The Present Stage: Conversations with Theater Writers Dan Rubins

Adapter/lyricist/director/choreographer Rebecca Martínez and adapter/composer/lyricist/music director/translator Julián Mesri hop aboard the podcast to share about their bilingual musical adaptation of The Comedy of Errors for the Public Theater's Mobile Unit. Hear from this multi-hyphenate pair about what it means to write for community, how they approached creating an adaptation that would be fully bilingual, and where they found musical inspiration in Shakespeare's text. It's a fascinating deep-dive into a uniquely powerful process!

Rachel Bonds RETURNS to the podcast, alongside composer-lyricist Zoe Sarnak, to discuss their new musical The Lonely Few. In this episode, the collaborators share what it means to write queer musical theater love songs for two women and nerd out with Dan about the creative, complex use of "diegesis" — music that takes place within the reality of the characters — throughout the musical. Musical theater fans won't want to miss this one!

José Rivera joins the podcast to talk about excavating his childhood memories in The Hours Are Feminine, the possibilities of translation onstage, and the distance between this play and the magic realism for which he is best known. (He also shares a bit about his upcoming adaptation of A Hundred Years of Solitude for Netflix!) Don't miss this enchanting episode.

Laura Winters joins the podcast to talk all things All Of Me, her new play with The New Group. The conversation explores the impact of her protagonists' use of AAC (alternative and augmentative communication) devices on playwriting process, the challenges of staging accessible stories, and her approach to the responsibility of bringing representing disabled experiences in a theatrical rom-com. Don't miss this delightful discussion!

Three days after becoming Pulitzer Prize finalists for Here There Are Blueberries, Tectonic Theater Project's Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich join the podcast to talk about the rich theater of archival research and what it means to dramatize and animate a story of archival detective work onstage. Don't miss this essential discussion about the boundaries of documentary theater, the ethics of centering the perspectives of perpetrators, and the power of paying attention to what's just outside the storyteller's frame.

Peregrine Teng Heard, Artistic Director of The Associates Theater Ensemble, joins the podcast to talk about her new play Redemption Story. Check out this wide-ranging conversation focused on how the playwright navigates the surreal ambiguities of the story, negotiates the play's multi-layered themes of representation in Hollywood, and constructs characters who are themselves performers.