Download Tag: musical theatre

From the Archives: “The Girl From the North Country” off-Broadway cast

Featuring the music of Bob Dylan, with a book and direction by Connor Macpherson, The Girl From the North Country is now playing at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway.

In Fall 2018, Laura Heywood sat down with three of the original principals from the Public Theater’s production of the show — the production that has transferred to Broadway this season.

Kimber Elayne Sprawl plays Marianne, a nineteen year old black woman raised to adulthood by a white family that owns and runs a boardinghouse, the setting for the musical. Jeanette Bayardelle is a tenant at the boarding house, a widow with a special relationship to the proprieter.  And the third voice you’ll hear is Sydney James Harcourt, an actor who departed the production after the Public run — his role, a transient boxer with a complicated past, is no played on Broadway by Austin Scott. 

LHI will revisit The Girl From the North Country with new content, once the production is officially open on Broadway (it’s currently in previews) — and for now, let this archival conversation whet your appetite for a beautiful new Broadway musical.

Laura Heywood Interviews Steven Sater (Spring Awakening, Alice By Heart)

Steven Sater is a Tony, Grammy, and Olivier Award winning lyricist, librettist, writer, poet and much more. He is the man responsible for Spring Awakening, the show that inspired the passion that led to Laura Heywood’s online alter ego, @BroadwayGirlNYC. His new novel, Alice By Heart, is a gorgeous and poetic expansion of the world behind the musical of the same name. Hardly a re-relling of Alice in Wonderland, the story instead is about a different Alice, down a different kind of hole – a lost pubescent girl in the panic of 1940s London, seeking refuge in an abandoned Tube station for herself and her sick best friend. The other children there do seem to oddly resemble the characters from her favorite Lewis Carroll novel, and the more terrifying the war becomes above ground, the more solace she takes in retelling the story she knows by heart to Alfred, the best friend who is succumbing slowly to tuberculosis. As a boy, Steven Sater himself was very sick – confined in quarantine most of his young life – and books were his refuge, too. So as we read the intertwined stories of these two Alices and the plight of struggling youth – we are, in a way, learning Steven’s story, too.

Laura Heywood Interviews Daryl Roth, live at NAMT 2019

Daryl Roth is one of the most prolific, influential producers in the history of New York theatre. Her mission is to champion thought-provoking, inspiring work onstage, and she is honored to hold the singular distinction of producing 7 Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: Anna in the Tropics; August: Osage County (2008 Tony Award); Clybourne Park (2012 Tony Award); How I Learned to Drive; Proof (2001 Tony Award); Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women; and Wit. Recorded live at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s 2019 Fall Conference, this interview focuses on the past, present and future of musical theatre from a producer’s point of view. Roth has produced over 90 productions on and off Broadway, many with political or activist content.

Laura Heywood Interviews Rachel Sussman (theatre and event producer)

Rachel Sussman is a Tony Award-nominated producer committed to cultivating dynamic, inclusive theatrical work through collaboration. With credits including What The Constitution Means To Me, The Woodsman, NYMF (Artistic Director), and Audible, she is also the lead producer and co-creator of In a new musical by Shaina Taub about the American women’s suffrage movement. In addition to theatre, Rachel and Laura discuss intersectionality, trans visibility, putting the B back in LGBTQ+, homelessness (specifically Rachel’s work with Covenant House) and even Rachel’s childhood performing with her family dog.