Theatre Life with Ben Kercheval

Stage Presence Players opens "Voices of Now," a collection of five short plays, this month in Taylor, Texas. Ben sits down with two of the people at the center of it, Denise Garza and Michael Lovestrong, who between them cover nearly every job in the production: writer, director, producer, and actor.

The showcase is a variety pack, with five pieces running from roughly seven to fifteen minutes and all varying wildly in tone with minimal sets and costumes so the writing and the acting carry the night. Denise shares how it all started, falling for Sari Boren’s "Who’s There?" in 2025, then pulling in Michael Towers’ "Peace by Piece" after judging it at Sam Bass Theatre’s festival. Three of the five playwrights are local; two are from the Northeast.

Michael is all in, writing one play and acting opposite Denise in "The Honeysuckle Effect." The two of them close on a bigger dream: turning "Voices of Now" into an annual, low-barrier home for new Central Texas writers and actors, maybe one day in a space of their own in historic downtown Taylor.

"Voices of Now" runs two weekends: Oct. 16, 17 and 18 at Black Sparrow Music Parlor, and Oct. 23, 24 and 25 at The Listening Room at St. James Episcopal Church, both in Taylor, TX. 

Tickets at stagepresenceplayers.ludus.com
Donate to SPP: https://stagepresenceplayers.ludus.com/donate
Instagram: @thestagepresenceplayers

Part II of our conversation with Austin improv mainstay Kaci Beeler of The Hideout Theatre. This time the focus goes global: with her troupe Parallelogramophonograph (PGraph), Kaci has performed in 11 countries and some 70 cities, and she takes us inside what that's actually like, from the surprisingly great scene in Winnipeg and the ensemble-festival model you find across Canada and Europe, to the grind of flyering in the rain at the Edinburgh Fringe, where promoting the show is the worst part -- next to sharing a one-room apartment with rats. 

From there, Kaci and Ben get into a bigger question: what "success" even means for a working artist, and why joy and play create more ripples than chasing prestige.

They close on the news that matters right now: The Hideout Theatre recently moved. After more than two decades on Congress downtown, the theatre has relocated to a new, more intimate home in north-central Austin, and there's an active fundraiser to finish building it out. If you love live improv in Austin, this is the moment to chip in.

Support the move: https://fundrazr.com/thenexthideout?ref=ab_6nRue1srJiD6nRue1srJiD

Follow Kaci on social media: @kacibeeler 

Missed Part I? Go back to Episode 6 for tons of great insight from Kaci on creating scripted and non-scripted narratives. 

Austin's true Renaissance woman sits down for part one of a two-part conversation. Kaci Beeler is an award-winning improviser, playwright, director, scenic designer, painter, and the national brand voice of Domino's from 2021 to 2025. For more than 20 years, she's been a mainstay of the Austin scene with her troupe Parallelogramophonograph (PGraph) at The Hideout Theatre. 

Ben and Kaci go back to the beginning: growing up a triplet, falling for both visual art and theatre and early morning drives with her dad Terry to Westwood High School's Fine Arts Academy. This episode covers the working reality of a multi-hyphenate who refuses to pick a lane, the murder mysteries she wrote and staged aboard the Austin Steam Train, and how she found her people at The Hideout.

Kaci also pulls back the curtain on the craft itself: why a live audience levels a performer up, when to direct and when to perform, and why casting friends who "know how to build the show" isn't favoritism. It's a rich, honest look at a career built on doing it all.

Part II drops in two weeks on Oct. 1. 

Part 2 of a two-part conversation. In Part 1, drag artist Alexander Surian took us inside the alternative drag world of Dragula: Titans as its Season 2 winner, Evah Destruction. Now the performer behind the persona sits down with Ben to talk about community theatre, having done three shows together at the Bastrop Opera House.

They dig into Alexander's countertenor turn as Penelope Pennywise in Urinetown, plus the most physically punishing roles they've taken on and the little surprises that make a character come alive. 

Now, Alexander is starring as Jack Kelly, the lead in Disney's Newsies, opening at the Bastrop Opera House on September 4. They talk leading a cast full of kids and a remarkable stretch of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Anything Goes, and Newsies back to back to back.

Missed Part 1? Go back for the deep dive on Evah Destruction and Dragula: Titans. Follow Theatre Life on Instagram, Facebook, X, Bluesky, and TikTok @theatrelifepod. New episodes every two weeks.

