Places, Everyone

Join host Lonnie Firestone as she interviews the creative and cast members behind the Tony Award-winning musical, The Outsiders . This special live episode from the Books That Changed My Life Festival at JCC Manhattan features insightful conversations with lead producer Matthew Rego and cast members Trevor Wayne (Ponyboy) and Kevin William Paul (Bob). Highlights: How S.E. Hinton’s classic novel ch...

This episode was recorded live at the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center on January 8, 2024. It is an interview with Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman whose 50+ year collaboration has produced hit songs as well as the Broadway musical,  Harmony . This episode also includes an expanded conversation with nine members of the  Harmony  cast: Chip Zien, Danny Kornfeld, Zal Owen, Sean Bell, E...

This episode was recorded live at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan on October 9, 2023. It is a conversation with creative and cast members of the Broadway musical,  Harmony . They include book writer and lyricist Bruce Sussman, and performers Chip Zien, Julie Benko, Sierra Boggess, and Danny Kornfeld. The narrative of  Harmony  is set in the 1920s and 30s in Germany, a d...

Three years ago, I founded a curricular theater program called Exploring Black Narratives, situated in Jewish schools and grounded in the work of acclaimed Black playwrights. One of the most exciting facets of the program has been helping students develop their interview skills in preparation to meet a professional actor who has performed in the play that we've studied. One such actor wh...

Part II of an extended interview with Jason Veasey and Nemuna Ceesay about their formative roles in developing the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical  A Strange Loop  for its Broadway production where it won a Tony Award for Best Musical. Picking up on our live interview event at JCC Harlem, Jason – an original cast member for  A Strange Loop  who plays Thought 5, and Nemuna – Asso...

At a live interview event at JCC Harlem on October 24, 2022, I spoke with two artists who were integral to the Broadway production of  A Strange Loop , the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical by Michael R. Jackson. These artists – Associate Director Nemuna Ceesay and original cast member Jason Veasey – spoke about the show’s development and themes . This episode includes highlights from the live e...

This is the second of two episodes focusing on August Wilson’s play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and its recent film adaptation on Netflix. Today’s interview is with actor Michael Potts who starred in the Netflix film as Slow Drag, the bass player in Ma Rainey’s blues band. When I watched Michael Potts as Slow Drag, I saw something recognizable: the way his character can convey so much with a glance o...

In April, I had the pleasure of leading an evening event about August Wilson, specifically his play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom . This event was hosted by the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Maryland, where the program I co-direct, Exploring Black Narratives, first took off. This conversation includes background on Wilson’s life and the Great Migration in America, as well as a comparative disc...

This episode is one of two classroom interviews with 11th grade students at Shalhevet high school in Los Angeles, CA. As part of the Exploring Black Narratives program, we studied Dominique Morisseau's play "Pipeline" and interviewed actors who starred in productions around the US. Today's interview is with Andrea Harris Smith who played Nya at the Studio Theatre production of "Pipeline" in Washin...

This episode is one of two classroom interviews with 11th grade students at Shalhevet high school in Los Angeles, CA. As part of the Exploring Black Narratives program, we studied Dominique Morisseau's play "Pipeline" and interviewed actors who starred in productions around the US. Today's interview is with Heather Velazquez who played Jasmine at the world-premiere production of "Pipeline" in 2017...

In Will Arbery’s play Heroes of the Fourth Turning, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize last year, a group of 20-something friends, all of whom are Catholic and politically conservative, gather for a party to toast their college professor who has become the president of their Catholic university. One of these friends is a young woman named Theresa whose right-wing views cross into alt-righ...

Classix is a team of theatermakers and scholars who provide universities, theater companies, publishers, and readers with resources to expand their exploration of classic Black playwrights. As founder Awoye Timpo says, the intention is "creating access to the plays for the widest possible audience but really by centering Blackness." Awoye and her teammates - Dominique Rider, Arminda Thomas, Britta...

