Filmed Live Musicals

How does a lifelong passion for musical theater begin? For Sara Glancy , it all started with "The Wizard of Oz" at age five. Join us as Sara recounts her enchanting journey from watching "The Wizard of Oz" to her professional training at NYU. Discover how a year-long New Year's resolution to learn a new musical every day helped keep her artistic spirit alive amidst the hus...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with writer and composer George Chiang and actor Harriet Chung about the multi award-winning musical Golden Lotus . Based on the influential Chinese novel Jin Ping Mei , Golden Lotus was developed in North America before premiering in Hong Kong in 2014 where it was filmed live. It's now available to stream on Stratfest at Home.  Learn about the banned novel Jin Ping Mei...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with actor and filmmaker Melissa Center all about her one woman musical Marrying Jake Gyllenhaal .  Go behind the scenes and discover how the musical came to life, how Melissa navigated the global theatre shutdown, filming during COVID, and how the new production differs from previous incarnations of the show. Marrying Jake Gyllenhaal will be livestreamed from Caveat in NYC...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Eddie Aronoff , the founder of Stage Russia and Art Seen Films , companies which specialize in distributing plays and musicals filmed live in Russia and South Korea to cinemas and homes around the world.  Discover how Eddie is supporting artists who have had to flee Russia, the world of K-musicals, how Kanopy is making theatre available to anyone with a library card, un...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Nicole Holst , producer of The Zeigfeld Girls Revue , a new cabaret celebrating the stories of the original Follies girls including Mae Murray, Olive Thomas, Louise Brooks, Julie Newmar, and Fanny Brice.  Which Follies girl still haunts the New Amsterdam Theatre? Are any of the Follies girls still alive? What cultural trends did they start? In this delightful chat, dive...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with David Nando Rodgers , an actor/singer/writer whose new cabaret My Sunday Clothes will be livestreamed from NYC’s The Green Room 42. In this thoughtful and enlightening conversation, David shares his journey into the world of musical theatre which began with sitting in the second row of a matinee of the Phantom of the Opera . Dive into the practice of theatre from the pe...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Sam Boer , co-founder of The Uncommon Folk Collective and one of the composers behind Ursa: A Folk Musical , a theatre-concert hybrid that received its world premier in 2022 as part of the Toronto Fringe NextStage Festival.  In this episode, learn about learn about the Uncommon Folk Collective, and delve into the process of developing Ursa: A Folk Musical. Hear about th...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Doug Reside , curator of the Billy Rose Theatre Division at the New York Public Library and author of Fixing the Musical: How Technology Shaped the Broadway Repertory , which looks at how the musicals that we remember, and the ones that are  the most performed, are the musicals that were able to use the technologies of their time such as cast recordings, sheet music, an...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Kevin Purcell , the multi-award winning Australian conductor,  musical director, composer, and arranger whose work spans across the worlds opera, classical, and musical theatre. Go behind the scenes of Kevin’s latest work, Castle Gillian: An Irish Tale , a full-length virtual reality musical. Discover how the musical came to be, how it was made, and the exciting new mod...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Jim Augustine and Oren Michaels, the founders of the League of Live Stream Theater (LOLST) . We talk about how the League of Live Stream Theater came into existence, its purpose, the challenges of filming non-profit theatre, the process of filming, the challenges of archiving, LOLST’s Revenue Generating Grant Program and the upcoming stream of Jocelyn Bioh’s Broadway pl...

