No Script: The Podcast

Jackson and Jacob discuss one of the most well known holiday plays of all time: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. This holiday classic warms hearts and presents real issues of discrimination in insular communities.... even while it has some outdated social elements. Listen in!   ------------------------------ Get Magic Mind for yourself with our discount code:  https://www.magic...

Jackson and Jacob discuss one of the most well known holiday plays of all time: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. This holiday classic warms hearts and presents real issues of discrimination in insular communities.... even while it has some outdated social elements. Listen in!   ------------------------------ Get Magic Mind for yourself with our discount code:  https://www.magic...

THEMED MONTH HAS ARRIVED!  In the first episode of "Mistletoe Month," Jackson and Jacob discuss a Christmastime classic: Inspecting Carol by Daniel J. Sullivan. Listen in! ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  https://www.patreon.com/noscriptpodcast  -----------------------------...

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has become one of America's best know, most lauded playwrights. His plays challenge the status quo -- none more so than "An Octoroon." Written as an adaption of an old American melodrama, "An Octoroon" is wild, shocking, and surprisingly transplants methods of performance from centuries ago. Listen in!  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon....

In this special episode of No Script, Jackson and Jacob record IN PERSON at a campground in Utah! Their discussion on "Hadestown" by Anaïs Mitchell has a unique vibe and plenty of noisy neighbors. Listen in as Jackson and Jacob discuss how Mitchell draws parallels between Hades/Persephone and Orpheus/Eurydice.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as...

This week on No Script, J&J discuss a real classic: Robert Harling's Steel Magnolias. A brilliant combination of humor and levity, the play has become a mainstay on stages of all types. Listen in! ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  https://www.patreon.com/noscriptpodcast  -...

Matthew Lopez's play The Legend of Georgia McBride is a study in performance. It follows an Elvis impersonator who becomes a celebrated drag queen, and uses celebratory drag performance throughout to do so. Listen in as Jackson and Jacob talk about this romp of a play.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Sc...

Lucy Kirkwood's The Children is about a trio of friends retired from work as nuclear engineers. When the plant they designed fails and pollutes their community, questions of generational responsibility arise. Listen in!   ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  https://www.patreon.c...

On No Script this week, Jackson and Jacob discuss theatre royalty. August Wilson is one of America's most beloved playwrights. His play Joe Turner's Come and Gone is at once a peek into the everyday operations of a boarding house and a highly symbolic masterpiece on the legacy of slavery in America. Listen in! ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $...

This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob discuss Rajiv Joseph's incredible world-building skills, on full display in Gruesome Playground Injuries. Listen in! ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  https://www.patreon.com/noscriptpodcast  ----------------------------- We want to ke...

The hit musical Heathers is, perhaps, the definition of "dark comedy." It's acerbic wit and rocking score making for a lively conversation this week on No Script. Listen in!  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  https://www.patreon.com/noscriptpodcast  ---------------------------...

A riff on The Scarlet Letter, Suzan-Lori Parks' play In the Blood is as harrowing as it is rich and poignant. Jackson and Jacob discuss Parks' deliberate doubling and mastery of image. Listen in!   ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  https://www.patreon.com/noscriptpodcast  ----...

The first episode of Season 11 is here! Returning to another great No Script tradition, Jackson and Jacob discuss a play by Lynn Nottage. Clyde's is a redemption story set in a mysterious sandwich shop. Listen in!  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  https://www.patreon.com/nosc...

The final episode of Season 10 has arrived! Jackson and Jacob discuss Parade (Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown), which was recently revived on Broadway. Listen in!  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  https://www.patreon.com/noscriptpodcast  ----------------------------- We wa...

This week on No Script, Jackson welcomes Hannah Barker Nickolay as our Season 10 Special Guest! Hannah and Jackson discuss Bryony Lavery's play Frozen, which examines the aftermath of the murder of a 10 year old girl. ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  https://www.patreon.com/n...

No Script returns to the legendary Anna Deavere Smith this week, looking at her empathetic portrait of a neighborhood in crisis: Fires in the Mirror. The play is taken from interviews and woven together into a moving tapestry of specificity. Listen in! ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can c...

This week on No Script, a celebration of sorts! The Phantom of the Opera just recently closed its historic Broadway run, and that makes it perfect for No Script. Listen in as Jackson and Jacob discuss the spooky ambiance, memorable images, and lasting impact of this Broadway giant.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ens...

This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob discuss a complicated classic. Strindberg's Miss Julie is a piece of real psychological intrigue where class, power, and desire play out on midsummer's night. Listen in!  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  https://www.patreon.com/noscri...

Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery is a compelling, empathetic portrait of a specific, sequestered community in rural Wyoming. As longtime friends re-gather for a college reunion of sorts, the shared community (a conservative brand of Catholicism) starts to show sharp distinctions. Listen in!  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month,...

This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob discuss a fast paced, witty sequel to The Importance of Being Earnest. A playful follow up, Montserrat Mendez's Thoroughly Stupid Things takes the premise of the original and spins it out to its wacky conclusion. Listen in!  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script...

Mini Month Part 2 concludes this week with a moving true story. A Thousand Cranes by Kathryn Schultz Miller is about the aftermath of the United States dropping the atom bomb on Japan. Miller uses ritualistic theatrical techniques and an evocative staging of death to tell this powerful tale. Listen in!  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month...

Mini Month: Part 2 continues this week with one of the famous one acts from Ireland. J.M. Synge's Riders to the Sea is a highly moving piece of writing. Synge wrote the play after visiting the Aran Islands. In the script, he earnestly presents a family lamenting the series of painful deaths which have befallen them.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as l...

Themed Month continues!  In the second week of "Mini Month Part 2," Jackson and Jacob continue exploring short plays. "La Muerte" is a frightening, apocalyptic tale of two brothers who confront a monster in the recesses of the subway. Listen in to hear how Ramirez uses theatricality and narrative to stage his epic battle. ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For...

Themed Month begins!  In "Mini Month Part 2" Jackson and Jacob return to the short play form, looking at four plays that run less than a traditional "full length" would. In the first two episodes, J&J discuss 10 minute plays. First up, perhaps the most famous 10 minute play of all time: "Sure Thing" by David Ives. ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low...

This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob discuss Leah Nanako Winkler's play God Said This. The play follows a family struggling to stay civil as their matriarch receives an aggressive chemo treatment. How does the past live in the present? Is it even possible to let go of old hurts? These questions and more are explored by Winkler in this sharp family drama.  ------------------------------ Please...