Theater History and Mysteries

Dr. Jon Bruschke, PhD
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The deepest dives you can find anywhere into the history and backstory of the great musical productions.  Dense content...for people who aren't.  And, I’ll never miss an opportunity to pursue any mystery, bizarre coincidence, improbable event, or supernatural suggestion along the way because, in the words of Dirk Gentley, it is all connected. You can contact me directly at theaterhistorypodcast@gmail.com Released every other Tuesday.  Music by Jon Bruschke and Andrew Howat, arranged, performed, and recorded by Andrew Howat. Check out the interview on Musical Theater Radio, episode 404: https://www.musicaltheatreradio.com/podcast

  1. DEC 16

    Mitchell's version of the Orpheus story compared to Virgil and Ovid (Hadestown 3/8, episode 32)

    Send us a text The ancient poet Virgil died of a fever with his master work still unfinished…and it was left to his executors to finish the work.  The book was the Aeneid, and it would be, in its time, the definitive work on the founding myths and stories of the Roman state.  This would cement his role as the greatest poet of his day, and it is a legacy that has never died.  Virgil is still read today.   But the stories he told were his own adaptations.  His version of Orpheus was different from that of Homer and Euripides.  He wasn’t even re-telling the story so much as inventing it. He was followed by Ovid, who would also have impacts at a historic level.  His books, too, are still read, and his contributions, too, carried on the Greek and Roman tradition in a way that is still recognizable today.  And he, too, told the story in his own way.  Scholars would write that he very consciously not only adapted the ancient stories for his own use, he would take VIRGIL’S story and freely change them for his own use. And twenty centuries later, a folk musician named Anais Mitchell would take this great story, powerfully carried forward in these two great works, and do what Virgil and Ovid had both done: Told their own story, in their own way, to make the story ring true for their audiences. What changes did Mitchell make, and why did she make them?  Did she ever ask “Who am I to think that I can hold my head up higher than my fellow humans?”  Could this modern bard write something that would improve on Virgil and Ovid.  She sure did, and we’ll find out how in this episode of THM. Support the show

    1h 12m

  2. DEC 3

    The Story of Orpheus -- Virgil vs. Ovid (Hadestown 2/8, episode 31)

    Send us a text The Romans stand at a key moment in human civilization.  Starting with roots in Greece, they are looking back at the Trojan war, they are thinking about their gods.  They have founded the first university in the western tradition.  And they are modifying and inheriting a series of explanations for the world. Where does the wind come from?  What controls the oceans, or causes lightning, or earthquakes?  Why do the seasons pass? What is nature like? Their answers, at least in part, involve the gods.  And they have been engaging those gods.  They have prayed to them, made sacrifices to them, asked them for favors.  And the gods, looking down, have picked their favorite champions, and intercede arbitrarily and for self-serving reasons in the affairs of humans. But now, just before the birth of Jesus, there is a Roman poet who comes up with a totally different take.  In his story, there is a mortal, who will try an entirely different way to earning the favor of the gods.   He will sing to them.  And this will open an entirely new way to look at the ancient Greek and Roman myths…and start a new way of thinking that will trace through history, to the earliest operas, and the fable of Robert Johnson playing for the devil at a crossroads, to Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown. We’ll look back at that story today, on this episode of THM. Support the show

    1 hr

  3. NOV 18

    The Greek Mythology behind Hadestown -- Hadestown (1/8, episode 30).

    Send us a text In ancient Rome, there is a poet.  What we now call western civilization is just beginning to find its first roots take hold … there’s an academy, and Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle are writing books that will be read for centuries.  In fact, books that we still read and talk and think about today.  And in this line, just around the time of Jesus, is our poet. His star is rising, then crossed.  The Encyclopedia Brittanica documents his rise: “No single work of literature has done more to transmit the riches of the Greek imagination to posterity. By 8 ce the Metamorphoses was complete, if not yet formally published” The poet doesn’t yet know the impact that his work will have; he can only know that his work is just now complete.  It’s fate, like that of the heroes he’s writing about, is not to get to a final destination unscathed.  Brittanica continues: “and it was at that moment, when Ovid seemed securely placed on a pinnacle of successful achievement, that he was banished to Tomis by the emperor.” The work would have to be finished in exile.  And the travails would not end there; the emperor would ban his books from public libraries.  He would write his own autobiography…the title would be “sorrow.” But history has a way of turning a censor’s work to folly; you can try to ban books but you can’t stop ideas, and when a good book finds it’s audience that genie won’t go back in the bottle.  I’ll keep reading from the Brittanica entry; our poet’s “chief appeal stems from the humanity of his writing: its gaiety, its sympathy, its exuberance, its pictorial and sensuous quality…It is those things that have recommended him, down the ages, to the troubadours and the poets of courtly love, to Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Ezra Pound.”   Really, Ezra Pound?  Ew…yuck.  That dude was a racist monster who sucked in all the ways our poet did not. The poet’s name was Ovid, the 12th and 13th centuries are called the “age of Ovid,” and he flourished again in the Renaissance. The book he wrote was called Metamorpheses, and in there is the tale of Orpheus and Eurdyce.  Among those who would not share the Emperor’s scorn for the work was Anais Mitchell, who would pick up the tale in 2006 and turn it into a Broadway smash hit a decade later. And today, we’ll learn where that story came from. Support the show

