What does it take to get a new musical staged on Broadway? In this episode, composer and lyricist Kyle Fackrell describes the journey of his new Off-Broadway musical, The Art Tour, that opens on 42nd Street next week. More than a recounting of the challenges and triumphs of producing an original work for the theater, Kyle details how the two-character show represents all of us in our decisions to be bold. It asks questions about love, art, and purpose. The interview is also a behind-the-scenes look about the process of collaborating, creating a business, and simply taking the big, risky leap.

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

Excerpt from: The Art Tour, music and lyrics by Kyle Fackrell; used with permission.

View the video podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF53Udt6IX4

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The Last Caravan is a tabletop roleplaying game created by Ted Bushman, set in a post-apocalyptic America that's been devastated by an alien invasion. Unlike many roleplaying games where players take on their personas of superheroes and intergalactic warriors, this game is about regular people--teachers, truck drivers, librarians, mechanics, moms, even dogs--who band together to survive wild situations. In this interview with the 2025 ENnie-award nominated game for Best Game and Product of the Year, published by Mythworks, Ted talks about how this game is played and how it came to be created.

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

https://tedbushman.itch.io/

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The Artists Residency at the Center concludes its 2025 cohort and asks the artists--Alexandra Mackenzie Johns (UK/Utah, literature & drama), David Jones (Oregon, music composition), Thayer Jonutz (Michigan, choreography), Zinta Jaunitis (United Kingdom, visual art), Jackie Leishman (California, visual art) and Daniel Martinez (Uruguay, visual art)--three questions. They are: what books they're currently reading, how Covid affected them and their art, and when they began to think of themselves as artists.

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

Photo credit: Kah Poon Photography

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Most people are unaware of the symbiotic relationship between artists and the gallerists who represent them. How does a gallery support, encourage, and market an artist's work? And how does an artist rely on the expertise of a gallerist when they are starting out, in mid-career, and when they want to defy expectation with something new? This interview brings visual artist Justin Wheatley and David Ericson, the owner of David Ericson Fine Art in Salt Lake City, Utah, together to uncover surprising ties of trust between creativity and commerce. 

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

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Winners of the Ariel Bybee Endowment Prize, Gonzalo and Susana Silva speak about their new exhibition, Instrumentos de silencio (Instruments of Silence). The 15-piece show at Sargent's Daughters gallery in New York (and later traveling to the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California) plays with ideas of musical instruments and history, but also the ways that invading Europeans subjugated and tandemized Andean populations with outside culture, including music. 

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

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His paintings are in nearly every Latter-day Saint meetinghouse and in many temples in the world. The beloved artist Walter Rane discusses in this podcast his life as a painter, insights he has discovered about himself through the freedom of creating, and why he loves painting now more than ever.

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

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It’s like a true crime podcast, but it’s about art. An heirloom masterpiece is created, mutilated, inherited, then lost--one of the most important objects in a rich culture’s history. Over a century later, a frantic search ensues, not unlike a manhunt, with a deadline fast approaching and a forthcoming, major exhibition hanging in the balance. Can it be recovered in time?

Scholars Heather Belnap, Ashlee Whitaker Evans, and Brontë Hebdon detail the extraordinary tale of a pre-Civil War album quilt cut in half, lost, and then found. The work itself is one of the most significant objects in all of LDS culture.

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

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Taiwanese Australian filmmaker Daniel Yen Tu tells about a new book project and screenplay, '93 Castrol which is the fast-paced story of siblings, a stolen race car, and a search for redemption from self-described low-lifery. The discussion of this limited edition artists book contains something even bigger--an emerging artist discovering identity, voice, and a newfound sense of authenticity. 

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

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Lisa Hess moved to New York at the age of 16 and a year later was asked to join the company of the New York City Ballet. That began an adventure with some of the great choreographers and dancers of the century, in a golden age of dance in America. Hess worked with the legendary George Balanchine in his final decade of life, frequently with Jerome Robbins, and others. In this extended oral history episode, Lisa Hess Jones captures a vivid era--a girl from Amarillo, Texas who finds herself with superstars Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Farrell, and a host of luminaries as she charts her course as a female, LDS artist, before embarking on a second career as a teacher, choreographer, and mother of two boys.

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

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After an emerging-artist blitz of 26 New York exhibitions in just 7 years, the award-winning visual artist Valerie Atkisson de Moura hit a wall. Adrift and depressed in a new home, she received a medical diagnosis of an incurable disease and discovered that her mother had the same disease but had kept it secret from the family. Then, in a horrible year, her mother died, Valerie was hit by a car and suffered head trauma that changed the way she lives and works. Throughout everything, the artist's focus of creating art based on family history sustains her and propels her forward.

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

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