Sci-Fi Musicals Double Feature Tony Awards Preview

On this special bonus episode, we preview the Tony Awards through our sci-fi musical lens. We also get a chance to interview the team from The Brass Teapot, a new dark sci-fi musical about love, pain, and the cost of getting what you wish for.

www.thebrassteapotmusical.com

Transcript

Welcome

Speaker 0:10

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Sci-Fi Musicals podcast. It's our double feature episode for May. On this episode, we are going to talk with our special guests who are bringing in a musical, a sci-fi musical. And we're also going to discuss all of the fun sci-fi musicals that have been nominated for the Tony Awards that are coming up. Sci-fi is taking over the world. It is a sci-fi invasion. As you all know, we have a broad definition of sci-fi. So we're going to talk about the shows that we believe fit into that category and why, and why we're excited about that.

Speaker 1 1:00

Let's

Best Musical Nominees Kickoff

Speaker 1 1:01

start with the Big Kahuna. We're going to start with the nominees for Best Musical. And they are The Lost Boys, Schmigadoon, Titanic, and Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York.

Speaker 1:14

Right off the bat, The Lost Boys. We talked about that in our last double feature. It's got a lot of fun. I was super excited. 100% no questions. That is sci-fi. And it's a pretty big contender. And a lot of people are saying that it has a shot to win. The Tonys are known to go for the smaller musical, but this is one of the bigger musicals this season. Yeah, this is not that. But I would say that if a big musical could win, I think that this one has a shot at that.

Speaker 1 1:49

I'd say so too.

Speaker 1:50

Yeah. Because it's it's out of the box. It's doing things that you don't normally see in these big spectacle musicals. For example, I don't remember if I mentioned last time, but it has a post-credit scene.

Speaker 1 2:04

I've never seen anything like that in a musical. Yeah. Anybody listening out there, if you know any examples of other musicals that have that post-credit scene, post-bow scene thing going on, I'm super intrigued by that idea. So we're one for one so far with science fiction musicals in the best musical category. But can we keep the streak up?

Why Schmigadoon Counts As Sci-Fi

Speaker 2:25

Shmigadoon. I'd say it fits into the fantasy realm of our sci-fi world, right?

Speaker 1 2:32

It's an isekai kind of a thing. Yeah. It is about a modern day couple. This are plain ordinary in our reality kind of a couple, and they stumble across this magical musical theater realm where everybody's singing, and there are all these tropes from musical theater as they try to work out their interpersonal problems.

Speaker 2:51

Yeah. And I guess we should go back and say, for those of you who don't understand what the heck is this weird word for maybe non-musical theater people or maybe musical theater people that don't know the reference, Shmigadoon is a play on the title of a musical Brigadoon, which is a golden age musical about a fantasy land. And then Shmigadoon itself is the stage musical version of the TV show, which has the plot that we're describing now, which was on Apple TV and unfortunately got canceled. But I heard that because of the success of the show, and if it does win the Tony, I think that it has a chance. And I've heard Buzz that it might be renewed on television as well, because I was really sad that it didn't get renewed, it didn't get renewed for that third season.

Speaker 1 3:46

Um incredible if it did that. The third season is already written. It's ready to go. Yeah, and I'm sure they could get all the performers to come back because most of them came back for the second season anyway.

Speaker 3:56

Yeah, and all the performers in the show are Broadway people, like Kristen Chenowith, uh Alan Cumming, uh who is in the Apple show, is also Aaron to Bate.

Speaker 1 4:06

The Broadway musical of it too. So we even have cover going on there. Worthwhile saying that season one of the Apple TV series is Shmigadoon, and it's based on that golden age brigadoon-esque kind of a story. Slash Oklahoma, slash Seven Bright Seven Brothers, Carousel, all of those sort of era. Music Man is a very prominent thing in this one. When we get into season two, it's called Shmikago because it's always to that sort of darker, edgier kind of 1970s, 60s, 70s, yeah. Chicago the musical, and we all hear reference to Jesus Christ Superstar and uh Sweeney Todd streak that goes through there. And oddly they do hair too. Season three, then, and I don't know too much about it, but because it hasn't been released or anything, it's supposed to be based on the sort of like big mega musical of the 80s and early 90s. So I don't even know what the name of it would be, but it'd be like based on things like Les Miz or Miss Saigon or things like that. So it is my only hope that the Schmatz doon. Yeah, Schmatz. It is my most fervent hope that the Schmigadoonians stage some sort of epic positions and maybe invade in our real world because that seems very fitting for the genre and for this sort of a show. Anyway, though, so Schmigadoon, in case you can't tell, Andy and I really like Schmigadoon. We really like behind it. It's very clever writing.

Speaker 5:39

Even though I think it's a big cast show, I still would consider it a small musical in a sense. So I think it it feels like it has a small musical feel or it has an underdog feel to it.

Speaker 1 5:53

So there's nothing practical element as something like Last Boys, or if we if you go back to other kind of big musicals, like from back.

Speaker 6:00

It feels like shucked.

Speaker 1 6:02

Okay, yeah. Absolutely. That makes sense.

Speaker 6:04

It or something rotten, it has that like winking at the audience. We're in a musical and we know it, which normally I don't enjoy. I will caveat and say that's not my favorite genre. But I think for Shmigadun, they do something where they're not just winking, but they're winking with so much love for the art form that I don't mind that they're winking and saying, we know we're in a musical and and why are we singing? Look, we're singing. A lot of times that bothers me. We're gonna talk about that when we get to the TV musical episode of this podcast. But uh that genre kind of bugs me a lot. But I feel like this show, this I've only I haven't seen the stage show, I will admit, but the TV show version does not bother me when they do that.

Speaker 1 6:55

Um you have again, we will talk about this later, but these get stuck in a like, how do we stop singing? The singing is the bad thing, let's get out of it. And why why is singing the bad thing? Singing is a great thing. I love singing, everybody loves singing, everybody loves musicals all the time. 100% they should.

Speaker 7:14

Some people don't, but they should.

Speaker 1 7:15

No, everybody loves musicals, they're just wrong. All right, I think what Shmigadoon does is it says it's not just like, hey, how can I stop singing? It's we have to learn to embrace this musical theater world in order to get back to our own world. Yes and I think that's something that's not a lesson. It's sometimes they make that turn right at the end.

Speaker 7:34

Love, love the show. Uh so even though they're not sci-fi necessarily, let's talk about the other two nominees, which are uh Titanic and Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York.

Titanic As Disaster Sci-Fi Parody

Speaker 7:47

So let's talk about Titanic, which so I don't know.

