No Script: The Podcast

The final episode of David Henry Hwang Month has arrived! Jackson and Jacob conclude their themed month by discussing Hwang's newest work, a musical written in collaboration with the great Jeanine Tesori. Soft Power is a satiric view of American politics. Listen in as Jackson and Jacob discuss how Soft Power is a play on The King and I.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us...

This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob continue through the Season 8 themed month! In this third week of plays by David Henry Hwang, J&J discuss Hwang's play "Chinglish," a comic examination of the perils and pitfalls of cross-cultural communication. Listen in! ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script P...

In the second episode of David Henry Hwang month, Jackson and Jacob discuss one of Hwang's earliest semi-autobiographical works: Golden Child. This play is an examination of the pace and cost of change. 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/noscr...

This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob begin a 4 week series on David Henry Hwang. Hwang is one of America's premiere playwrights, shaping the present and future of drama. His play M. Butterfly catapulted him into prominence and remains one of the best American plays of all time. Listen in!  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can...

This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob come back to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. One of America's foremost contemporary playwrights, Jacobs-Jenkins writes plays that are challenging, uncomfortable, and so, so smart. His play Appropriate is a stark portrait of the legacy of racist violence in the American south.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $...

This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob talk about a play with HUGE name recognition and fascinating production challenges. Qui Nguyan's play She Kills Monsters is an adventurous reflection on grief and loss. Listen in as J&J discuss D&D! ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  ht...

Larissa FastHorse is a contemporary indigenous playwright. Her play The Thanksgiving Play was inspired by FastHorse's experience of trying to tell indigenous stories on the American stage - and the frustration of the blockades in place. Listen in as Jackson and Jacob discuss this satiric new(ish) play! ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month,...

Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes is an American classic. It tracks the changing landscape of the post-Civil War South by following one corrupt family as they attempt to make their fortune. Listen in this week as Jackson and Jacob discuss this piece of American history.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure th...

This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob discuss a musical that changed the landscape of musical theatre in America. "Rent," by the late Jonathan Larson, is the story of friends in New York City. Listen in as J&J chat about Rent's unlikely origins, vignette structure, and overall investigation of love.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/mont...

This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob discuss Jen Silverman, who made her No Script debut in Season 1. Silverman's play That Poor Girl and How He Killed Her is uncomfortable, poignant, funny, and oh-so-relevant. 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.patr...

In the second episode of Season 8, Jackson and Jacob revisit Dominique Morisseau. As one of America's most impressive contemporary playwrights, Morisseau's work tracks pressing issues in our society. Her play Pipeline examines the American education system and its impact on one family. Listen in as J&J dive in to this moving piece.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on P...

Welcome back to No Script! Season 8 begins with a Pulitzer Prize-winner. Join Jackson and Jacob for a discussion on Stephen Adly Guirgis' play Between Riverside and Crazy. This script is a powerhouse of scene writing, showing off some of Guirgis' strongest characters in conflict.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensur...

In the final episode of Season 7, Jackson and Jacob return to one of America's great dramatists: Suzan-Lori Parks. This week, J&J cover one of her earlier plays: Venus. In this loose adaption of a true story from the 1800s, so much of what makes Parks the playwright she is can be seen and appreciated. Listen in!  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low a...

This week on No Script, Jackson hosts the season's SPECIAL GUEST! Jana Latchaw Milbourn joins Jackson to discuss a play she's recently directed: AR Gurney's The Dining Room. 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  -----------------...

After a month of murder, Jackson and Jacob are delighted to return to regular programming for the last three weeks of the season. This week on No Script, J&J discuss The Chronicles of Kalki by Aditi Brennan Kapil. Kalki re-imagines the final avatar of the god Vishnu as a teenage monster slayer who must intervene in the life of two high schoolers. Listen in! ------------------------------ Please co...

For the last week of Murder Month, Jackson and Jacob discuss a documentary theatre piece about the murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. Emily Mann's Execution of Justice is a verbatim script about the trail of Dan White. 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...

Jackson and Jacob return to Murder Month this week with a loose adaption of Agatha Christie. Lloyd Suh's Charles Francis Chan Jr.'s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery is a play about writing a play, in which the playwright takes on racist portrayals of Asian Americans in American media. Listen in! ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can...

MURDER MONTH is on pause! Taking a break from all the death, Jackson and Jacob visit a classic old comedy from the Pulitzer Prize list. You Can't Take it With You (George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart) is a story about a "slightly mad" family (according to Kaufman) whose lifestyle is brought under scrutiny.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month...

MURDER MONTH Episode 2! This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob explore a very different play than Macbeth. Murder is still the subject of the day, but murder in a very different light... Deathtrap by Ira Levin is a comedy thriller where murder becomes the first solution to any problem. Listen in as Jackson and Jacob laugh their way through this crazy play! ------------------------------ Please...

MURDER MONTH has arrived!  In this first episode of Season 7's themed month, Jackson and Jacob launch into their conversations on killing with perhaps the most famous murder play of all time: Shakespeare's Macbeth. Listen in as J&J discuss the ghastly consequences of guilt on the human soul. ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can he...

Tarell Alvin McCraney's play Choir Boy is sweeping the nation. This empathetic portrait of teenagers at a prep school is full of music, poetry, and challenges to power. This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob explore the wonderful complexity of McCraney's characters.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Sc...

Yilong Liu's The Book of Mountains and Seas is a buddy romp through New York City... about grief! Liu's sense of humor shines through in this script. Listen in as Jackson and Jacob discuss the juxtaposition of myth and modernity this week.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/month, you can help to ensure the No Script Podcast can continue.  ht...

This week on No Script, Jackson and Jacob visit one of America's great lyrical, poetic masters: Lanford Wilson. His play Talley's Folly is a short romance set in a gorgeous boathouse. Oh... and Jackson was in it! 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.patreo...

Hanay Geiogamah is one of the first indigenous people to have a play published in the United States. His Foghorn is a satirical chastisement of the way indigenous people are stereotyped in the American media. Listen in as Jackson and Jacob discuss how Geiogamah uses juxtaposition to create a huge impact.  ------------------------------ Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For as low as $1/mon...

In their first sponsored episode of No Script history, Jackson and Jacob discuss Jaclyn Backhaus' play Men on Boats. Based on a true story, the script follows a group of intrepid explorers who set out to map sections of the Colorado River. The characters - historical persons - are all cisgender white men. The cast? Not so much. Listen in as Jackson and Jacob discuss this rousing tale that asks que...