Today, actor Raymond J. Lee talks about the Grammy nominated off Broadway show Soft Power. Host Michael Fatica was blown away by how cleverly it deals with super touchy topics about race, democracy, traditional theatre and more.

In my journey to chronicle the transformation of The Addams Family musical through its many incarnations, I was starting to understand what made the show so unique. Most first national tours are essential replicas of the Broadway production, but The Addams Family’s was not. Launching in the fall of 2011, the touring version of the show turned the focus onto the family, including a wedding in the curtain call. It changed the primary conflict from between Wednesday and her parents to between the parents themselves, as I learned from the show’s co-writer Rick Ellis.. It included a lot of new music and musical staging for both Gomez and Morticia that highlighted that conflict, as I heard from associate choreographer Dontee Kiehn. And it doubled down on the humor, adding as many jokes as could fit into the script and staging said associate director Steve Bebout. And those changes worked. All three of those original creative members - Rick, Dontee and Steve - said that the continued clarification of the script, score and staging made the national tour an unequivocal success. Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “It’s hard to think of another show that has been revised so heavily and, for the most part, successfully, by its admirably indefatigable original authors and composer.” But I started to wonder… was all that success a fluke? Was the tour just a success in comparison to what had come before? So I delved into the show’s next professional stagings, international productions with the same design, staging and style as the show’ national tour. Lovingly referred to as “replica productions,” the first international production opened in Sao Paulo Brazil in 2012, transferring to Rio de Janeiro the following year. Also in 2013, two replica productions were mounted in Australia and Argentina. The final replica production opened in Mexico City the following year. And luckily for my research, both original associate choreographer Dontee Kiehn and original associate director Steve Bebout were involved in mounting many of them...

We're celebrating the birthday of one of our favorite leading ladies, Celia Keenan-Bolger. She is a four-time Tony Award nominee, winning for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 2019 for To Kill A Mockingbird. Beloved in the New York theatre community for almost twenty years, her first theatrical award was in 2005 for Outstanding Ensemble Performing in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Celia joined me in the studio to talk about her experience - both winning and not winning awards - and how a Best Ensemble Award is the closest to what made her love theatre in the first place. Here’s our conversation...

On today’s episode, we’re celebrating the 33rd anniversary of Broadway’s longest-running show, The Phantom of the Opera. Although the Majestic Theatre remains dark because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve dug deep into our archives to revisit some of our favorite stories from Phantom ensemblists. First, we’ll hear from Jacob Keith Watson about performing in three Broadway shows over the course of one season. Then, Polly Baird will chat about joining the cast as a replacement and later putting replacements into the show herself as dance captain. Finally, Jackson Cline reads a 2018 interview with long-running cast members Satomi Hofmann & Janet Saia.

The 73rd Annual Tony Awards were held June 9, 2019 at Radio City Music Hall with James Corden hosting for his second time. Heading into the ceremony, Hadestown led with 14 nominations, followed by Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations with 12, Tootsie with 11, Beetlejuice with 8 and The Prom with 7. In the running for Best Revival of a Musical were just a pair of shows: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! and the Roundabout Theatre revival of Kiss Me, Kate. The 2018-2019 season was the last complete season on Broadway, since the 2019-2020 season was cut short this past March for two weeks...er, for two months...just kidding, we’re still here, due to the coronavirus pandemic, but I digress. 2019 marked the 3rd year of President Donald Trump’s term in office, and while he was rarely -- if not ever -- mentioned by name, his presence definitely loomed in the broadcast; from poignant speeches speaking out against demagoguery and systemic discrimination, to other beautiful speeches uplifting representation and opportunity for immigrants and the disabled, and even in the content of the work being celebrated itself, this telecast -- and this season as a whole -- seemed to stand against all the hate and intolerance being shepherded by the recent administration…

Over the years, The Ensemblist has had the sublime opportunity to speak with four performers from a variety of Hamilton companies, each with their own unique memories and takeaways from the experience. Special thanks extend to performers Antuan Magic Raimone, Alexia Sky, Rebecca Covington Webber, and Kim Taylor for recalling their experiences with us.

One of the not-so secret secrets in this show about secrets is that The Addams Family went through massive structural changes multiple times on its way to becoming the most popular musical in America. Many of the changes were noted in my previous discussions with Rick Elice and Dontee Kiehn: solidifying the focus on the family, the addition of the wedding curtain call. But both Rick and Dontee had been with the show since before rehearsals for its pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago. I wanted to speak to someone who was a part of the changes made on the show’s journey to Broadway. So I called up Steve Bebout. Steve Bebout has worked as the associate director on four massive Broadway musicals, including Something Rotten!, The Book of Mormon and Sister Act. But, like me, The Addams Family was Steve’s Broadway debut. We both initially were outsiders entering the world of this lumbering imperfect production. So I wanted to get his take on what made the show work from when he first joined the team in late 2009.