Speaker 1 7:50

I'm gonna make the argument that Titanic is science fiction, all right. And it is science fiction going by the rule of humans reacting to new technology case, the new technology being a great big freaking boat. Love it, love it because think of all the new technologies that the Titanic had to be in order to be the biggest boat at the time. Yeah, and then what happens if it sinks? Plus, like a lot of disaster film are in that science fiction place anyway. Like, what happens when our technologies go wrong? Uh when the systems that we have set up in place fail us, and I think that's a very science fictional thing altogether, even if oh no, we're in a forest fire done by completely like regular things. How do we escape? How do we get out? It's like I would say that is a fringe case, even in our like expansive view. Titan Titanic, though, I'll say, yeah, I will count that as science fiction for the purposes of this podcast. Sure. You have a singing iceberg, and I can count animals.

Speaker 8:44

And singing natural objects. I I think that if if you do think about the story of the Titanic like in context, it does feel like larger than life. It has captured the like imaginations I'm putting in quotes of people for many years, and it does feel like something fantastical in a way that Doctor Who did Titanic in space.

Speaker 1 9:14

So if it's in Doctor Who, it's automatically science fiction, period.

Speaker 9:19

Okay, so we will count Titanic in our sci-fi genre. We're like, why not?

Speaker 1 9:26

So, Andy, is this just a straight-up adaptation of Titanic?

Speaker 9:32

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 9:34

Shot for shot. Shot for shot, pay me like one of your French girls. 100% Titanic. Great.

Speaker 9:43

Oh, yeah, complete with a Celine Dion narrator. Yes.

Speaker 1 9:48

That's how it's different.

Speaker 9:50

No, it's a parody. It's a parody. Uh, again, I have not had the beautiful opportunity of seeing this amazing show. But yeah, the idea is that Celine Dion has hijacked the tour of the Titanic Museum, and then she uh claims to have survived the actual sinking of the ship, and then narrates her version of what really happened to all the characters in the movie Titanic. It's super camp, it's a lot of references to modern things like drag race and other pop culture things. It's one of those shows that's been on my list because it was off Broadway for a long time. Yeah. And it's really exciting that it that's such a show like this, like similar, I think, like to Oh Mary, where it's just so gay and like so insanely camp, like that it made it to Broadway, like being so like quirky and fringe and out of the box, like it's just like heartening to see something as kooky and weird get to the Broadway stage, is exciting. So I hope it runs a million years.

Speaker 1 11:06

And the fact that this one took the route from like little quirky off-Broadway show, parody musical.

Speaker 11:11

Yeah, it's a parody bona fide on Broadway. So we've got two parody musicals up for the Tony Awards, which is really crazy, like to think about. But at the same time, like Avenue Q beat Wicked. So which precedence for that. So yeah, who knows if Titanic can run away with the Tony, like I won't be sad about that. Unfortunately, though, I think this is where the sci-fi streak runs

Two Strangers And Broadway Trends

Speaker 11:34

out because too much. It does carry a case and I think that the most likely candidate for winning, because the Tony does love a small, tiny, two-person musical, I think that it rewards surprising new original emerging voices.

Speaker 1 11:54

Okay, I'm sure.

Speaker 11:55

So although that's not a hundred percent always the case, musicals are often come from adaptation. So adapting something doesn't get punished. But I think that if there can be something that comes from an original source and it works, I think that usually creators are given a little boost for that as well.

Speaker 1 12:22

It's like doing a show without a safety net in some ways. Like writing any original show is just harder than adapting.

Speaker 12:29

So yeah, whereas the rest of these are based on source material of some kind, right? Yeah. Two being literal parody musicals. Two strangers carry a cake across New York about. What is the price of this? Is it about? I'm across New York. Okay. Yes. Okay, so there's uh an English guy who flies to New York for his father's wedding, and uh the sister of the bride is picking him up at the airport, and he goes with her to pick up the wedding cake. That's it.

Speaker 1 13:05

That is the entire premise.

Speaker 13:07

Um and it's just two people in this musical, right? Yes. The other thing about Two Strangers is it's British, so you have that sort of British invasion tradition coming in with this one because there's which we'll see in the revivals as well, there is a tradition of British musicals having a home on the New York stage, and this represents that trend as well.

Speaker 1 13:31

Okay. So in addition to the large sci-fi takeover of the best musical category, and when we get to uh best revival, we're really gonna have a good time with that. But I'm gonna say that of these four musicals, we're seeing four very different approaches to musical theater in 2026. There is the very large corporate-driven movie musical adaptation, and that is The Lost Boys. We see uh the uh the popular uh older, old school inspired golden age musical kind of thing that was also highly well known because it was on television first, that is made it to Broadway and is a musical comedy and is a little bit winking toward the audience. So the path that one took was from television land onto Broadway, and not necessarily the same path as a Lost Boys film, right? It's also very new. Shimiga Dune has come out within the past 10 years, whereas Lost Boys is a film from the 1980s. Then we have Titanic, which follows along with all of these parody musicals that are going off Broadway. Uh things that we've named a bunch of them here, but even things like the Bridgerton musical or Rabbitoui the musical. Heated rivalry, the parody that's heated rivalry of the parody. Our friend Dylan. Dylan. So we see this whole explosion of parody musicals that are happening there. Maybe because the rights of shows are just so difficult to get now for new writers, and so there's a good path in. So, in terms of just business model of musical theater right now, I think that this presents a fascinating snapshot about just where we are in the industry. That these are the four musicals that are being allotted as the uh the nominees for the best of the musicals this past year.

Speaker 15:14

And we got sci-fi representing right up front. We love that. Love to see it.

Speaker 1 15:18

Geeky Little Heart Flutterer. I love it.

Best Revival Category Goes Full Sci-Fi

Speaker 15:21

So let's go to Best Revival because this is where we are stacked.

Speaker 1 15:27

We've got three shows in the best revival of a musical category. And I'm gonna argue that we are three for three for sci-fi.

Speaker 15:34

100%.

Speaker 1 15:35

We've got cats, the jellical ball, which is the a hyped up queer representation version of cats that is set at a ballroom scene. Yes, it's so much fun, it is amazing and quirky. And Andy, what you were saying about Corey for queer representation on Broadway, this is dialed up to not even 11. 11.

Speaker 16:00

1100. Yes.

Speaker 1 16:02

As high as you can go with the queer representation, cats is it, and it is a blast. It is a good time out there.

Speaker 16:09

I've never seen a theater house full of people up on their feet screaming and yelling and just enjoying themselves as much as I have at Pats. Like I was just in shock at how much fun every single person in the room was having.

