
50 episodes

The Farm Theater's Bullpen Sessions bullpensessions
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- Arts
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5.0 • 18 Ratings
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The Farm Theater's Bullpen Sessions are conversations with working theater professionals aimed at early career artists or any one interested in the journey of building a career in the theater. Season one features guests including: Aaron Roman Weiner ("The Americans"), Susan Pourfar ("Scandal"), Raul Castillo (El Chicano; HBO's Looking), Matthew Hallock (Chair of Centre College Theater Dept.), Portia (Sweat; Ruined), Kris Diaz (The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety), Lisa Arrindell (Madea's Family Reunion; Saints and Sinners), Megan Kingery (Broadway Producer, The Great Comet of 1812), Judy Bowman (Casting Director, Actors Theatre of Louisville), Rick Steiger (Broadway Stage Manager, An American in Paris; War Horse). The focus of the podcast is to have conversations with working theater professionals and to demystify the process of building a career in the theater. Hosts Lee Kaplan and Padraic Lillis will talk with artists from all disciplines in the theater to have them share: how they got to where they are, who and what helped them, what they carry with them into the room, and advice for early career artists.
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Bullpen Sessions Episode 72: Katie Mack
Katie Mack (she/her) is a queer sober scrappy nomadic creative who loves other creatives. Her most recent curiosity is the intersection of technology and live theater, to be explored in future production #uglycry: grief hits different coming this fall. She is the founder and producer of multi-award winning podcast “fcking sober: the first 90 days”, has helped create over 40 original song works as an actor, and six first works with her company Somehow9am Productions, and has an unhealthy love of peanut butter.
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Bullpen Sessions Episode 71: Awoye Timpo
Awoye Timpo: is a New York-based director. Off- Broadway directing credits include Elyria (Atlantic Theater Company) In Old Age (New York Theatre Workshop), Good Grief (Vineyard Theatre), The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll’d (Playwrights Realm), and The Homecoming Queen (Atlantic Theater Company). Regionally she has directed Pipeline (Studio Theatre), Everybody Black (Actors Theatre of Louisville) and Paradise Blue (Long Wharf Theatre). Additional credits include Carnaval (National Black Theatre), Sister Son/ji (Billie Holiday Theatre) and Ndebele Funeral (59E59 Theaters, Edinburgh Festival/Summerhall, and South African tour). She is a Creative Director for music events and a Creative Consultant for the African-American Policy Forum.
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Bullpen Sessions Episode 70: Suzy DeVore
Suzy DeVore is a professor of theatre, actor and director. She holds an MFA from The Actors Studio Drama School, New School University in New York City and a BA in Dance from Point Park College, Pittsburgh, PA. She is currently the Program Manager for the Hillsborough Community College Theatre Program, Ybor Campus in Tampa, FL. She has directed over 25 productions for the college. She is also the president of the Visual and Performing Arts Series of the college, which welcomes national guest artist performances and workshops. While in NYC, she was the managing director of her theatre company of P.L.A.Y. Put Life Ahead of You, which focused on the integration of education through the arts, by both producing new work and pursuing the history of classical work. Favorite theatre productions include roles in Extremities, Laura, The Shadow Box, Last Night of Ballyhoo, and In the Blood. She is a member of Association of Theatre in Higher Education and has been awarded outstanding director for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Region IV.
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Bullpen Sessions Episode 69: Dr. Indira Etwaroo
Dr. Indira Etwaroo (she/her) (award-winning producer, director, scholar, and arts and culture executive) has worked across the world to develop multiplatform venues and content that represents the diversity of the globe and explores the complex intersections between stories-that-matter and the topics-of-our- time. She currently serves as the first-ever Director of the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple in California.