    42 min

  4. NOV 11 · BONUS

    Intermission episode -- Interview with Superteacher Michael Despars (1/1, Epsiode 29)

    Send us a text Normally we release every other Tuesday, but this is our first special episode that uses the more traditional podcasting interview format.  This off-week episode comes just in-between Jesus Christ Superstar and Hadestown, which will start next week. *               *                 *                *                  * Imagine a scared kid going to their first day of high school.  Maybe they’re new at the school and don’t have any friends yet, maybe they’re just a nerd and not all the cool kids are being nice, maybe they have some stuff going on at home and they’re nervous and uptight all the time. For it all to work out for these kids, something has to go right.  They walk into a room to start an activity that they barely know about, and it changes their life.  Maybe it’s a debate room, or a science class, or a high school paper newsroom.  And maybe…it’s a theater class. This has happened so often it’s actually a theme at the Tony’s.  When Elaine Strich won in 2002 she invited her high school drama teacher, Mr. Bodick.  When Neil Patrick Harris won for Hedwig he thanked both Churchill Cooke and Danny Flores.  He said “These are teachers in small town New Mexico who when sports was the only option, showed that creativity had a place in the world. Without them I would never be able to do any of this.” Melody Herzfeld, a high school drama teacher, got special recognition at the Tony Awards in 2018.  She was a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS, and she hid 65 students during the horrific shooting there. If the measure of a life is the impact it has on other lives, there is no doubt that one profession that may lead the pack in changing lives are high school drama teachers.  Before almost everyone who has made it to Broadway is someone who made it to Broadway, they were theater kids, and they wouldn’t have been there without theater teachers. And today we’re going to take a departure from our normal formula and talk to one of the best high school teachers, the FUSD’s Teacher on Special Assignment, Michael Despars. Support the show

    53 min

  5. NOV 4

    Superstar and the lost Gospel of Judas -- Jesus Christ Superstar (5 of 5; Episode 28)

    Send us a text It is the 4th century AD…Jesus has been dead for at least 300 years but the stories and ideas about him have not.  After having been persecuted for decades, and fed to lions in the Coliseum, the Christians are now becoming the dominant religion under the new emperor Constantine.  But they aren’t the only Christians, and they aren’t the only ones with ideas about who Jesus was, and who Judas was.  They are becoming the institution that would later start the inquisition, and torture and suppress every other form of thought. We aren’t there yet, but non-catholic ideas about Jesus are being actively suppressed. In upper Egypt, on the west banks of the Nile, there is a true believer in Gnosticism.  The gnostics have their own writings, their own theology, and even their own gospels.  And one of those Gospels is the gospel according to Judas.  And books like this are exactly the sort that Rome is seeking out to destroy. To protect these ideas, these books, and this knowledge, the gnostic believer takes his manuscripts, stores them in a clay container, and hides them away in a cave.  There they will sit for 15 centuries and when they are final discovered in the 1980s, and finally published in 2006, they will have the exact same approach to understanding the crucifixion that the musical JCS superstar launched only decades earlier.  What are we to make of that?  Let’s excavate together on this episode of THM. [Footnotes in episode 24] Support the show

    55 min

  6. OCT 21

    How did people react to Superstar, a story about Jesus from Judas' perspective? -- Jesus Christ Superstar (4 of 5; Episode 27)

    Send us a text There is a new musical about to open, and boldly it declares that it will re-tell the story of the crucifixion, and do so from the perspective of…Judas.  The advanced publicity is massive – as will become a hallmark of the coming age of megamusicals – and the theme of the show has not escaped notice.  No less an evangelical figure than Billy Graham himself said the show was “bordering on blasphemy and sacrilege.” His concern about the content is shared.  In a rare moment of agreement between Graham and the National Secular Society, both groups showed up to protest the opening of the show.  The Secular Society handed out leaflets entitled ‘Jesus Christ Supersham.’  The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee also responded … rather strongly … to the show. Ted Neely, who has played the lead role of Jesus in scores of productions, looked back at the role when he had passed his 80th year.  He “by the controversy the show stirred up.  "I gotta tell you, it was very strange," he told Tapestry.  "Our production company said, no matter what they may say to you, don't say anything, because they might punch you right in the face. So we were silent." But the show would not be.  Would the controversy shut the show down?  Would protestors block the doors?  Or would the show simply go on?  We’ll talk about how the audiences, the critics, and the world reacted to the opening of Jesus Christ Superstar in this episode of THM. [Footnotes in episode 24] Support the show