Speaker 1 16:27

Why is this one sci-fi?

Speaker 16:29

Because the original is talking about and the heavy side layer.

Speaker 1 16:33

Yeah, space and incarnation.

Speaker 16:36

It's just inherently like out there. It can't not be sci-fi to me. We're gonna be talking about this in depth next season. So we'll save this main discussion for then. We'll leave it at the this is sci-fi and we'll get into it.

Speaker 1 16:53

Second nominee is ragtime. And this is set canonically in early 20th century. Um it is uh it is about a historical moment in American history.

Speaker 17:07

Race and class, right? It's not about sci-fi.

Speaker 1 17:10

Race and class is never in sci-fi. Yeah. So why is this science fiction? The fiction part is easy because technically none of this happened, even if there are certain historical figures that are present in work, like Henry Ford is in there, and Emma Goldman, and uh we get Evelyn Nesbitt in a very famous turn. And if we're going by the idea that science fiction is humans reacting to new technologies, then this is 100% science fiction. Major parts of the plot revolve around the model T. Ford winding up with Colehouse Walker and him buying the car for his future and his family's future. We also get ideas about mass media and new political systems coming in and the rise of factories and inequality, and those things are all very science fictional ideas. Plus, warn the Duke. We have one character who is aware of the future and can tell the future and is trying to warn anybody who will listen about the oncoming World War One. So you get this subplot going on here where the main character of the show is psychic, and that is totally there.

Speaker 18:16

You go. That's our uh tagline on this show. Ragtime is sci-fi. Actually, sci-fi, actually, and then of course, the final uh show in this revival category is Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show. Oh my god, this show made me gay. They always say, Don't let your kids watch those movies, they'll turn them gay. Yes, that happened. I don't know how many times I did the time warp in high school, but at one point I jumped to the left and I never stepped to the right again. So, yes, I can also say that there are a lot of problematic things about the show, but ultimately it's a formative piece of culture for myself and many in my generation. Um, and so it's exciting to see it back on stage and with an amazing cast. Again, my boy Andrew Durant is playing Brad. Uh as I've mentioned before, we grew up in the same community theater back in Georgia. And there's just the cast. I'm not gonna call out everyone in the cast, it's really stacked.

Speaker 1 19:35

So, why is this science fiction? Because you've got this strange group of aliens who are there to blow your mind and blow your gender, and there are space police and freeze rays, and uh there are individuals who've been created, like created people, like the golem kind of a thing. Um so we've got like this is sci-fi through and through, 100%.

Speaker 19:56

Yeah, and there's some questions about casting, who should play Dr. Frankenfurter, and that's always been controversial. I think ultimately if it's something that is a problem uh for you, like that's respectable. And I say don't see the show, don't support something that you don't agree

Loving Shows While Naming Problems

Speaker 20:19

with. I think that it's one of those shows that's like my problematic fame. I don't know. I'm on the fence about seeing it for some of those reasons, but I'm excited that it can be the kind of show that brings joy to a lot of people. Personally, I want to celebrate a show like like Cats, which also has a lot of problems historically.

Speaker 1 20:44

Let's just three of the revivals have their problems. Yeah, ragtime as well.

Speaker 20:48

Like exactly King of Ragtime is really depressing and upsetting and and like trauma porn. And Cats has a history of really racist sections of it. I believe most of them, if hopefully all of them, have been removed by now. Uh, it doesn't erase the pain that they have caused. I'm not saying that those things don't make the shows like have issues. That's the thing about revivals.

Speaker 1 21:19

I believe that's also why we're big proponents in new musical theater, is because there are a lot of these like problematic faves that we love that we like are inspired by, and yet we also recognize that these are like things that have real problems and that don't carry the messages that like we believe in. Exactly. So I think that's a big reason why we are writers is because we can be using these things that we love, but putting them in uh in better ways that like more reflect our values as human beings and the world see.

Speaker 21:49

So on this podcast, we want to stay positive, and so sometimes we don't want to focus on like the negative things about these shows, but we also don't want to gloss over them either. So I just wanted to mention we know it would be disingenuous of us to have real problems to them. Yeah, and we want to respect it's the right of everyone to say, yeah, I don't like that show for like totally fair reasons. But we're also excited that we have three sci-fi musicals in the celebrate that. In the best revival category.

Cats Reimagined And Andrew Lloyd Webber

Speaker 1 22:23

Now I'm gonna talk about Katz for one more second, and that's that you can see another trend going on in the theater world just by Katz's inclusion in this, too. Is that Andrew Lloyd Weber seems to be having a moment where his works are getting reimagined to these very different contexts from how they were originally put on. So we have uh very recently on Broadway, we have Sunset Boulevard, which was this stripped down, gritty, bloody version of it that had still interesting kinds of effects without the gigantic scenery budget going on for it. We've got Phantom, which like after its record-breaking, like decades-long run on Broadway closed down. Then within a few years, it was back running again in New York in an off-Broadway house where it's this immersive production with the phantom, the masquerade. Yeah.

Speaker 23:14

It's not even an off-Broadway house. It's literally a shop, it's literally an art store that they recreated into this immersive space where yeah, there are six different phantoms that audiences follow around with within 15-minute increments, and each audience gets a full show that they follow these different phantoms through through the story. And it's totally immersive. Diane Paulis directed it, and so it's very much like Sleep No More, but like it's phantom.

Speaker 1 23:51

You also have something like a Vita, which is coming to Broadway next season. Yes, I'm so excited. So yeah, I think Angeloid Weber has this like newfound renaissance now because Angeloid Weber is very distinctly musical theater. You sing Android Weber's stuff in your life, and your aunt and Peoria will be like, oh, I know this show. So I see that trend happening now, too, with cats. And I think that really continues on with this sort of a thing.

Speaker 24:20

I and I think what's also really cool about cats is they didn't really change the music.

Speaker 1 24:25

Cats, the Jellicle Ball redoing its orchestrations, in one sense, is very typical of just what happens anytime that any show has a revival, has a new production anywhere in the world. But then this particular one is interesting because that re-orchestration goes along with the reimagining of it.

Speaker 24:43

Yeah, but I'm saying they didn't change it that much. Yeah. And my point is that all the people that said, Oh, I hate cats, I'm like, you're watching the same show. Like you just hated the costumes.

Speaker 1 24:54

So what cats did was that they left everything in place, basically, and had the orchestrator come in and change things. If they wanted to change the music, then it would be probably an arranger who would come in.

