The Spring Festival is fast coming upon us! For the first time, Broke People is going behind the curtain *wink wink* to talk to the creative teams behind the plays of this season's festival.
Starting us off is the writer and director of the one-act play Getting It Over With,  Josh Ewing and Avery Wood! Tune in to hear them chat about what the rehearsal process has been like so far and what this play means to them.  

Come join us for a lively conversation with artist Grace Zofia Alberti. Flying high off of her/they turn as a writer last season, she/they wrote the stunning Stella, she/they are participating in this season's festival as an actor. Have a ball listening in as she/they dive into her/their process and talks about where she/they hope to go with her/their artistry in the years to come!

My name is Grace Zofia Alberti. I am a second year in Playwrights Horizons Theatre School as well as a Creative Writing minor in CAS. I am (ahem) a multi-hyphenate, as they call us - I really, fully enjoy every single aspect of theatre, from directing to design to performing to writing to stage management to publicity to dramaturgy to whatevertheheck. It is all my favorite. As a kid, I performed in lots of embarrassing community, school, and children's theatre, but in 2016, at the age of 15, I figured out that while I LOVED theatre, I was very, very bored by it in the way it had been made available to me, and thus, started a non-profit theatre company with my friends called Ad Astra Theatre Troupe (www.adastratroupe.org)! With it, I directed two shows, a production of Peter/Wendy by Jeremy Bloom in 2017, and a play I co-wrote called Uprising with Lale Davidson and Jul LeCours (my now writing partner) in 2018. We were invited to tour Uprising to two other venues later that year, and the play is now in the process of being re-drafted as we feel Older and Smarter than our teenage writer selves. In 2019, Ad Astra performed an adaptation of Trojan Women by Jul LeCours and Padraig Bond, in which I was both producer and Hecuba. Last winter, pre-COVID, Jul (my writing partner) and I ran a two-session writing workshop with the company, and they're still making work, having been passed on to younger students. Ad Astra's 5th season is currently in motion! Since then, it's been mostly college theatre nonsense (co-direction of the play Earthquakes in London with My Le), you, my Broke Theatre Fest (Actor - Complementary, something rather than nothing; Writer - Stella), and some voice over work for Jul's animated play if this is bad don't tell me, available on YouTube 

This week, we have Broke People veteran and Shakespeare aficionado Alexandra Hess on the podcast! She talks about her work on Ella Lee Davidson's Francois and gives us an inside look into her process as a director and artist!

Alexandra Hess is a director, actor, and writer based in New York City and Washington D.C. She is a junior at NYU Tisch and studies English and American Literature at CAS (College of Arts and Sciences). Alexandra has trained with the Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute through NYU and at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in D.C. Recently she has directed Francois with the Broke People Play Festival and Much Ado About Nothing with the Pop-Up Players where she also serves as treasurer of the board. 

Come join Mary and Alex as they catch up and chat about his career and thoughts on the theatre industry and where it is headed!

Alexander Oleksy is an NYC based director and teaching artist originally from The Woodlands, TX.  Currently studying Educational Theatre at NYU Steinhardt, Alex focuses on developing new, experimental works and devising performance from interviews and found artifacts. He has devised and directed two documentary plays, On Beauty and How to Own a Gun in America, and has directed other verbatim works for Luna Stage (Another Number in the Pool) and the Verbatim Performance Lab (Portraits Election 2020, COVID-19). As a teaching artist, Alex has facilitated and led Solo Show Workshops and aided artists of all ages in developing their own voice in an autoethnodramatic style. Directing credits include: Strange Happenings in the School Library (Luna Stage), The Eleventh Floor (Luna Stage), the searcher is Lost (Broke People), Shutter Speed (Uproar x WNYU), Seussical the Musical (Lamplighters NYU).

Come listen as Connor interviews Mary and Charlotte, the Co-Director Liaisons for Broke People and directors in their own right. What is directing like at a place like NYU and how do you find your voice as a director?

Mary sits down to chat with Vikki, writer of last season's The Searcher is Lost and fellow e-board member!

Connor, Emma, and Mary chat about the original reason Broke People was founded: Writers!

Connor and Mary chat about "Zoom Theatre". What is it? Where is it headed? Is it here to stay?

A look inside the Executive Board of Broke People Play Festival! The members' discovery of the club and how they came to be involved with the festival. 

Get a sneak-peek into the new Broke People podcast: Peeking Behind the Curtain and meet the hosts, Connor McKenna and Mary Cecilia Walker!