The 73rd Annual Tony Awards were held June 9, 2019 at Radio City Music Hall with James Corden hosting for his second time. Heading into the ceremony, Hadestown led with 14 nominations, followed by Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations with 12, Tootsie with 11, Beetlejuice with 8 and The Prom with 7. In the running for Best Revival of a Musical were just a pair of shows: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! and the Roundabout Theatre revival of Kiss Me, Kate. The 2018-2019 season was the last complete season on Broadway, since the 2019-2020 season was cut short this past March for two weeks...er, for two months...just kidding, we’re still here, due to the coronavirus pandemic, but I digress. 2019 marked the 3rd year of President Donald Trump’s term in office, and while he was rarely -- if not ever -- mentioned by name, his presence definitely loomed in the broadcast; from poignant speeches speaking out against demagoguery and systemic discrimination, to other beautiful speeches uplifting representation and opportunity for immigrants and the disabled, and even in the content of the work being celebrated itself, this telecast -- and this season as a whole -- seemed to stand against all the hate and intolerance being shepherded by the recent administration…

It’s 2021, and the theatre industry is still shut down. In this new series, “The Shows We Need”, Michael Fatica will try to identify pieces that we as a community need to come back when the theatre world resurfaces. We begin with Jagged Little Pill, which deals with many big social issues and starts new conversations. Guests Kei Tsuruharatani and Marc Kimelman chat about the creation of the show, how it has affected them, and more.

The original production of The Addams Family was choreographed by Tony Award winner Sergio Trujillo. Once a Broadway ensemblist himself, The Addams Family came along when Sergio had four productions running simultaneously on Broadway: our show, the long-running Jersey Boys, the sparse but beautiful musical staging in Next to Normal, and the Tony-Award winning production of Memphis. With this many shows under his purview, Sergio employed a team of talented associate choreographers to maintain his vision and keep the staging clean. And at The Addams Family, Sergio’s associate was the highly kind and highly capable Dontee Keihn. Also a former ensemblist, Dontee had been in the original Broadway ensemble of the famed 42nd Street revival, as well as the Bernadette Peters-led revival of Gypsy. Her journey with The Addams Family began as the associate choreographer for the show’s pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago. She maintained that position for the show’s Broadway run, as well as the national tour and stagings in both Brazil and Australia. She then took over the dual roles of associate director and associate choreographer for two more “replica” productions in Argentina and Mexico City. She was with the show as long as anybody, so she knows the staging of The Addams Family intimately and thoroughly.

It’s time to start 2021 with some joy. And what better way than to share something that’s been bringing me joy over the last few months: Let’s Hear It For The Choice. Created by Jimmy Larkin, Let’s Hear It For The Choice is a celebration of great musical theatre performances large and small. Jimmy has been sharing compilations of these bold statements, or “choices,” on his Instagram channel along with a heavy dose of dry but loving humor. He joined me recently to share what he thinks makes a great “choice” and some of his favorite ensemble choices of all time. Here’s our conversation…

The 41st Annual Tony Awards were held June 6, 1987 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre with Angela Lansbury hosting for her third time. Heading into the ceremony, Me and My Girl and Les Miserables were neck in neck leading the pack for most nominations (with 13 and 12, respectively.) Behind them were Starlight Express with seven nominations and Rags with five. Although the category is titled “Best Revival of a Play or a Musical,” this season there were no musicals nominated. The 1986-87 season was smack-dab in the middle of a volatile time, but not particularly bombastic itself. We found ourselves in the middle of President Ronald Reagan’s second term, with both the Cold War, the War on Drugs, and the AIDS epidemic raging. (Interestingly enough, a week after this telecast is when Reagan makes his famous speech in Berlin where he asks Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”) Also, this season occurred during the end of the Iran-Contra affair -- a political scandal that embroiled the country for about a year and a half, where the Reagan administration was found to be bartering arms for seven US hostages in the middle east...gotta love a quid pro quo… On Broadway, the British invasion was HERE. With three out of four of the Best Musical nominees being British imports, Cats alive and well at the Winter Garden, and Phantom opening in the West End and waiting in the wings for their Broadway house, it seemed like Cameron Mackintosh, the RSC, and all their contemporaries were taking over the Great White Way.