Dr. Etwaroo was a major force for content innovation and inclusion in the public media field, as the Founding Executive Producer of The Greene Space in NYC and Founding Executive Producer of NPR Presents, the national live events platform to bring live, on-air and online content to audiences across the world. Of note, she Executive Produced the American Broadcast Premiere of the 75th Anniversary of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, starring Phylicia Rashad and the first-ever audio recordings and video broadcasts of August Wilson’s entire American Century Cycle, in partnership with the August Wilson Estate and Artistic Directors Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Stephen McKinley Henderson. She led The Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn through radical growth, as its Executive Artistic Director: more than doubling the audience, increasing revenue by 212%, and producing groundbreaking content. Dr. Etwaroo spearheaded the launch of the first-ever national $10 million strategic plan for thrivability for Black theater institutions, The Black Seed, in partnership with Gary Anderson, Dr. Monica NDounou and Shay Wafer. Indira’s work at BAM developed educational and humanities’ content that leveraged BAM’s MainStage work. Dr. Etwaroo has been a professor of graduate studies at Temple University and at NYU, teaching Leading Performing Arts Institutions in the 21st Century.
She has received awards and honors for her work, including the “40 under 40” of national leaders by The Network Journal, the Black Theater Network’s Larry Leon Hamlin Legacy Award, as well as the Larry Leon Hamlin Producer’s Award from the National Black Theatre Festival. She has lectured and published extensively on the performing arts, race, womanhood and equity; and has served as a Fulbright Scholar where she lived and worked with refugee Somali women in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Indira is the mother of Zenzele, a director and writer. -
Bullpen Sessions Episode 68: Skylar Fox
Skylar Fox (he/him) is a director, playwright and creator of magic and illusions for theatre. He cares about making wildly theatrical plays and musicals that push the boundaries of what theatre can do to tell demandingly vulnerable stories powerfully.
As a magic designer, Skylar is the illusions and magic associate for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway and around the world, and has created magic for Fat Ham (The Public Theater and National Black Theatre, Broadway upcoming), You Will Get Sick (Roundabout), A Beautiful Noise (associate design, Broadway), Damn Yankees (Shaw Festival) and Dracula (Maltz Jupiter Theater). He also has consulted on The Tonight Show, The Tony Awards and San Diego Comic Con.
He is the co-artistic director of Nightdrive, where he has directed and cowritten an apocalypse around a campfire (The Grown-Ups, secret location); a live, immersive alien movie (Alien Nation, Paradise Factory); a fivedimensional community meeting with a full pancake breakfast (Providence, RI, The Tank); a haunted rock concert (Thank You Sorry, Ars Nova); and a hybrid comic book with interactive animation (Apathy Boy, The Brick & Ars Nova, 2015 O’Neill finalist). He also directed and co-created The Annotated History of the American Muskrat by John Kuntz (The New Ohio, Boston Center for the Arts). -
Bullpen Sessions Episode 67: Stacey Raymond
Stacey Raymond is a critically-acclaimed stage and screen actor who resides in New York City. They played Paramedic Kerry Whitaker on NBC's hit series New Amsterdam for entire five seasons, Stacey has appeared in dozens of performances, workshops and readings with such theaters as New York Theatre Workshop, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ensemble Studio Theater, Page 73, LAByrinth Theater Company, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, to name a few. Select Film credits include: Alice in Andrew’s Land, August In The City and Romance In The Digital Age. Select TV credits include a recurring role on New Amsterdam (NBC), The Legend Of Vox Machina (Amazon Prime), Mr. Robot (USA), Bull (CBS), Law & Order: SVU (NBC), The Good Cop (Netflix), Alpha House (Amazon).
Stacey received a BFA in Acting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and is a proud member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA.
Customer Reviews
Covers the gamut...beautifully
The Farm's Bullpen sessions, is a throughorly engaging hour or so of stage director Patric Illis speaking with theater professional. As an interviewer, he humbly gives 95% of the time to his interviewees-- letting and encouraging them to go as deep as they like into any given area of their careers and the personal stories behind those careers. It's exciting to listen to the wild and varied trajectories of actors' and writer's lives and what fuels them. Zero fluff, zero pretense. Wish all theater podcasts were this on point. If you love hearing about 'process' it's all here!
Giving Thanks
Great podcast! Very inspiring. Thank you, Padraic and Lee for creating this.
Love this show
Padraic is brilliant and Lee asks great questions. Their guests are working artists who share gems of knowledge that I find incredibly helpful!