Over the past century, thousands of musicals have opened on Broadway. Why do we remember some and not others? My guest this week is Doug Reside, the author of a very interesting new book: Fixing The Musical — How Technologies Shaped the Broadway Repertory. In this conversation, Doug shares with us how the printed versions of the scripts, cast recordings, movie versions, and even illegal bootlegs on YouTube have shaped the American musical as an art form and defined the Broadway repertory as we k...
Dec 12, 2024•43 min•Season 3Ep. 160
My guests this week are Dustyn Martincich & Phoebe Rumsey who have edited and authored (along with a number of other contributors) a recent book titled Dance In Musical Theatre — A History of the Body in Movement. As anyone who has listened to this podcast regularly knows, much like the authors of this book, I believe that dance has always been one of the most important and key elements of musical theater—from Oklahoma! and West Side Story to Spring Awakening and Hamilton. By pulling togethe...
Dec 05, 2024•48 min•Season 3Ep. 159
With Gypsy on Broadway, Wicked on movie screens nationwide and Mama I'm A Big Girl Now off-Broadway, this seemed to be the perfect time to revisit this episode from the first season of Broadway Nation. This was the first of three episodes highlighting the principal themes of the Broadway Musical. Here I look at the single most ubiquitous and pervasive theme: “Transgressive Women”. For more than 100 years an overwhelming majority of musicals have featured transgressive female characters who break...
Nov 28, 2024•35 min
This is the third and final segment of my recent conversation with author Laurie Winer regarding her book Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of The Musical, recently released in paperback. Today our discussion centers on the second half of Hammerstein’s remarkable partnership with Richard Rodgers, including the creation of their musicals South Pacific, Me And Juliet, The King And I, Pipe Dream, and The Sound Of Music. If you missed the first two parts, you may want to catch up with those bef...
Nov 21, 2024•40 min•Season 3Ep. 158
My guest again this week is the noted journalist and theater critic Laurie Winer, who returns for part two of our conversation about her book, Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of The Musical. If you missed part one, you may want to catch up with that before listening to this one. Following the triumph of Show Boat, during the 1930s Hammerstein experienced a very challenging decade of devastating flops on Broadway and very limited achievement in Hollywood. And that’s where we pick up our co...
Nov 14, 2024•32 min•Season 3Ep. 157
My guest this week is the noted journalist and theater critic Laurie Winer, the author of a beautifully written and expertly researched book, Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of The Musical. Diving deep into Hammerstein’s life and work, Winer, offers new insights into the groundbreaking achievements of the creator of Show Boat, Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, and The Sound of Music, to name only a few of the musicals that made Hammerstein one of the most commercially successful and cult...
Nov 07, 2024•42 min•Season 3Ep. 156
My guest is six-time Tony Award nominee Chad Beguelin, who has created book & lyrics for Broadway musicals The Prom, Disney’s Aladdin, The Wedding Singer, and Elf. Today, he joins me to discuss his captivating new novel set in the world of theater, SHOWMANCE. The beautifully crafted plot of Showmance opens on the disastrous opening night of a new Broadway musical — Stage Of Fools — with book, music, and lyrics by Noah Adams, the novel’s central character. The scorching reviews the show recei...
Oct 31, 2024•38 min•Season 3Ep. 155
Today’s episode is the second half of my conversation with Trevor Boffone regarding his fascinating new book: TikTok Broadway — Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age. If you missed part one of our discussion, you may want to catch up with that before listening to this one. Trevor Boffone is a Houston-based content creator and social media manager. His previous books include Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok and Latinx Teens: US Popular Culture on the Page, Stage, and ...
Oct 24, 2024•37 min•Season 3Ep. 153
My guest this week is Trevor Boffone whose new book is titled TikTok Broadway — Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age. I suspect that many of you, like me, are not on TikTok and may not immediately think this book will be of great interest to you. However, I encourage you to give it a listen because I think you will find what Boffone has to say in his book and in this discussion to be a fascinating and important aspect of recent Broadway history. I was quite captivated by it. On this episode...
Oct 17, 2024•43 min•Season 3Ep. 153
Today, my guest is my old friend, GERARD ALESSANDRINI, creator of the long-running off-Broadway hit revue Forbidden Broadway, which recently opened its 27th edition, FORBIDDEN BROADWAY — MERRILY WE STOLE A SONG now playing at Theater555 NYC. On this episode, Gerard and I discuss not only this latest iteration of the show but also look back to its origins in 1980 and explore its remarkable forty-three-year history of hilariously skewering Broadway and insightfully spoofing its musicals, plays, an...
