Places, Everyone

TV and stage actress Kristen Sieh loves languages and has developed a talent for creating her characters’ voices. When Kristen nails a character’s voice, she fully inhabits her – or him as is sometimes the case. She has played Teddy Roosevelt in the play RoosevElvis, an Israeli in the musical The Band’s Visit, and a New Jersey mother in the 1940’s in the upcoming HBO adaptation of Philip Roth’s no...

In this episode, I explore citizenship in the arts. Is citizenship simply about having rights and membership, or is it a more active stance that incorporates voting, advocacy, and protest? I discussed that question with director Saheem Ali, a dual-citizen himself who addresses issues of citizenship throughout his art. Saheem has become increasingly in-demand as a director in re...

Adam Kantor, the Broadway actor known for his roles in Rent, Avenue Q, The Last Five Years, Fiddler on the Roof , and The Band’s Visit spends his time offstage tending to his other passions – food, travel, and community service. Throughout his career, Adam’s dedication to philanthropy and activism have been central and constant. Adam was a founder of Broadway in South Africa, an initiative that br...

Dominique Morisseau, a MacArthur “Genius”, Kennedy Prize Winner, and Tony Nominee, loved growing up in Detroit. Good friends, close relatives, and formative teachers made the city feel like a close-knit family. But as a young adult, she realized that the outside perspective was altogether different – others saw Detroit as a city in ruin. Dominique took her passions for poetry and acting and set ou...

How does physicality shape an actor’s work? Noah Robbins can speak to that. He was a child dancer who performed at the Kennedy Center in annual dance productions led by choreographer Debbie Allen. From there he went straight to Broadway and has been busy in theater and TV ever since. Throughout his acting career, Noah’s dance experience has been beneficial, allowing him to channel the physicality...

Writer and actress Jocelyn Bioh gets excited about African comedy. Not "The Book of Mormon" kind where Africa is the punchline, but the insider first-person kind that draws on memory, nostalgia and referential humor. As the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, Jocelyn craved stories about West Africa that were as funny and multi-layered as her personal experiences. This past year, a particular African...

Brooklyn Academy of Music is the oldest performing arts venue in America that is continually operating. It presents dance, theater, opera, music, and film, and its performances are known for being contemporary, experimental, global, and unusual, much like Brooklyn itself. Across the river in Manhattan, there’s a new major arts venue on the scene called The Shed - a massive structure on the west si...

Tony Award winner Itamar Moses is a playwright, a book writer for musicals, and a screenwriter on several TV shows. Each of these art forms is rewarding, he says, but playwriting is thus far the medium that allows him full creative control. Perhaps for that reason, it’s also the arena in which he probes the most personal subject matter. Like many novelists, screenwriters, and playwrights, Itamar d...

Michael Zegen has acted in dozens of TV series, films, and plays over the past decade and a half, but he has recently hit a new level of celebrity playing Joel Maisel on the hugely successful series, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”. The show offers an exciting challenge for the actor – a multi-layered character that Michael admits he's still discovering. Yet the world of "Maisel" – a distinctly Jewish...

Actress Sarah Steele knows a thing or two about long-term roles: she's had one on TV (on the CBS drama "The Good Wife" and its spin-off, "The Good Fight") as well as on stage (in the award-winning Broadway play, "The Humans", whose original cast took the production to Los Angeles and London). The ability to shape a character over years and years is a great opportunity for an actress, though it com...

What makes a theater festival successful? High-quality art, solid ticket sales, and an enthusiastic audience response. Since 2008, Kelley Girod has worked toward that goal with a festival designed to launch black writers in the early phases of their careers. Many of the festival’s alumni have since risen to prominence.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does risk-taking mean in art? New York Theatre Workshop, a company in downtown Manhattan that's known for taking risks, has an advantage: an enthusiastic audience with an appetite for thought-provoking art. What might be risky at other arts venues is expected here. Which is to say, risk is subjective. In this episode, New York Theatre Workshop's managing director, Jeremy Blocker, talks about...

A theater producer falls in love with a foreign film and wants to adapt it as a live musical. Fast forward eight years and he's accepting a Tony Award on live television for Best Musical. For that producer, Orin Wolf, and that show,  The Band's Visit,  the path appeared smooth but was in fact arduous and steeply uphill. With no funding or support, Orin had to get people on board: in...

Welcome to Places, Everyone: a podcast about the intersection of art and finance. Through interviews with creative people across stage and screen, this podcast explores how artists work the business side. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.