Center Theater,The Roundabout Theatre Company, The Public Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage,  The Vineyard Theatre, Manhattan Class Company, Primary Stages, The Pearl Theatre, Keen Company, Red Bull, and The New Group.

His work has been seen in Europe, Asia, and Australia. Across the United States he has designed for The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, La Jolla Playhouse and the Old Globe in San Diego, Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, The Kennedy Center, Ford's Theatre and The Signature Theatre in Washington, D.C., The McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J., The Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, The Ahmanson Theater, The Mark Taper Forum, and The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, The Huntington Theatre and The American Repertory Theatre in Boston, The Alley Theater in Houston, The Fifth Avenue Theatre and the Seattle Repertory Theatre in Seattle, The Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, The Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine, The Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Hartford Stage, The Philadelphia Theatre Company, The Dallas Theatre Center, The Cleveland Playhouse, Saint Louis Repertory Theatre, The Cincinatti Playhouse, The Delaware Theatre Company, The Utah Shakespeare Festival and many others.

He designed Warren Carlyle's 2018 production of Jerome Robbins: Something To Dance About and Lynne Taylor Corbett’s 2011 production of the Brecht/Weill Seven Deadly Sins for the New York City Ballet.

He has twice designed the scenery for The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He recently appeared in a commercial for Microsoft.

In addition to a Tony Award,

Our guest for January is Director RACHEL CHAVKIN. With undergraduate and graduate degrees from NYU’s Tisch school and Columbia University respectively, Rachel is the founding artistic director of THE TEAM, a co-operative company based in Brooklyn. THE TEAM’s mission is to develop and produce plays that speak to the experience of living in America today. The dozen productions they’ve developed have played around the world since the company’s inception in 2004. Notably, Rachel shepherded both NATASHA, PIERRE AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812, and HADESTOWN through a process that ultimately brought them to Broadway. Rachel has won of a variety of awards, including the Obie and Drama Desk, and the 2019 Tony Award for best director of a musical for HADESTOWN. Listen in as Rachel talks about her process as a collaborative member of The TEAM, her work as a Freelance Director, and her upcoming projects.

This month we sit down with Tony-nominated playwright Dominique Morisseau. A native of Detroit, she graduated from the University of Michigan with a BFA in acting, and began her writing career there as well.Since then, her plays have notably premiered at the Williamstown Theater Festival, the Atlantic Theater Company and Lincoln Center theater in New York. Her work includes THE DETROIT PROJECT, a trilogy of plays (Paradise Blue, Detroit ’67, and Skeleton Crew) depicting the socio-political status of the city across seven decades, Pipeline, a powerful play that delves into the urgent issue of the “school-to-prison” pipeline, Sunset Baby, a witty look at where the personal and the political collide, and the libretto for the current Broadway musical AIN’T TOO PROUD, for which she was nominated for a Tony award. She has received a number of playwriting awards, including an Obie, two NAACP image awards, and last year, a MacArthur grant.

This month's episode features the multitalented, always brilliant Joanna Gleason.  Perhaps best known for her Tony-Award winning performance as The Baker’s Wife in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical Into the Woods,  Joanna Gleason's credits on stage and screen are many. Other Broadway credits include Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing,  Arthur Laurents, Charles Strouse and Richard Maltby’s Nick and Nora, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Peter Nichols’s play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, for which she received her first Tony Nomination. Joanna’s film and TV credits include The Newsroom, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Boogie Nights, The West Wing, and two Woody Allen films: Hannah and her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Tony-Award Winner John Rubinstein made his Broadway debut creating the title role in the musical Pippin, directed by Bob Fosse. In 1980 he won the Tony, Drama Desk, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and Drama-Logue Awards for his role in Mark Medoff’s play Children of a Lesser God. Other Broadway roles have included Neil Simon’s Fools (directed by Mike Nichols), David Rabe’s Hurlyburly, M. Butterfly, Ragtime and the revival of Pippin, among many others.

In 1987, he made his off-Broadway debut at the Roundabout Theater as Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, with Stephen Lang and John Wood, and subsequently performed in Urban Blight and Cabaret Verboten. In 2005, he received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Lead Actor in a Play, as well as nominations for both the Outer Critics’ and Drama League Awards, for his portrayal of George Simon in Elmer Rice’s Counsellor at Law.

In 1985 he starred in Merrily We Roll Along at the La Jolla Playhouse, in a version newly re-written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by James Lapine. He was the original Andrew Ladd III in A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, opened the play in New York off-Broadway, and later performed it on Broadway, in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and on the QE II. He created the role of Molina in Kiss Of The Spider Woman, and the role of Kenneth Hoyle in Jon Robin Baitz’s Three Hotels. In 1997, he played Tateh in the American premiere run of the musical Ragtime, by Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty, and Lynn Ahrens, at the Shubert Theater, Los Angeles, receiving both an L.A. Drama Critics Circle nomination and a Drama-Logue Award as Best Actor in a Musical, and continued in the show both in Vancouver and on Broadway. He appeared opposite Donald Sutherland in Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s Enigmatic Variations at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, and at the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End. He played the Wizard of Oz in Wicked at the Pantages Theatre for 18 months; and co-starred in the world premiere of the musical version of the film Grumpy Old Men at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.

This is Part 1 of a special two-part podcast.

This is part 2 of the interview with John Rubinstein