Speaker 25:05

Plus, uh Android Weber is credited for best orchestrations for the Tony Awards. He was heavily involved in any orchestrations that they did for this revival. And pretty much everything to me sounds the same as any version of cats that I've heard because I think his fingerprints were still all over it. And I will say that there are lots of different versions of cats. We're gonna talk about Starlight Express in a couple episodes. There are like a million different versions of Starlight Express, but they all sound like Starlight Express. They all sound like Andrew Lloyd Weber because he did all those versions. And so my point about cats is that whatever you do to the orchestrations, the music is still Andrew Lloyd Weber. It's still basically the show is the show. And all the people that are cats haters need to look at themselves in the mirror and say, Do I just hate leotards? What do I really hate about this show? Because now they're coming, now people are coming back and saying, Oh, I love cats, but I don't know. I hated it before and now I love it. Girl, it's the same show.

Speaker 1 26:22

And I think that is very much the power of the sort of recontextualizing the older work. Yeah. That you can make people who think of the old work as being musty as coming to the table with this new stuff and being like, oh no, this is actually very cool. I hate the old work, but the new stuff is great, even though it's the same thing.

Speaker 26:38

Yeah. For those of us who have always loved it, yeah, it is awesome. So booyah. But also welcome. Yes, you can join us. I don't know what else I can say about the Tony Awards, except that I won't be sad for any of this. The only sadness is that Chess didn't get nominated, but I would still want cats to win. So and if ragtime or Rocky Horror wins, I'm okay with that. And all the best musicals, I would be happy for any of them to win.

Acting Noms And Ticket Strategy

Speaker 27:10

If you have the means to get out and see any of these shows, I would go ahead and buy those tickets before the Tony Awards on June 7th. Um because if anybody wins, it's going to be tough to get those tickets after that time.

Speaker 1 27:25

I love the Tonys because not only are they just this perfect little snapshot of where you're at in a Broadway season, and it's a really great way for any of these shows to puncture into mainstream culture for a little bit.

Speaker 27:38

Yeah. And then I also wanted to congratulate all the uh the performers who have been nominated for sci-fi musicals. Luke Evans for Frankenfurter in Rocky Horror, Josh Henry for Cole House Walker Jr. in Ragtime, and Brandon Uranowitz for Tata in Ragtime are our sci-fi nominees for leading actor in a musical. Then we've got Sarah Chase as Melissa Gimbal in Schmigadoon, Stephanie Tzu as Janet Weiss in Rocky Horror, which Stephanie was in Be More Chill, Cassie Levy as a mother in ragtime, and Marla Mendel as Celine Dion in Titanic. Those are all best performance by a leading actress in a musical. Those are our sci-fi nominees. And then best performance by a featured actor in a musical. We've got Ali Lewis Borz Borsgue. Oh my gosh, I'm butchering that. As David and The Lost Boys, Andre DeShields as Old Deuteronomy and Cats, the Jellico Ball, Ben Lee V. Ross as Mother's Youngest Brother in Ragtime. And as you mentioned, Leyton Williams as the icebergslash seman in Titanic. Then Best Performance by a featured actress in a musical. We've got Shoshana Bean as Lucy Emerson in The Lost Boys. Love her. Rachel Dratch as the narrator in Rocky Horror. Anna Gasdyer as Mildred Leighton in Shmigadoon. And then Nichelle Lewis as Sarah in Ragtime. She is incredible. I don't know who's gonna win in that category, but I couldn't even guess.

Speaker 1 29:26

Very competitive category.

Speaker 29:28

Uh I know. And then I just want to shout out directors. We got Michael Arden for Lost Boys, Lear de Bessonet for Ragtime, Christopher Gately for Shmega Dune, and Zelon Livingston and Bill Rausch for Cats the Jellico Ball. And then, you know what? I'm gonna shout out all the writers. And I'm gonna shout out all the writers because we're writers. So best book nominees. We've got Cinco Paul for Schmigadoon and Love Him again because of the TV show. Chris Hawk and David Hornsby, who I love because of Always Sunny and Mythic Quest and all his TV work. I'm a huge TV fan. But anyway, they wrote Lost Boys, Ty Blue, Marla Mandel, who plays Celine Dion, and Constantine Rizzuli for Titanic. And Jim Barne and Kit Buchin for Two Strangers Carry a Cake across New York. Then for Best Original Score, Music and or Lyrics Written for the Theater. Now, this also includes for plays. Maybe people don't know that you can be nominated for Best Original Score for a play. So there's only three musicals nominated for best original score and two plays. So The Rescues, who did music and lyrics for Lost Boys, Cinco Paul, who also wrote the book as well as music and lyrics for Schmigadune. And Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, who wrote music and lyrics for Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York. Steve Barganetti wrote music for Joe Turner's Come and Gone, which is a play. And then Caroline Shaw wrote the music for The Revival of Death of a Salesman.

Speaker 1 31:16

I'm going to say that Caroline Shaw is one of my favorite contemporary classical composers. Her stuff is so cool and powerful and always interesting to listen to.

Speaker 31:26

I can't do all the categories, but congratulations to all the designers as well and everyone. Okay, I lied. I'm going to do best orchestrations because we talked about it. So we mentioned already for Cat's Jellicle Ball, we have Trevor Holder, Doug Shat, Android Weber, and David Wilson. Also, Lost Boys has a bunch of folks. Kyler England, Adrian Gonzalez, Ethan Pop, and Gabriel Mann for Lost Boys. Doug Besterman and Mike Morris for Schmigadoon. Lux Pyramid for Two Strangers. And Brian Yusuf for Chess. Yay for best orchestrations. Again, okay, I have to stop because we're just gonna list every single Tony Awards.

Interview Begins With The Brass Teapot

Speaker 32:18

Welcome to our interview portion of the episode. We are here now with some of the creators of a new musical called The Brass Teapot. So we have with us Tim Macy, a book writer, and uh Chaz Cardigan, music and lyrics, and Eric Caico, who is a co-conceiver and producer on the show. Yeah. So welcome everyone. Thanks for being here today.

Speaker 3 32:52

Thanks.

Speaker 1 32:54

And if you can just go around like the first time you're talking to say who you are so that our audio listeners at home can get a sense of connecting the uh name to the voice. Sure thing done. This is Chess Cardigan, the composer. Perfect. Thank you.

Speaker 5 33:07

Yeah, and I'm uh Tim Macy. I'm one of the book writers. Uh the other book writer is Rama Mosley, who's not with us today.