So many of us experienced the unexpected in 2020. When the world stopped, we were forced to reckon with who we are without busy lives to distract us. That reckoning was most uncomfortable for the busiest among us, who were moving so fast they never took the time to stop. Paloma Garcia-Lee was one of the busiest of those artists. A verteran of six Broadway shows, she spent 2019 as an original company member of Moulin Rouge! The Musical, as well as playing a featured role in F/X’s Fosse/Verdon and playing Graziella in the upcoming Stephen Speilberg helmed feature film of West Side Story. She was running on all cylinders until March 12. Here, with what happened next, is Paloma Garcia-Lee.

My first stop on this journey was reaching out to an old colleague, Rick Elice. Along with Marshall Brickman, Rick wrote the book for the musical adaptation of The Addams Family. Rick and I’s path crossed a handful of times during my tenure with the original Broadway production: he was in the room when I had my final audition, he was in the building to put in new leads or when the show closed on New Year’s Eve 2011. But I mostly knew Rick from being the husband of our leading man, Roger Rees, who took over the role of Gomez Addams two months into my run. Last month, I sent an email to Rick for the first time in more than nine years. Imagine when he replied within 24 hours, excited about the opportunity to discuss the show. In the years since, Rick wrote the script for Peter and the Starcatcher, The Cher Show, and has maintained the multiple companies of his show Jersey Boys, currently the 12th longest running show in Broadway history.

The 41st Annual Tony Awards were held June 6, 1987 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre with Angela Lansbury hosting for her third time. Heading into the ceremony, Me and My Girl and Les Miserables were neck in neck leading the pack for most nominations (with 13 and 12, respectively.) Behind them were Starlight Express with seven nominations and Rags with five. Although the category is titled “Best Revival of a Play or a Musical,” this season there were no musicals nominated. The 1986-87 season was smack-dab in the middle of a volatile time, but not particularly bombastic itself. We found ourselves in the middle of President Ronald Reagan’s second term, with both the Cold War, the War on Drugs, and the AIDS epidemic raging. (Interestingly enough, a week after this telecast is when Reagan makes his famous speech in Berlin where he asks Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”) Also, this season occurred during the end of the Iran-Contra affair -- a political scandal that embroiled the country for about a year and a half, where the Reagan administration was found to be bartering arms for seven US hostages in the middle east...gotta love a quid pro quo… On Broadway, the British invasion was HERE. With three out of four of the Best Musical nominees being British imports, Cats alive and well at the Winter Garden, and Phantom opening in the West End and waiting in the wings for their Broadway house, it seemed like Cameron Mackintosh, the RSC, and all their contemporaries were taking over the Great White Way.

It was supposed to be the biggest Broadway show of the season. Two theatre titans taking on two of the most familiar roles in popular culture. The combination of wildly successful source material and innovative theatremakers were sure to create a theatrical juggernaut. And the public agreed: advanced ticket sales for the show were the largest of any Broadway production to date. And then… it opened. Many jeered the production, but none said it as succinctly as The New York Times’ Ben Brantley, when began his review with the following quote: “Imagine, if you dare, the agonies of the talented people trapped inside the collapsing tomb called The Addams Family. Being in this genuinely ghastly musical must feel like going to a Halloween party in a strait-jacket. A strangled voice inside you keeps gasping, ‘He-e-e-lp! Get me out of here!’” And then, in early 2016 the Educational Theatre Association had released their annual survey of the most-produced musicals in high schools across the country in the 2014-2015 school year, and The Addams Family was the most popular high school musical in the country. How was this possible? I thought high schools performed musical theatre canon - Broadway megahits like Oklahoma! and Les Miserables. How did our unloved little musical become so popular? Sure, we are only talking about high schools but it means something that for half a decade more future theatremakers and theatrelovers have learned the lyrics to “When You’re An Addams” than any other song in the musical theatre canon.

In this month's episode of Chris Chats With, host Christine Shepard (Mean Girls, Head Over Heels) brings together a roundtable of colleagues and friends for a roundtable discussion about community v. the individual.

In this month's episode of Chris Chats With, host Christine Shepard (Mean Girls, Head Over Heels) brings together a roundtable of colleagues and friends for a roundtable discussion. Ari Groover, Arica Jackson and Ricardo Zayas delve deep into a discussion about community v. the individual.

In the final episode of Fosse/Verdon, we see Gwen and Bobby back together to work on a pre-Broadway revival of Sweet Charity. Leading the pack is today’s guest Kelcy Ann Griffin. Kelcy performed on Broadway herself in Bullets Over Broadway and Chicago. S...

We’re revisiting our 2014 interview with Tony Award Winner Randy Graff. Among her many Broadway credits is the original production of Les Miserables. Randy spoke to us about originating the role of Fantine on Broadway, the rehearsal process, memories of performing the show, and why Les Miserables has had such a lasting legacy.