In this special crossover episode, host Luisa Lyons chats with Ebony Vines and Pamela Shandrow of the Theatre Geeks Anonymous podcast.  Join us as we nerd out about musical theatre and take a look at three short-running Broadway musicals that were all filmed live: At the Drop of a Hat (1962) starring British comedy duo Flanders and Swann, Show Girl (1961) starring Carol Channing, and Allegiance (2...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with the person who inspired the entire Filmed Live Musicals project, Ellen M. Krass!  Ellen M. Krass is the Emmy award winning producer behind the live captures of The Robber Bridegroom, Little Johnny Jones, Follies in Concert, Sweeney Todd with Angela Lansbury and George Hearn, Sweeney Todd with the San Francisco Philharmonic, Candide with the New York Philharmonic , the B...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Brendan Bradley, actor, director, producer, “scrappy story-teller,” and pioneer in VR theatre. In this episode, we explore the world of making digital theatre — seeing technology as an aid storytelling instead of a threat, doing theatre as an “elder millennial”, thinking of digital theatre as puppetry, diving into the extraordinary theatre/lecture piece Future Stages ,...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with the Grammy nominated, and Tony, Olivier, Drama Desk, and Emmy Award winning Broadway producer Jim Kierstead . Jim’s extensive producing credits include Kinky Boots, Pippin, Hadestown, The Inheritance, The Lehman Trilogy and The Inheritance. He is also the co-founder of Broadway Virtual, a new company that aims to help artists develop work for stage and screen. Jim share...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with performer and writer Alexandra Palting whose new solo musical 0874 A Filipino American Love Story recently played the She NYC Arts Summer Theater Festival, where the show won Best Score. The musical tells the story of when Alex’s college boyfriend moved across the country and her Lola (grandmother) showed her a grocery bag filled with hundreds of love letters from Alex’...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with the London based Australian director Brett Sullivan - the director behind the captures of Love Never Dies, Billy Elliot, Miss Saigon, Newsies, Kinky Boots, Les Miserables for BBC’s The One Show, Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, Waitress, and the upcoming Prince of Egypt, and Aladdin. Topics include the impact of AI in filming live theatre, filming for live broadcast, wor...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, folk musicians, cancer survivors, and the creators and stars of the award-winning short musical All Wigged Out . Go behind the scenes with Cathy and Marcy as they share the story behind creating their original musical which tells the story of Marcy’s journey through breast cancer. The duo talk about why they chose to film the musical, the fi...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Jennifer Ashley Tepper , theatre historian, curator, producer, and Creative and Programming Director of 54 Below in NYC. Topics include the joy that is Florida Thespians, the importance of theatre on TV,  New York City as a musical theatre campus, and going behind the scenes of 54 Below, one NYC’s hottest cabaret venues. Jennifer Ashley Tepper is the Creative and Progra...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with  playwright, lyricist, book writer and producer June Rachelson-Ospa and actor-director-choreographer and publisher C. Michael Perry about the musical Welcome to Tourettaville which tells the story of a young boy who is diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome. Topics include the challenges of creating work based on real people, the power of theatre to inspire and heal, and the...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Deborah Henson-Conant , a truly gifted musician, artist, composer, and storyteller. Deborah shares the extraordinary story behind the intensely personal and beautiful new two-hander musical The Golden Cage. The musical was filmed live at the 2022 Off-Broadway “CreateTheater New Works Series” and is now available on demand on Streaming Musicals. Deborah Henson-Conant is...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Dominic Frisby about the history and the creation of audio musical Kisses on a Postcard, based on Terence Frisby’s musical and radio play Just Remember Two Things… It’s Not Fair and Don’t Be Late . Described as “ Oliver for vacee kids,” Kisses on a Postcard tells the story of brothers Terence and Jack Frisby who were evacuated from London to Cornwall during World War II...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Christian Cieri about his new musical The Humoral Funeral Parlor on the Corner of the Street .  Christian shares his journey to writing his first full-length musical inspired by The Little Shop of Horrors and Rocky Horror , the challenges of creating an original work from scratch, staging a reading, what it’s like to be an actor on the other side of the casting table, a...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Jay Cruz , entrepreneur, marketing executive, and CEO and founder of the Indie Film Theater Network, or IFT Network . Jay shares his journey to working in the world of theatre, IFT’s three pronged approach to streaming theatre - including a writing room, production and marketing, and streaming, and insights into the making of filmed theatre. Jay Cruz is an Award Winning...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Freya Catrin Smith and Jack Williams, composers of RIDE: A New Musical which was filmed live during its run at the Charing Cross Theatre in 2022 and is now available to stream on Broadway on Demand.  Hear about the show’s journey from workshop to fully staged production, how professionally filming the workshop helped in re-writes, the casting process, and what’s next fo...

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Pat Valera, director and writer of the Filipino musical Mula sa Buwan ( From the Moon). The original musical is a re-telling of Cyrano de Bergerac set in 1940s Manila. Pat shares his insights into the history of musical theatre in the Philippines, his journey to becoming a director, and the story behind the creation of Mula Sa Buwan! Mula Sa Buwan will be available to s...