Speaker 6 33:13

She's busy directing. I'm Tim. Hi, I'm Eric Keiko. I'm the co-conceiver slash one of the producers. I think I watched the film in 2014. It was probably the following year, Tim, that I emailed probably 11 years ago that this process really started. Yeah.

unknown 33:30

Yeah.

Speaker 33:31

So speaking of the film, let's go all the way back and talk about uh how this project started, a little bit about the story and what made it move from different forms that it's been in to the musical that it is today.

The Origin Story Behind The Teapot

Speaker 5 33:48

Yeah, for sure. I was actually still finishing my MFA when I wrote the short story. I just wrote it just to write it. It wasn't for any reason. I just had this idea. The premise of the brass teapot is a young couple struggling financially finds an antique teapot that gives them money when they hurt themselves and spirals from there. Right. When I was like 23, maybe, I was in a relationship and we were pretty broke and we were fighting all the time. And just this concept of man, if we could get paid to fight, or if we could get paid for this difficulty, sprung in my mind, and I wrote that story from a very real place. Absolutely. And I published it on a website East of the Web, it was called. It was a big short story website, and got a lot of attention. And a lot of high school kids started making their projects based on the story. They were making these short films that were all over YouTube, these couples hurting themselves and these magic teapots. I met Rama, who's a director. She read the story and reached out to me. And pretty soon I was writing the screenplay, and she was set to direct. And we made the movie. The movie took a little less time than it's taken to get the musical on a seat, but it took a long time, also. It's been a very long process. And Rama and I got the movie made. We shot in upstate New York in 2012. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. I think it was 2013. It was a great experience. And since then it's gained this international following. It's big in China. They made a shot-for-shot remake in China without permission, whatever. And Eric discovered it from there. And I'll pass it over to Eric.

Speaker 6 35:22

It was 2014. It was the week before I was about to get married here in Chicago. We were staying at my sister-in-law's place because we were living in New York at the time, but getting married in Chicago, and we were just looking for something to watch. The brass heat belt was on Netflix. I'd never heard of it. It looked cool. And when I watched it, my big takeaways were these questions of how far would you go to take care of those that you love, right? To hold on to a life of comfort and to attain a status of what you think your life should be when you compare yourself to other couples and your peers. And this could be career-wise, it could be like life milestone-wise. And months went by and this story and these questions stayed in my head. And I just thought this would be the type of unexpected, weird musical that I would want to see. So why not try and make it? Right. And so I Googled, I found this digital footprint like Tim was describing of the lore and this kind of community that had grown around the story and the subsequent film. And got an email address and just sent a cold email and said, Hey, I've never produced anything in real life before. I'm not expecting to hear anything. And then not much time went by before I got an email response from Rama saying, Hey, to your question of who owns the rights. We do. The creators of the film, to me, see and myself. Yes, we thought about dramatizing it. There

Finding The Sound And The Songwriter

Speaker 6 36:40

have been other sort of similar inquiries that haven't happened yet. We'd love to learn more about you and see if you're the right person to take this on. And then years went by, Tim, right? Emailing back and forth, like life happens, job transition happened. Ultimately, uh we all decided to work together. And that was five years after that. That was 2019. And so we were making plans. Uh Tim and Rama were drafting an initial book of sort of placeholders for the music because we were also looking for that last all-important missing piece. Um for a while we were pursuing just more traditional musical career writers and writing teams, and uh things weren't hitting and things weren't gelling in the way that we wanted them to for the tone of this particular piece. And so we started looking to the music industry. And my friend who's a music supervisor in LA, uh, Amanda Cree Thomas. And so I said, Hey, this is your world that I don't know anything about. Are there people in your network who you think uh might take to this uh tone, this theatricality, and this dark uh comedy that also has these supernatural elements? And she was like, I've got a short list for you. And thank goodness on that short list was Chaz Cardigan.

Speaker 4 37:43

Chaz, what did you say to that? I had been a recording artist for most of my life at that point. And at that time, this is the year 2020, maybe 2019, end of 2019, somewhere in there, yeah, end of 19, I think, I was signed to a major label at the time. And so the gears were all churning and the machine was really working in my favor, which is a very short-lived thing, and you have to make the most of it while it happens. At that time, my publisher sets up a meeting with this music supervisor under the pretense of, yeah, do you want to write a song for like the show Big Mouth? Or do you want to write a song for insert Hulu show here? To which the answer was always yes, because I would like to work and I like to work. I didn't really come from a theater background. I'd done theater once in high school. I loved it, but I didn't study the canon. I grew up in Kentucky. So the idea of being a theater person felt guarded in this ivory tower that belonged to the coasts to me as a kid, that I just didn't get to penetrate too much. I think glee was kind of my only in towards the great American songbook for the most part. Which, thank God for Glee. Thank you, Ryan Murphy. She said, Oh, and by the way, I'm working on this dark fairy tale or alternative rock musical, but you don't want to do that. And I thought, no, I want that. I no one's doing that. And at the time, I was hungry for knowing that my time with a label was probably pretty short-lived, because it tends to be. I did not know the pandemic was coming. But I sort of I was hungry already, subconsciously, I think, for something I could work on that the label did not own. And also knowing I'm 23, four when this is happening, and I'm thinking, I need something that's gonna open a door in my life in the next phase of my career. I don't know who I am on that other side of 25 yet, but I'd like to find out. So I watched the movie and I just found the story so evergreen. It's just so pure, this idea of what we give up for happiness. And that's a thing I write about a lot in my music. So I said yes, uh the team let me make a temp first demo to see if I could get the handle on it. And the shape of the score has changed a lot over the last six years. It's gone through a bunch of iterations of varying degrees of difficulty and density and rockiness versus musical theateriness and poppiness. And in the process, this show's allowed me a window to learn theater and study the canon and get to learn this thing that now I is my life and I love and respect it so much. And I am so grateful for getting to hop onto this years ago. Because now it's the main thing I get to work on with these guys.

Speaker 40:24

Yes, because as we were saying, uh musicals take a long time to gestate, sometimes longer than our children. And so this has been in the works for a long time, and we learned a little bit about the premise and the

Alice, The Teapot, And Ghost Guides

Speaker 40:41

story. Uh, but I'd like to maybe switch to uh you brought in some clips. So maybe we can share some of those clips. So we'll start with more.

