Actors: On Process

Maria invites me to her apartment & tells me about her legendary high school performance as the Emcee in CABARET, her love of Sondheim and desire to work on a musical, tools and techniques for breaking down a script, and her time at UCSD which led to meeting Les Waters & other important future collaborators.

Recent Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle Award winner John-Andrew Morrison joins me to speak about an unexpected encore at DREAMGIRLS on Broadway, spending too much time in the theater department as a pre-law major at Brandeis University, what led to his graduate studies at the University of California, San Diego, a disastrous showcase season, important advice from the now artistic director of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company Maria Manuela Goyanes, corporate jobs, and what led to a pivot in his career that made way for the developmental process of A STRANGE LOOP, & what he’s most looking forward to about returning to the piece when it’s safe to be making theater again.

Recommended viewing: https://youtu.be/ZDLCvVBUBTM

Tony Award nominee Cailtin Kinnunen joins me on Zoom to discuss her big move to New York City, the benefits of being homeschooled, how she celebrated her sixteenth birthday, & how she and I became friends. We also trade stories and compare moments of panic onstage, discuss the familial bonds she built in THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, how THE PROM became the gift that keeps on giving, and how she has used her time this year to reflect and recalibrate after a busy and hectic 2019.

Patrice sits down with me, via Zoom, to chat about her extraordinary childhood, when theatre began to speak to her, majoring in engineering at Cornell University before securing her family’s blessing to pursue theatre, how Kristin Linklater’s voice work changed her life, the importance of not lying in the audition room, her work as an educator, how her relationship with Mfoniso Udofia came to be, her unbelievable audition for HALFWAY BITCHES GO STRAIGHT TO HEAVEN, finding and locating her two most recent roles as Wanda Wheels and Abasiama Ufot, & falling in love with Sir Patrick Stewart.

Before the pandemic, I sat down with Daniel Jenkins in his apartment to talk about growing up as a self-proclaimed ‘nerd’, a day in the life as an apprentice at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, transitioning to New York and his starring role as Huckleberry Finn in the original Broadway company of BIG RIVER as well as his return to the musical almost twenty years later. We discuss stories from the auditions and processes for BIG, John Doyle’s production of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, and STAGE KISS including dancing with Rebecca Taichman, frequent collaborations with Bartlett Sher, as well as our mutual appreciation and admiration for the late Michael Friedman.