Oct 10, 2024•1 hr•Season 3Ep. 152
This is the second part of my recent conversation with author Thomas Hischak regarding his new book, Song Of The Season — Outstanding Broadway Songs Since 1891. In this captivating book, Hischak looks back at the history of the Broadway musical by chronicling of every New York theater season from 1891 to 2022 and then audaciously selecting one single song as the song of that particular season. To facilitate this discussion, I selected one or two songs from each decade covered in the book for us ...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 151
Author Thomas Hischak returns to the Broadway Nation this week to tell us about his captivating new book, Song Of The Season — Outstanding Broadway Songs Since 1891. For this book, Hischak analyzed every Broadway season since 1891 and selected one song as the most outstanding. In this episode, we discuss “Oh, Promise Me” from Robin Hood (1891), “In The Good Old Summertime” from The Defender (1902), “Defying Gravity” from Wicked (2003), “In Old New York” from The Red Mill, “They Didn’t Believe Me...
Sep 26, 2024•40 min•Season 3Ep. 150
Welcome to a new season of Broadway Nation — the podcast that delves deeply into the remarkable history of the Broadway musical, with a special focus on the Immigrant, Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists who invented it. My guest today is Tony Award-winning Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell. After a short break, I am excited to be back with a new season that will be jam-packed with fascinating Broadway history, including interviews with an amazing lineup of authors of some brilliant new books tha...
Sep 19, 2024•1 hr•Season 3Ep. 149
Hi this is David Armstrong. You may be wondering where I and Broadway Nation have been over the past few weeks. As you will hear, I have been battling a wicked case of bronchitis and today is the first day in ten days that I have been able to talk even enough to croak out this brief message. At the end of the summer, I had been planning to take a few weeks off from podcasting anyway, and this bronchitis has just jumpstarted that break. So here’s the plan: On September 19 Broadway Nation will ret...
Aug 13, 2024•7 min
I’m David Armstrong, and my guest again today is author Andrew L. Erdman, whose captivating new book is titled Beautiful — The Story of Julian Eltinge, America's Greatest Female Impersonator. In this third and final episode in this series, Andrew shares with us the story of how Julian Eltinge capitalized on his international Vaudeville and Broadway fame and became a major movie star in Hollywood and how that coincided with a golden age of female impersonation in America. We also explore the chal...
Jul 25, 2024•36 min•Season 2Ep. 148
My guest again this week is author Andrew Erdman, whose captivating new book is Beautiful—The Story of Julian Eltinge, America's Greatest Female Impersonator. In this episode, Andrew continues the story of Julian Eltinge’s rise to the absolute highest realms of show business — and we especially focus on three musicals that were created especially for him by top Broadway talents such as Otto Harbach, Jerome Kern, and Irving Berlin: That Fascinating Widow (1911), The Crinoline Girl (1914), and Cou...
Jul 18, 2024•44 min•Season 2Ep. 147
My guest on this episode is Andrew L. Erdman, who is the author of the new book: Beautiful — The Story of Julian Eltinge, America's Greatest Female Impersonator. In the late 19th and early 20th Century — long before the fierce television Drag stars of today — a specific style of drag performance known as Female Impersonation was wildly popular on stage and screen — in America and around the world. And no female impersonator was more famous, successful, or highly regarded than Julian Eltinge. Alt...
Jul 11, 2024•43 min•Season 2Ep. 146
This special encore episode of Broadway Nation was first released in the fall of 2022. My guest is PAUL SALSINI, who many listeners will remember as the founder and original editor of The Sondheim Review, the first and only quarterly magazine ever devoted to a living musical theater composer. Paul passed away earlier this month, at the age of 88, so I thought this was a very appropriate time to revisit this fascinating conversation. Paul launched the magazine in 1994, and over the following ten ...
Jun 27, 2024•38 min
My guest this week is award-winning entertainer Richard Skipper, who joins me to talk about his new show, Still Going Strong—A Celebration of 60 Years of Hello Dolly!, which he will be bringing to various venues on several continents over the next few months, starting with Crazy Coqs in London on August 5th. As you will hear, it was Richard’s friendship with Carol Channing that inspired him to begin chronicling the history of Hello Dolly!, and over the past fifteen years, Richard Skipper has int...
Jun 20, 2024•44 min•Season 2Ep. 145
Today I am excited to share with you the third and final segment of my conversation with author Kevin Winkler regarding his new book, On Bette Midler: An Opinionated Guide. In this engaging book, Kevin focuses on all aspects of Bette Midler’s career — on stage, recordings, film, and television. But in this conversation, again we focus primarily on her work as a theater artist. If you missed the other two episodes in this series, you may want to listen to those before jumping into this one. For m...