Speaker 4 40:51

Uh the lead of the show, I'd say the primary lead, is a character named Alice, who has grown up in a tough background. She's been in this committed relationship for about 10 years since high school. They're not married yet. She's always changing the goalposts of when we're gonna get married, when we're gonna be able to settle, because that's very expensive to settle and get your life moving. And these characters are about 27, 28. She's gone through grad school. She wants to be a museum curator, and she just cannot get her life started. And at the time this song happens, she's just been denied a job she really thought she had an inn for. And while she was at this museum getting denied for a job, she found her way into a sort of back archive and stole this ancient thing, this relic, this brass teapot that called to her. And she can't quite put words on it. She can't quite articulate why she did that. But what the audience will have seen is that the teapot has possessed the spirits of these different historical figures that came out on stage and guided her towards the teapot, the ghosts of Marie Antoinette, Genghis Khan, Joseph Stalin, Al Capone, Joan of Arc. And they've guided her without her seeing them. And as more begins, her mom, who she's strange drunk, has just called her and said, Baby, I've relapsed. I'm back on drugs, I need you to pay for my rehab. And so Alice is having this kind of come to Jesus moment of saying, crap, okay, wow, I've got to pull it together then, I guess, and figure it out because I didn't get that job, and now I need to pay my mom like $50,000 to do this thing that I know she needs, and it all falls on me as the only daughter and yikes. So the song will start, and about midway through, what the audience will see is Alice accidentally burning herself with a curling iron, and then a ghost of Marie Antoinette will enter the song and it will then become a duet for the second half.

Speaker 2 42:44

That's more than a lot that seem on the outside. I'm sure I can break down any door.

Speaker 43:15

That's gorgeous. Uh, thank you. I can really hear your pop rock uh background in that.

Pop Rock Meets Musical Theater Craft

Speaker 43:22

One thing that I love about the history of musical theater is that it's always rooted in what is popular music at the time. So I think it's important to remember that a lot of times when we think of musical theater as a genre, we think that it should just be sounding a certain way. It should all sound like Sondheim, or it should all sound like Jason Brown. Yeah, or like some sound that we think musical theater sounds like. But to me, it should sound like popular music. It should sound like something you want to hear on the radio.

Speaker 4 43:56

That's yes. Yeah, I think that was an interesting sort of push and pull. When I came into the process, please, yes. When I came in, the initial sort of palette of influences that uh have been laid out were like, what if we chase like Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros and Florence Welch and Kate Bush was a big one. And it was like 80s alt, early college rock, right? This kind of and with a little bit of a dark folks-y thing. And we chased that, and then I chased like a combination of that and then like 2019-2020 radio alt, which was what I knew as I was like coming into the process. What I found was that musical theater, it is influenced obviously by whatever's popular at the time, but it also does have a canonical reference quality. There's always this linear understanding of what's come before in the canon that I think the best shows were able to tap into. I don't think you necessarily have to be like beholden to it or chained to it, but I think you like to know what's come before on stage. Or if it's a rock musical, you need to be like aware of why a rock musical in the past worked. A pop musical, it's like writing it on its own in a vacuum is a fun exercise, but maybe not necessarily the best to like give it a broad access point. Uh not even necessarily in these songs that you've got, but some of these songs stretch out for like 10, 11, 12 minutes, and they become these kind of sprawling uh pieces with like movements and sweeps in them.

Speaker 6 45:25

Little sequence, right? Yeah.

Speaker 4 45:28

Yeah, and they are punky, but there's uh there is like a musicality to them that I think that strikes a balance between both that I think the best shows I think do. Right. I I is what I feel like they do.

Speaker 6 45:39

And it's been fun to be aware of uh musical theater history, right? So to know, and not to say that you have to have a knowledge of it, but it's been fun for me to say, here's what a traditional act two opener would look like, right? Or here's a traditional act one closure would look like, and here's I'm using this example because it's a question we're currently grappling with as far as where the act rate wants to go. And it will tell you on something very different depending on what our decision is, right? So to leave them with one question and to invite them back in another musical moment or scene or whatever it may be. So it's fun to know the rules to then be able to break them. Yeah.

Speaker 46:16

I'm not saying you should discard musical theater history, but I'm saying it's that musical theater history tells us to make make sure to keep in mind that what works is also what is popular music at the time. Also, like you said, keeping in mind the canon that comes before it.

Speaker 4 46:36

It's this really interesting art form. Obviously, it's not location locked to New York, right? Or the West End, but it has been and it will be the nucleus of like where musical theater, where the canon is dictated, right? And you have this interesting, funny tightrope you have to walk, knowing that uh most people who see a show, it's this combination of tourists to New York who don't really know what they're about to watch. And so they're open for the ride, but they are people who listen to people's music, who listen to popular music or rap or rock or whatever's on the radio, and they come in with their own thing. And then you've got the sort of New York theater scene or the London theater scene who do know Sondheim and who do know uh Jason Robert Brown and who are expecting that and finding the line that appeals to both of those people as a really fun challenge. And then obviously, if it succeeds, it finds its way to a little girl in the middle of Ukraine or something who doesn't care about once on this island. She just knows that song.

Speaker 47:33

That sort of in a weird way reminds me of the monologue from Devil Wears Prada. Sure. Where she's oh, you don't care where you got that thrift bin blue sweater from, but that color is actually curated for you. Yes. From the fashion industry. Um you're doing great. Go ahead. Thank you. No, I haven't rehearsed, but it just reminds me of that because, like you said, it's all influenced and basically curated by this sort of elite type thinking from New York and the sort of top-down way of thinking of art. But then yeah, it needs to also appeal to the broadest of uh audiences. So I think that's what when you do find that magical thing, that's the key. Yeah. So all right, let's hear the next clip.

Finale Song And Life After Magic

Speaker 4 48:30

Yeah. John, Alice's longtime partner. They've made this deal when they recognize what the teapot's magic is, which is it pays you cash money for physical pain. When they first discover that, they make a deal that they will get out of the hole, pay off the credit cards, pay off the student loans. Just get out of the hole, give it away. But get to that point, and Alice is saying to John, no. No, what are you talking about? Come on, we can go further. Why shouldn't we have more? Why shouldn't we be allowed to live a real life and have a little bit of excess? Let's know that about that. So that's setting up just enough.

Speaker 2 49:04

John, we're doing better.

Speaker 49:32

That's great.

Speaker 6 49:33

Very nice. Doing vocals on that track with Chaz is Mel Bryant, who is a badass.

Speaker 4 49:40

She is so cool. New York slash Nashville based uh rock artist who has been a friend for a long time. She actually co-wrote the next song with me as well, uh, which this will be the next song, is the show's finale. We're skipping way past act two into the event.

Speaker 6 49:58

Who wouldn't he's in? Time travel is also part of the show.

Speaker 50:01

Oh, okay. Depends on who you're asking.

