I Wanna Be Like You with Elbi Cespedes

Adam Gwon is an award winning composer and lyricist whose work has been performed on 6 continents! His musical Ordinary Days premiered Off Broadway in 2008 and has gone on to become a hit beyond its Off Broadway run in part thanks to its successful cast album! His songs Fine, I'll Be Here and Favorite Places from Ordinary Days have gone on to be performed at concerts and cabarets all over the world! He's here now to discuss the cast album for his latest musical All The World's A Stage which premiered last spring Off Broadway and is OUT NOW and features former guests Matt Rodin & Elizabeth Stanley! We get to talking about how he went from actor to writer, how Ahrens & Flaherty affected his career in a major way, his time as a Tony Award voter and much more!

Adam Gwon is an award winning composer and lyricist whose work has been performed on 6 continents! His musical Ordinary Days premiered Off Broadway in 2008 and has gone on to become a hit beyond its Off Broadway run in part thanks to its successful cast album! His songs Fine, I'll Be Here and Favorite Places from Ordinary Days have gone on to be performed at concerts and cabarets all over the world! He's here now to discuss the cast album for his latest musical All The World's A Stage which premiered last spring Off Broadway and is OUT NOW and features former guests Matt Rodin & Elizabeth Stanley! We get to talking about how he went from actor to writer, how Ahrens & Flaherty affected his career in a major way, his time as a Tony Award voter and much more!

Ross Meyerson is an Emmy Award winning casting director for his work on the hit drama Damages starring Glenn Close along with his former partner Julie Tucker. Currently, he’s casting the upcoming season of Dexter: Resurrection following the success of the first season last year! His roots however are in theater having been the Artistic Director of Millbrook Playhouse and various regional theaters across the country. Some of his most prominent casting credits include Nurse Jackie, Kevin Can Wait, Sneaky Pete and The Big C! If you’d like to take class with Ross, he currently teaches at One on One NYC!

George & Marty Lee Andrews are on the precipice of celebrating 50 years of marriage, having shared a life working in the theater. The two of them have been a part of some of the most legendary musicals of all time. George holds the Guinness World Record for the longest running actor in the same Broadway show having been in the original cast of The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway in 1988 and finishing his run in 2011! Prior to this, he originated the role of Frid in Stephen Sondheim & Hugh Wheeler’s classic musical A Little Night Music which Marty starred in its first national tour. The two of them directed the show in it’s premiere in South Africa and developed a strong relationship with its original director and Broadway legend, Hal Prince. Their career spans decades and have spread their welath of knowledge to generations younger than them with children and grandchildren also working in the theater. George & Marty tell us all about their careers, how they met, and their favorite Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim stories!

Joe Iconis is a Tony and Drama Desk Award nominated composer and lyricist for writing Be More Chill. Aside from Be More Chill, he’s written plenty of musicals that have premiered Off Broadway and regionally including Broadway Bounty Hunter, The Black Suits, and most recently The Untitled Hunter S Thompson Musical (which premiered last year at Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia) and many more! He also contributed songs to the second season of the NBC TV series SMASH including Broadway, Here I Come and The Goodbye Song sung by Jeremy Jordan, Katherine McPhee and Krysta Rodriguez. In 2022, he released an album of story oriented songs titled Album which featured theater icons such as Danny Burstein, Lin Manuel Miranda, Aaron Tveit and many more. We get to talking about his entire career and what he has coming up next!

Tim Weil is most notably known as the original Music Director and Supervisor for the Tony Award winning hit musical Rent! Having been there from its original workshop to Broadway, national tours and beyond, Tim has now written a book: Making Rent: The Story Behind The Music That Changed Broadway. The book chronicles his experience with the show, Jonathan Larson and discusses the inner workings of how this little engine that could became one of the most revolutionary musicals in history! Aside from Rent, some of Tim’s Broadway credits include Shrek the Musical (Music Director), Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill (for which he served as the Music Director and provided some original composition) and Oh Calcutta! He also happens to be the husband to a former guest of ours Randy Graff!

Stephen Cole is prolific author and musical theater lyricist who’s written multiple books and musicals premiering Off Broadway, regionally and around the world! Notably, he was the author for memoirs and biographies for Charles Strouse, Marni Nixon, and Noel Coward! Some of his most popular musicals include After The Fair, the musical adaptation of the classic film The Night of the Hunter and The Road to Qatar (which focused around writing the first ever musical written by Americans to premiere in the Middle East!). He also served as a writer for tributes for the Drama League where he met many Broadway legends including Chita Rivera who eventually starred in Casper, (an original musical where he served as the lyricist) a show focused around the Casper the Friendly Ghost! He’s now written a historical fiction novel inspired by his personal relationship with Ethel Merman in the later years of her life titled MARY & ETHEL and Mikey Who? which is out now!

AJ Shively is a Tony Award nominated actor with 3 Broadway shows to his name including the revival of La Cage Aux Folles (opposite Kelsey Grammar), Bright Star and Paradise Square (which earned him his Tony nomination)! Recently he starred as Robbie in Classic Stage Company’s production of A Man of No Importance, the one night only concert of Hello Dolly at Carnegie Hall and the Encores! production of Titanic at New York City Center! We get to talking about tips and tricks for those working on Broadway, the history of Stanislavsky’s acting methods and how his Irish heritage has informed his career!

Today, I Wanna Be Like Aaron Lazar! Aaron Lazar is a Grammy award nominated Broadway superstar having starred in The Last Ship (with music and lyrics by Sting), A Light in the Piazza, A Little Night Music and Les Miserables, to name a few! Some of his on screen credits include The Wolf Of Wall Street, Everything Everywhere All At Once and Girl Meets World! After receiving an ALS diagnosis a few years ago, Aaron released an album titled The Impossible Dream in 2024 which also featured Josh Groban, Sting, Lin Manuel Miranda, Kristin Chenowith, Brian Stokes Mitchell and MANY MANY more which earned him his Grammy Award nomination! The album’s proceeds benefit the ALS Network and was the start of a mission Aaron has since surrounded his life around, the “impossible dream” to heal himself from ALS. He’s gone on to start a podcast of his own (Impossible Dreams podcast) with guests like Ben Stiller, Mark Cuban and Andrew Rannells to name a few and has been on a journey to help people heal themselves.

Today, I Wanna Be Like Jerry Zaks! FOURTH DREAM GUEST MANIFESTED BY JESS LEPROTTO! Jerry Zaks is a legendary director with credits in theater, film and television. He's received 4 Tony Awards for his direction on The House of Blue Leaves (starring the Broadway debut of Ben Stiller!), Lend Me A Tenor, Six Degrees of Separation and the iconic production of Guys and Dolls starring Peter Gallagher, Nathan Lane and JK Simmons. On screen, he directed the film Marvin's Room (starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert DeNiro, Meryl Streep, Gwen Verdon and Diane Keaton), as well as episodes of Frasier, Two and a Half Men and Everybody Loves Raymond! Most recently, he's behind some of the biggest Broadway shows of the last decade such as The Music Man starring Hugh Jackman & Sutton Foster, Hello Dolly starring Bette Midler and A Bronx Tale: The Musical (co-directed with Robert DeNiro). We get to talking about all of that as well as what makes a strong director and what he looks for from actors who enter the audition room with him.