Jun 13, 2024•50 min•Season 2Ep. 144
On today’s episode author Kevin Winkler returns for the second part of our discussion of his fascinating new book, On Bette Midler — An Opinionated Guide. If you missed part one of this conversation, you may want to catch up with that before listening to this one. In that episode, Kevin and I touched on Bette’s childhood, explored her early years in the off-off-Broadway experimental and very campy Gay theater scene, detailed her unusual rise to at least demi-stardom at the Continental Baths, her...
Jun 06, 2024•32 min•Season 2Ep. 143
This week I am excited to welcome author Kevin Winkler back to Broadway Nation to discuss his new book, On Bette Midler: An Opinionated Guide. This engaging book is a critical analysis of every aspect of Bette Midler’s career on stage, recordings, film, and television, but in this conversation, we focus primarily on her work as a theater artist. To date, Midler’s long career has been bookended by her appearances in two classic Broadway musicals, Fiddler On The Roof and Hello, Dolly! In between, ...
May 27, 2024•42 min•Season 2Ep. 142
In this Encore Episode from 2021, author Rick Pender takes us inside the creation of The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia. Rick Pender is a longtime member and former chair of the American Theater Critics Association. He first began reviewing theater in 1985 for a public radio station he managed at Northern Kentucky University. He later became the theater critic for CityBeat – Cincinnati’s alternative weekly newspaper -- and eventually became its arts and culture editor. He also often contributed a...
May 20, 2024•42 min
My guest again this week is author BEN WEST who returns for the fourth and final segment of our conversation in regard to his exceptional new book The American Musical – Evolution of an Art Form. As you will hear, in today’s episode, we move into what I call the Modern Era of Broadway from the 1970s right up to today and detail the major changes in the way musicals are made over the last 50 years. Our discussion touches on such shows as Hair, Your Own Thing, Rent, The Wiz, Jelly’s Last Jam, Hami...
May 13, 2024•39 min•Season 2Ep. 141
This is the third segment of my conversation with author BEN WEST, regarding his new book: THE AMERICAN MUSICAL — EVOLUTION OF AN ART FORM. As you will hear this book is a comprehensive history of the American Musical from its origins in the 19th Century right up to the turn to the 21st Century. Along the way Ben West sheds new light on a myriad of shows, authors, directors, and performers including a host of often-overlooked women and African-American artists. If you missed the previous episode...
May 06, 2024•39 min•Season 2Ep. 140
Today’s episode is the second part of my recent conversation with author BEN WEST, regarding his his exceptionally comprehensive new book: THE AMERICAN MUSICAL — EVOLUTION OF AN ART FORM. This book traces the American Musical’s creative journey from its 19th Century beginnings through its 20th Century maturation, and on to the turn of the 21st century. Along the way, Ben West sheds new light on a myriad of shows, authors, directors, and performers including a host of often-overlooked women and A...
Apr 29, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 139
My guest this week is author BEN WEST, who joins me to discuss his exceptional new book: THE AMERICAN MUSICAL — EVOLUTION OF AN ART FORM. This book is a comprehensive history of the American Musical that traces the form’s creative journey from its 19th Century beginnings through its 20th Century maturation, and on to the turn of the 21st century. Along the way Ben sheds new light on a myriad of authors, directors, and craftspeople who worked on Broadway and beyond. In a similar way to this podca...
Apr 22, 2024•51 min•Season 2Ep. 138
My guest this week is Jack Viertel who joins us to talk about his delightful new novel, Broadway Melody. This is one of a fascinating wave of novels that explore the history of Broadway though a combination of fictional characters and real-life Broadway figures. Jack Viertel began his theatrical career as a drama critic for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and then worked as a dramaturg at the Mark Taper Forum. This led to him serving three decades as Creative Director and Senior Vice President o...
Apr 11, 2024•51 min•Season 2Ep. 137
During an incredible Broadway career that stretched from 1953 to 1998, composer Cy Coleman created the music for 12 Broadway musicals. Unlike most Broadway composers, however, he was never part of an ongoing songwriting team but instead worked with seven very talented but very different collaborators. My guest today is one of those esteemed lyricists -- David Zippel who partnered with Cy Coleman on the score for the 1990 Tony Award winning "Best Musical", City Of Angels the hit musical that alto...
Apr 04, 2024•48 min
This is the second part of my discussion with Tony Award-winning Costume Designer Ann Hould-Ward in which we trace the legacy chain of Broadway costume design expertise that was handed down directly over a 100-year period from Aileen Bernstein to Irene Shariff to Patricia Zipprodt to Ann Hould-Ward, herself. If you missed the previous episode you may want to listen to that first. During our discussion was also touch on the careers of the legendary designers Florence Klotz, Ann Roth, Willa Kim, a...
Mar 27, 2024•30 min