Speaker 6 50:03

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 50:04

Yeah. The sci-fi-ness of it in a minute.

Speaker 4 50:07

Yeah.

Speaker 5 50:08

I know I've done a lot of talking, Tim's. I apologize if I must have done any of this. I like when you talk, it's good.

Speaker 4 50:14

After the magic dies is the I'd say I like the end credits song of the show. There's like a finale that kind of happens that sort of like ties up all the loose ends, and then this is more of like the seasons of love of what's it all about? What are we saying? It's a curtain number, there's no plot going on here. It really is just like when a big, major magical thing in your life happens that scars you, honestly, or like it changes everything. Life has to keep going after that. You have to keep washing the dishes after that, and you have to keep driving in traffic after that. It's not like the big magical thing stops all that from happening. So that's the sort of setup for all of the characters going into after the magic dies.

Speaker 51:34

Speaking of musical theater history, it's really given me Jonathan Larson vibes. Like tick-tick-boom, I mean. It's a huge compliment. You said seasons of love, but to me, it's given like tick-tick-boom. I think 3090 is something I like.

Speaker 6 51:48

The current opener, choo chas, just with the piano intro. Thank you.

Speaker 51:52

Yeah, it just gives all the right feels you want in a big ensemble finale. So, yeah, that's

NAMT, Readings, And Next Steps

Speaker 52:00

great. And you took this show to NAMT, right? Um, maybe Jonathan, can you talk about what Nampt is?

Speaker 1 52:09

It is a large festival of brand new musicals. There's a mentorship element that goes along with it and a presentation that happens. I believe it's a shortened presentation. It's not the entire musical presented or anything like that. The goal is to present this new musical theater to uh producers and artistic directors and people who might want to be putting on the shows in the future. Uh this show, of course, is one of the NAMT musicals. So, congratulations for that.

unknown 52:35

Yeah.

Speaker 52:36

And so when you took it to NAMP, there's a lot of producers and theater companies and theaters there from all over the country, maybe all over the world, even, uh, who are looking for shows to produce and musicals to develop. And did you get any folks that were interested in, you know, working with you to take this to the next level?

Speaker 6 52:58

One of the other things they do for each show is collate the interests that came from those who were in attendance. If you attend the MGO as an independent person, you can just buy a ticket. Or if you are a member, you can go in that way and you can sell out a form afterwards. It says, here are the shows that I would like to learn more about, and or here are the show that I'm interested in following more. And so we got a whole range of feedback from yes, keep me posted on what the updates are, all the way to yes, let's be involved in the development. And two months ago in March, Ogunquay Playhouse in Maine, their new work department took us under their wing and they produced another 29-hour reading for us, which was amazing. On the AMP introduced us to our director, Katie Davis. It introduced us to our music director, Rick Ettinger, who have stayed on with the project and also already have their fingerprints all over it in an amazing way. And so there was enough interest in the show after NAMP that we've been able to continue working on it and keep our eyes on what is the right next step. It's been a balancing act of how do we feel about the piece and where do we want it to go and how can we carve out time in our own lives to make the changes that we know need to happen while also wanting to respect work with the timelines of a theater company or a producer or whatever it may be. After the one quit reading, we had a great sit-down with uh the artist director and their new works associate is to collect the even more really exciting feedback. And so right now, there have been some slight revisions after that. And we're shopping the show around. We're seeing where is the right home for it. We have a couple of paths. We're entertaining a few paths. We're talking now to general management companies and people who can help get us to the next level in terms of what is a New York off-Broadway budget look like? What does a Chicago budget look like? What does a tour budget look like? Uh figure out where's the right place to have it short premiere production.

Tech Check And The Teapot Lore

Speaker 54:40

So now we want to talk about the sci-fi-ness of your show because we're sci-fi musicals podcast after all of that. So we like to do something called a tech check. What we like to do is rate a show on scientific plausibility from one to ten and just talk about how the science works in the show.

Speaker 5 55:07

Okay, so first you have to have a caveat of like, what do you believe in? Like in a belief system, right? Because there is this working mechanism of why this happens. It's not just wake up and here's a magic teapot. There's a reason that magic exists because 2000 and some odd years ago, Judas sold out Jesus for a bag full of ducats, silver ducats. And then as he walked away with his ill-gotten treasure, the traitor started to feel the bag grow heavier and heavier until it felt like it was going to drag him down into the dirt and he was going to be buried alive. So what could he do other than dump those beautiful silver coins into a nearby metalsmith's pot, which was being used at the time to create a teapot for the great Emperor Caligula and those ducats that silver possessed in them, more than just the physical makeup, right? They had emotion and pain and they had the conveyance of betrayal into the physical, right? Into the object that you hold in your hand. You feel something. If you believe in the feeling being passed from a physical object, an object in this world, into a person, if you've ever felt that, if you've ever held something in your hands, a crystal, a jewel, something, and felt an energy from it, then if you can accept that into your belief system, then I give it a five.

Speaker 56:36

That's amazing. I love the lore. Obsessed.

Speaker 1 56:38

And sometimes in this podcast, we'll also talk about magical systems as well, in terms of how hard of a magical system it is or how soft it is. It sounds like you've set up a very hard magic system in this one.

Speaker 4 56:48

There's also really firm logic to the ghosts that we've figured out, I think over the last year and a half. We love the spooky vibe, but then figuring out what is it, what does the teapot want? Why is it doing this? What is it seeking? And I think we do have a pretty clean line right now of ghosts want X because Teapot wants X. And this is where those merge and diverge, uh sorry, converge and diverge at any given point in the show. And is it solved? Is it solvable? And obviously, there's like a buy-in to the magic. I feel like it's on a scale of soft to hard, I give it, I feel like it's less seven, soft being zero, ten being hard. But Tim said if in the plausibility department, if you make space in your life for the supernatural and the mystical and the ecstatic, then yeah, probably that five.

Speaker 6 57:45

But what's also interesting, Jonathan, hearing you talk about you had this latter example of is it a system in which you have to throw a spaghetti at the wall and see what happens? A comp that comes to my mind a lot for the show when we've been built developing it is Little Shop. And my life gets better, right? I eat this planet, and all of a sudden Audrey likes me back, and my I'm doing good at work and like all this stuff. And so there's something really compelling to me as an audience member of watching ordinary people trying to figure out by trial and error or whatever it may be, trying to figure out a system that maybe does have very hard and fast rules, but they stumble and they're clumsy because we've all been in that situation, not all been in a magical supernatural situation, but there's something really relatable. I think about oh, if I do this, then that happens and that experimentation, I think. And that's been really fun to also figure out the arc of. And especially with a show like this that deals with violence and partner-on-partner violence, and seeing that escalate to uh spoiler alert, emotional pain, right? That has to be handled really delicately by uh Tim and Chaz and Rama, the brilliant writers here. Uh, anyways, hearing you spell it out in that way, Jonathan, about uh watching protagonists learn a system is exciting. And that's what we hope to infuse in act one of this piece.