I'm excited to share a series of conversations with actresses who starred in Jocelyn Bioh's play,  School Girls: Or the African Mean Girls Play . These interviews were recorded with students at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Maryland. This fall, I developed a program for Jewish high schools, which are majority white spaces, to explore plays by Black playwrights, to read and watch t...

I'm excited to share a series of conversations with actresses who starred in Jocelyn Bioh's play, School Girls: Or the African Mean Girls Play . These interviews were recorded with students at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Maryland. This fall, I developed a program for Jewish high schools, which are majority White spaces, to explore plays by Black playwrights, to read and watch those p...

I'm excited to share a series of conversations with actresses who starred in Jocelyn Bioh's play, School Girls: Or the African Mean Girls Play . These interviews were recorded with students at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Maryland. This fall, I developed a program for Jewish high schools, which are majority White spaces, to explore plays by Black playwrights, to read and watch those p...

Since theaters shut down this spring, a certain type of performance has gained traction online – the compilation video, in which multiple performers, each in their own space, record their part of a musical number that is compiled into one cohesive performance. One of those compilation videos that has been widely circulated features the Broadway revival cast of “A Chorus Line” doing the famous open...

Kelley Girod, a playwright and the founder of The Fire This Time festival, spoke with me about racism in the American Theater. We talked about the statements that many theater companies put out as protests began around the country. To Kelley and many Black artists and other artists of color, these statements in support of the Black community felt hollow. They followed years of diversity and inclus...

On Mother's Day, I spent the evening speaking with the very talented actress Karen Pittman. Every time I watch Karen perform, I notice her strength first and foremost. In this interview, we discuss three of Karen’s roles on TV and on stage that exemplify strength of character: a determined producer on “The Morning Show” (Apple TV+), a dedicated teacher in “Pipeline” (Dominique Morisseau’s pla...

Reed Luplau is a veteran dancer who has performed in Broadway shows and prominent dance companies including Lar Lubovitch Dance Company and the Sydney Dance Company. Trained in multiple forms of dance including classical ballet, modern dance, acrobatics, tap, and jazz, Reed is most interested in being a “good mover”, particularly when movement is a conduit to storytelling. In this conversation we...

Financial Advisor Bailie Slevin is a great success story. When a car accident disrupted her career as a stage manager for the theater, Bailie found her way to the financial sector and has been a champion for artists’ careers ever since. Bailie transformed a set back into a prosperous career, and when she advises her clients, many of whom are stage and screen artists, she activates that same model...

Pirronne Yousefzadeh is a director of all sorts. She directs plays and she has a dual position at Geva Theatre Center as the Associate Artistic Director and the Director of Engagement. She’s also a co-founder of Maia Directors, a consulting and advocacy group for artists of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian descent. In these roles, Pirronne frequently seeks to strike a balance between...

Sam Gold, the Tony-Award winning director of  Fun Home , wants to eliminate all barriers between the audience and the story. To that end, he removes any element that actors might use as a crutch in their performance, like an unnecessary set piece, and he utilizes the physical theater space to bring the actors as close as possible to the audience. In many of Sam’s productions including  H...

This episode is all about nostalgia and how we experience it through art. Any art form can have nostalgic effects, but I think there’s something unique and specific about music: the way hearing an old song you love transports you back in time to a younger version of yourself. Tony award-winning Broadway producer Eva Price has lots of musical nostalgia: she’s been drawn to pop music and Broadway mu...

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins writes some of the most challenging plays I’ve read and seen. That’s partially due to the fact that his plays are each distinct in form, namely the way each play is delivered is as important as the story itself. Branden is a writer who is fascinated by the history of storytelling, from the Greeks to the Middle Ages, and within American drama, from the Civil War through...

In this episode, I look at the ways in which church and gospel music can shape an artist like my guest, Ephraim Sykes, a veritable triple threat of acting, singing, and dancing. As a kid and teenager, Ephraim had a natural affinity for dance and music, and his outlet was Sunday worship. Joining the gospel choir wasn’t a conscious decision, Ephraim says. “It was just what we did.” Since getting his...