Pioneer Theatre Company's Podcast Pioneer Theatre Company

Playwright Jeff Talbott invites us into the process of adapting a female-centered version of Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People." Where Henrik Ibsen was focused on the dangers of "compacted majorities," Talbott is focused on the reasons that we've stopped talking to each other. The play is being developed in PTC's Play by Play program and will be read this Friday, March 13th @ 7:30pm and Saturday, March 14th @ 2pm & 7:30pm in the Babcock Theatre. **JEFF TALBOTT (Playwright) Jeff Talbo...

For this episode—in conjunction with "Once On This Island"—mythologist John Lundwall, PhD, explains our need for stories with elemental gods, the origin of Haitian mythos, and the image of the Cosmic Tree in "Once On This Island" and beyond. **John Lundwall is the author of "Mythos and Cosmos: Mind and Meaning in the Oral Age," a book that examines myth through oral thinking and oral cosmology. He obtained his doctorate in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate School in Santa Barbara, C...

Our first Play-by-Play reading of the 2019–2020 season is "The Anatomy of Love" by Ted Malawer. Mr. Malawer talks about how he gradually makes a play less personal for him and more personal for the characters that inhabit it. **TED MALAWER (playwright) is a recent graduate of the Juilliard Playwriters Program. He has received Lincoln Center’s Lecomte du Nouy Prize and The Kennedy Center’s Blanche and Irving Laurie Award. His theatrical work has been developed and commissioned by T Magazine/Th...

Next up at PTC is "Mary Stuart" by Jean Stock Goldstone and John Reich (derived from the text of Friedrich Schiller). Director Shelley Butler talks about how she approaches political intrigue, how she prepares for historical dramas, and about the manufacture of narrative in Elizabethan times and today. **SHELLEY BUTLER (Director) recent productions include the world premieres of Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 at South Coast Repertory and helming the Japanese premiere of Beautiful: The C...

PTC's holiday show for 2019 is "The Play That Goes Wrong" by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields. It's a demanding physical comedy with a lot that goes wrong—as the title implies. For this episode, actors William Connell (Chris) and Ruth Pferdehirt (Sandra) talk about the rigors of comedy—timing, pacing, "riding the wave," and more. They also share their stories of other moments in plays gone wrong…. The outro music is by Trev Lewis/Hagfilms.Support the Show.

Dr. Avery Holton, a 2018 National Humanities Center Fellow from the U of U's Department of Communication, helps you separate fact from fiction in this episode, as we discuss how social media has warped (and sometimes strengthened) the lifespan of facts. Support the Show.