The Fosse/Verdon finale, “Providence,” premiered on May 28th, 2019. Just like the pilot, its writing credit was separated into two: the story of the episode by Joel Fields & Steven Levenson, while the teleplay itself was written just by Steven Levenson. The episode was directed by Tommy Kail. We saw three pieces of choreography in this finale: two were performances of “Big Spender” and “If They Could See Me Now” in this episode, both originally choreographed by Bob Fosse and reconstructed by Mimi Quillin. The third was the father-daughter sequence to Mr. Bojangles between Bob and Nicole, as well as its subsequent plagiarism later in the episode, both choreographed by Nicole Fosse herself. We had four featured songs in this finale. The two songs from Sweet Charity, written by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, were “Big Spender,” performed by the show’s fictional tour cast, and “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” performed by both Kelcy Griffin and Michelle Williams. The other two songs are not from musicals: All That Jazz’s finale “Bye Bye Life,” which exists as a play on the Everly Brothers’s “Bye Bye Love,” written by Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, and performed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Also performed by Lin is a version of “Mr. Bojangles” written by Jerry Jeff Walker. The finale viewership came in at a high of 992,000 total viewers, third only to the series’s first two episodes, with both live and DVR viewership rising from last week. What’s nice is, the finale’s live viewership was the highest it had been since the pilot, so luckily the show went out on a live high!! Bob is in pre-production for his semi-autobiographical movie All That Jazz, but the script still has a satisfying ending. Paddy hits the nail on the head when he tells Bob, “the problem with your movie is that your hero doesn’t change.” In his search for a realistic, if unsatisfying ending, part of the pre-production includes interviewing Gwen about her feelings about putting Bob’s next wife, Ann, into roles that she created. Her response? “It’s pretty familiar.” Part of the casting process is Bob auditioning Ann for the role of Katie - a role is obviously based on herself. Bob grills her, making Annie run the scene over and over pleading “why can’t you do the scene like it means something to you?” Her response: “Because this isn’t a scene. This is my life. These are my words. You took our life and you put it into a fucking scene in a movie.” Nicole is also watching her life being put into a fucking scene in a movie when she visits the All That Jazz set and watches the conversation she had with her dad being rehearsed by another actress playing her. After creating Roxie in Chicago, Gwen is back where she was just a few years ago: at dinner with her manager, discussing dead ends of career opportunities. She really wants to act, but isn’t interested in following the work to LA. When Nicole’s interest in extracurricular drugs increases, Gwen considers moving her, Ron and Nicole out of the city. But dangled with another challenge to the way he sees the world, Bob gives Gwen the role of Roxie on tour, telling her, “It’s your show. It’s always been your show.” Her husband Ron forces Gwen to make a decision: staying with him vs. being puppeted by Bob. And so, she watches him pack up his life and leave. Post-production, everyone is back on their shit: Gwen performing and hosting a medical auction on Staten Island, and Bob recreating conversations he had with Ann (both in real life and in the movie) with his latest girlfriend. Gwen takes on the task of shadow choreographing the pre-Broadway revival of Sweet Charity, but with the direction missing the heart of the show completely the only way for the show to work is for them to work as they always have been meant to: side by side, as partners.

Most recently seen in New York shining in the ensemble cast of off-Broadway’s Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Dionne has performed on Broadway in Motown, Memphis and Hot Feet. But her other passion is for fine period clothing, which led her to become the owner of the fine vintage clothing and luxury goods store Couture du Jour. Dionne spoke with Anna about how she turned into passion into a thriving storefront in New York’s theatre district, and how her two careers continue to interweave. Here’s their conversation…

We’re revisiting our 2014 interview with Eddie Korbich. As we know, original cast recordings are vitally important in bringing Broadway and off-Broadway musicals to audiences both before and after the shows have left the stage, and Eddie is no stranger to the process of creating them. He’s been featured on five! In this interview, Eddie spoke with us about how cast recordings inspired him as a child, the ins and outs of recording them, and the magic of being featured on one for the first time.

It's been a roller coaster of a year, but there are silver linings to even the darkest clouds. Even though the 2020 Tony Awards have yet to announce a ceremony date, one of those bright spots was seeing two performers with major ensemblist cred be celebrated for their work last season: Robyn Hurder of Moulin Rouge! The Musical, and Daniel J. Watts of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. We asked each of them to share their feelings on being nominated for our industry's highest honor. Here in her own words in Robyn Hurder, and a statement by Daniel J. Watts he has given us permission to read and share.

Jack Sippel made his Broadway debut in 2018 as a swing and dance captain in the original cast of The Prom. 2 years later, his journey with the show continues with the recently released film adaption, for which he served as assistant choreographer to Casey Nicholaw and as a performer. Our own Mo Brady recently sat down with Jack to discuss his experience working on the film. Here’s their conversation...