Speaker 1 58:59

Yeah, and sometimes in other works that we discuss, the science might be implausible, but also the entire world that they exist in is implausible too. Um it's like the spaceships and everything, that's pretty implausible. But the entire society is structured in this way that we don't really see a pathway toward creating in our real world. I think then that it seems to me then with this show uh where it can push it a little bit more toward the realism or world is real, realistic science fiction, because it's existing in the real world too. A real world where you can turn on a television and technology like that exists, and people behave in ways that we would expect normal human beings to behave given extraordinary circumstances.

Speaker 59:37

Yeah, the thing that is extraordinary is the teapot, it seems, and the possibility of things like that, like you mentioned, Tim, like if you believe in things like crystals and tarot and maybe UFOs that are being exposed by the government now, you know, like seem implausible, but yet somehow are somehow we feel something might be true that bubble.

Speaker 1 1:00:01

Very realistic, except for this one little thing right here. But the entire plot comes out of that one little thing.

Speaker 6 1:00:06

We want to tighten certain elements that are satirical or a little bit out there so that we can open a door, right? Keep that door open for these otherworldly things to happen in a way.

Speaker 4 1:00:16

There's a degree of absurdity that's that's been fun with it, of heightening the world just a little bit. But what the interesting, I think, line that we've been trying to ride with this last draft that we just workshopped is that anything that is absurd also is absurd because of how plausible it is and how it's maybe one degree removed from okay, this is a little ridiculous, but there's a scene Tim has written where in a call center, somebody gets a call that they're late on their credit card payment, and the punishment is that they're about to be sent to a firing squad or a labor camp. In context, it's funny, but it's a black comedy show. So it's only who steps away from a real thing that might happen, which is horrible and partly why we need to poke the bear a little bit and try to make fun of it as much as we can.

Speaker 1 1:01:01

Also, frightening sometimes how the things in these works, if they're a little on the older side and are like, at the time that would have been pretty remarkable, and now it's like that's just how it works, maybe.

Speaker 1:01:11

So we all feel like it's this show's living in a five zone because we have a real world context with one very magical thing, but that very magical thing is what hinges the whole plot. So it does have hard magical systems, so that gives it a little more bump up in the rating, I think. Yeah, it feels right. Yeah, like a five,

Where To Follow And Final Thoughts

Speaker 1:01:35

yeah. Is there anything that you want to tell us? Anything else that you want to tell us about your show or anything that's coming up that you want to let us know, or maybe uh your social media or your website or how to follow you. Where can we see more?

Speaker 6 1:01:51

Yeah, at the brass teapotmusical.com. You can now listen to all the demos with Chaz is Blessing. We put the full album of demos up there, and you can also follow the brass teapot musical on Instagram because currently that's where you'll get updates. And so hopefully there will be news to announce this year.

Speaker 1 1:02:09

When you have news, let us know so that we can announce it all over our episodes too. Thank you. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 1:02:14

I think before we leave, the last thing I'd like to say about the show is that uh so many of the productions we've gotten to do have been necessarily small scale or stage readings. And what I really want people to know about the show is how absolutely psychological and surreal it gets in the second act that is going to be so effing cool to see on stage when we find the right partner for this. I think that the buy-in of teapot equals money is so fun and the world is so fun. But in act two, as we get to the heart of it all and things get very dark and grisly, I think that's the part of the show that I'm the most excited for people to see produced. So that's what I'd like to hold into the ether is the buy-in is fun, but the real meat of it is what's going to be cool on stage.

Speaker 1:03:11

I just finished a run of my show about uh Tyromancy, which is the art of divination using cheese. So similar idea, tarot, crystals. But like you said, seeing some of those production elements on stage is so satisfying because before I could only see them in my head. Even my other writing partners couldn't see them because they were in my head. And it was just so exciting and satisfying to see it played out on stage. And so I'm thrilled and excited for you when you get that chance as well.

Speaker 6 1:03:46

Thank you. For the opportunity to come on here and I saw Jonathan announce this podcast was happening. He's like, Yes, this is these are my people, these are the kind of shows that we need more of.

Speaker 1:03:56

Tell us again how you know each other, yeah.

Speaker 6 1:03:58

Underground and Northwestern. When at musical theater auditions wearing a monochrome color button down because we were told that was the musical theater audition uniform. Yep.

Speaker 1 1:04:07

And I mean Jason Robert Brown, probably. Right. Yeah, probably. But we crossed paths a lot. Were we ever actually in a show together? I swear that we were at some point, but I don't remember what. Was it it wasn't children of Eden, was it? No, I wasn't involved in Children of Eden.

Speaker 6 1:04:21

If you went to my festival between 2003, 2007. What I'll do, I'll go to scary Facebook and have it show me our friendship.

Speaker 1:04:32

That was a good yeah, you'll find some asked picture. Oh, Jesus Christ Superstar directed by Jesus Christ Superstar.

Speaker 1 1:04:39

That was it. Yes, who was who? I was one of the random apostles, and then at the end, I was like the centurion who helped Dan Kohler get on the cross. Yeah, you were I was Peter's the Peter stuff. Travis Greisler was the director on that. He's now some big shop Broadway guy now.

Speaker 3 1:04:57

Yeah, I know him.

Speaker 1 1:04:59

Joel Escher, who is in a lot of our mutual writing circles, is the music director of it. Yeah, that's right. Oh, Andrew Kelts is in it too. He's like all over the place too. Broadway is Anna Islandsville. That's right. Very cool. Small world. It was stacked.

Speaker 1:05:13

Thank you all again so much for being with us today. And we will definitely uh make sure to share all your uh websites and social medias on our website. Thank you, Tim, Chaz, and Eric for being here today. Thank you, Jonathan. Thanks, Andy.

Thanks, Socials, And Patreon

Speaker 1:05:33

So that is our Tony Award preview show. We'd like to thank our guests, Eric Kaiko, Chaz Cardigan, and Tim Macy for joining us today.

Speaker 1 1:05:44

Thanks. Great conversation, guys.

Speaker 1:05:46

Please follow us on all of our social medias. You can find us at sci fi musicals and become a patron on our Patreon.