Part 1 of a two-part conversation. Nationally recognized drag artist Evah Destruction -- the alter ego of Austin-based performer Alexander Surian -- has eaten pig brains, stapled herself with a staple gun, nearly drowned, and taken a shock-collar lie-detector test on national TV, all in the name of the game. A three-time contestant on The Boulet Brothers' Dragula, she went from the main series to two seasons of the all-star spinoff Dragula: Titans, culminating in a Season 2 victory and the crown: Queen of the Underworld.

Alexander and Ben get into Evah Destruction's origins, the demands of alternative drag and the competitor's drive that carried her through, and crossing into scripted theatre with Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Austin Rainbow Theatre), which resulted in a 2026 Austin Theatre Critics Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Musical. 

Follow Theatre Life on Instagram, Facebook, X, Bluesky, and TikTok @theatrelifepod. New episodes every two weeks.

Self-proclaimed "theatre brat" A. Jason Jones fell for the stage from an early age, but walked away for years before he came roaring back. Today, he directs and serves as board president at the historic Gaslight-Baker Theatre in Lockhart, Texas. His directing credits there include Hamlet, Arsenic and Old Lace, Frankenstein, Something Rotten!, Annie Get Your Gun and Godspell, and he recently returned to the stage himself in The Giver. 

Ben and Jason dig into the nuanced but rewarding task of directing children on stage, the anxiety-inducing work of keeping a volunteer community theatre's doors open during the COVID-19 lockdown, and what a dream traveling troupe would look like.

You can follow Jason on Instagram @jasynjonz

Gaslight-Baker Theatre website: https://mygbt.org/

Follow Theatre Life on Instagram, Facebook, X, Bluesky and TikTok @theatrelifepod. New episodes every two weeks.

Award-winning actor and director Kelsey Layton has been performing since she was three years old, singing lead in her family's multi-generational show band, The Heltons, in South Alabama. In this episode, she and Ben trace the whole arc: opening for Loretta Lynn as a kid, the reality TV show that almost happened, training at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, and finding a home at the Bastrop Opera House.

Now she's one of the hardest-working people in Central Texas theatre, directing and starring on stage in the same season. Her directing credits include "Puffs," "Sister Act," "The Drowsy Chaperone," and "Steel Magnolias," with "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" coming next spring. As an actor, she recently led as Bella in "Lost in Yonkers," and she's currently playing her dream role, Reno Sweeney, in "Anything Goes."

Ben and Kelsey dig into method acting and mining real life for a role, the pull between directing and performing, on-stage chemistry, and what it takes to build a life in the theatre one show at a time.

Follow Theatre Life on Instagram, Facebook, X, Bluesky, and TikTok @theatrelifepod. New episodes every two weeks.

From Ukulele to Shakespeare (Shitfaced): Arielle LaGuette Takes Us Behind the Curtain

Welcome to the very first episode of Theatre Life, a podcast for theatre people, by theatre people, hosted by Ben Kercheval. And what better way to kick things off than with one of Ben's oldest and funniest friends?

Arielle LaGuette is a multi-talented actor, singer-songwriter, and co-founder of Austin's Fallout Theater, one of Texas' premier comedy venues. A member of improv troupes Garage Comedy and Girls! Girls! Girls!, Arielle has also survived the notoriously chaotic Shit-Faced Shakespeare, and she's here to tell us exactly what that's like from both sides of the bottle.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Ben and Arielle rewind the clock to their days as RAs in the "music dorm" at the University of North Texas, where Arielle first picked up a ukulele and started her journey into music. From cringe-inducing early YouTube covers to recording with A Flock of Seagulls' Joe Rodriguez, to a wild, out-of-nowhere attempt to "make it" near Disney World (spoiler: she ended up at the Olive Garden instead), Arielle's path to the stage was anything but a straight line.

They dig into what really makes improv work — the freedom to fail, the trust between castmates, and why "yes, and" is less an agreement and more a shared belief. Arielle breaks down the surprisingly technical mechanics of musical improv, shares her Mount Rushmore of Austin improv performers, and tells the incredible story of a Girls! Girls! Girls! show that went off script in every way possible and somehow turned into pure magic.

And yes, they get into Shit-Faced Shakespeare. Handlers, safety nets, stage combat while inebriated, and the fine line between glorious chaos and disaster. Arielle explains what it's really like to perform without complete control of your faculties, and why the show works precisely because of tight guardrails around it.

Along the way: reflections on Austin's evolving, sometimes-divided comedy scene, the value of community over competition, and why rejection and "side quests" often turn out to be exactly what you needed.

Grab your water bottle (or nebulizer) and settle in for a conversation full of heart, hilarity, and hard-won wisdom from a true theatre lifer.

Follow Theatre Life on Instagram, Facebook, X, Blue Sky, and TikTok @theatrelifepod. New episodes every two weeks.