    52 min

  7. OCT 7

    How the musical was written -- Jesus Christ Superstar (3 of 5; Episode 26)

    Send us a text There is a new show out there, and this one is, boldly enough, a re-telling of the story of Jesus Christ from the perspective of Judas.  That, by itself, is likely to be controversial.  And to take on this sacred topic the cast prepares itself by…covering the body of performer playing Christ and having the castmates lick it off of him, to get “closer to Jesus.” The stage crew is pulling together the props and set pieces to make the show work which include… plastic tambourines, fish, enormous protozoa-like creatures, representations of the man in the moon, strings of beads hanging from poles, boulders, and a gigantic set of false teeth. Jesus will need to be crucified, and for that the actor playing Jesus will be wrapped in what one reviewer will call an “auto-erotic silver artichoke.”  He’ll be followed around by his conscience, which will be represented as a group of performers dressed in puffy suits that look like the stay-puffed marshmellow man. Do these seem like typical staging choices to represent the final days of Christ to you?  And this is definitely NOT a parody; this is miles from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.  None of these are attempts to make fun of, or deconstruct, the story of Jesus.  They are legitimate efforts to enhance the story.  Why are they so weird?  Why were they there?  Did they propel the show to success or did they have to be overcome for the production to become the very first to run for 8 years in London and serve as the protype for both rock operas specifically and megamusicals overall?  Our sermon will be begin shortly, no this episode of THM. [Footnotes in episode 24] Support the show

    1h 8m

  8. SEP 23

    The Judas story in (and outside) the Bible -- Jesus Christ Superstar (2 of 5; Episode 25)

    Send us a text It is 1432 and the small, medieval French village is abuzz.  There’s a travelling theater troupe and they’re going to perform what is, far and away, the most exciting show the town will ever see.  It happens every year, but only once a year, and everyone – from the smallest child to the oldest farmer – is going to see it.  It’s like a modern musical; you’ve seen it before, but the performance itself is so spectacular you see it again. The crowd is absolutely alight before the show even starts.  There is energy and chatter; think of a heavy metal concert crossed with a soccer match.  And it’s a heavy metal show with a huge amount of fake blood.  There’s man who gets lashed over and over, his side is pierced with a spear, nails are driven through his hands, thorns are dragged over his scalp.  His tormenters take turns pulling out his beard until his flesh comes off with it. This tale, gory as it is, does come from original source material.  But there is one key change.  In the original version, the people killing this poor victim are Roman soldiers.  In this play, they are Jews.  And it’s not hard to tell they are Jewish – the features of the performers are grossly exaggerated so everyone, including those small children, can tell who they are.  They live on the edge of the village and you’d never hire them to work for you, but they never go away, either. The crowd is pumped by the action.  The tormenters are pure evil; the victim is pure good.  This is a passion play of Christ, and Judas the villain is portrayed so convincingly, and his identity is so linked to his race, that everyone knows what to do when the show is over.  They move as a vigilante mob to the Jewish sections and dispense street punishments for these children of Judas, beating them, breaking their possessions, burning what they can, and of course a few will die actual deaths to atone for the staged death that everyone has just witnessed.  It will happen this year.  It happened last year.  It will happen next year.  This is just how the village celebrates the miracle of Easter.  But looking back over history, it’s not hard to conclude that this was less a celebration of Jesus than a condemnation of Judas, a man who’s name is synonymous with betrayal, a man who bears the most hated name in all of western history. Eight centuries later two Anglicans would take up the story again, with modern and elaborate staging, but with two important differences.  Their story would include music, and their story would be told from the perspective of Judas.   They couldn’t be more opposite in their sympathies, but neither the passion plays of the middle ages nor the modern rock opera JCS are the Biblical story of Judas – and maybe, neither one could be.   What is the Biblical story of Judas?  It is NOT the same in all of the gospels…and a large chunk of what is considered the Judas story was added after the Bible canon was written.  What was the historical Judas, who was the Judas in the Bible, how does all that connect to JCS, and what does it tell us about life and theater?  We’ll take our own reflective walk through Gethsemane together on this episode of THM.  [footnotes in episode 24] Support the show

    1h 8m
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About

The deepest dives you can find anywhere into the history and backstory of the great musical productions.  Dense content...for people who aren't.  And, I’ll never miss an opportunity to pursue any mystery, bizarre coincidence, improbable event, or supernatural suggestion along the way because, in the words of Dirk Gentley, it is all connected. You can contact me directly at theaterhistorypodcast@gmail.com Released every other Tuesday.  Music by Jon Bruschke and Andrew Howat, arranged, performed, and recorded by Andrew Howat. Check out the interview on Musical Theater Radio, episode 404: https://www.musicaltheatreradio.com/podcast

Information

  • Creator
    Dr. Jon Bruschke, PhD
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2025
  • Episodes
    32
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Theater History and Mysteries
  • Show Website
    Theater History and Mysteries