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Go in-depth with the leading artists and professionals working on stage today when you go "Downstage Center." Downstage Center, a collaboration of the American Theatre Wing and XM Satellite Radio, is a weekly theatrical interview program that spotlights the creative talents on Broadway, Off-Broadway, across the country and around the world, with in-depth conversations that simply can"t be found anywhere else.
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Now in its fourth year, Downstage Center has been featured by the Associated Press and Slate.com as the place to go for theatrical talk.
Downstage Center is heard weekly on XM Satellite Radio's Channel 28, On Broadway, with new programs debuting Fridays at 6 pm, followed by encores on Saturday at 12 noon, Sunday at 7 and Wednesday at midnight (all times eastern).
Following their initial run on XM, you can listen to the programs here in Real Media streaming audio format, download the mp3 files or you can subscribe to our podcast feed.
Please note that due to copyright restrictions, any pre-recorded music that was used in the interview has been deleted from all audio files.
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Tom Viertel |
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Producer of Hairspray and Gypsy.
Original air date - October 31, 2008
Running Time - 58:59
Bio of Tom Viertel
Prolific producer Tom Viertel, who with his partners Richard Frankel, Steve Baruch and Marc Routh have been responsible for such shows as The Producers, Hairspray, and the John Doyle-directed Company and Sweeney Todd, talks abut producing on Broadway and the pending closing of the long-running Hairspray. He relates his own theatrical heritage -- his grandfather was a contractor who built the Mark Hellinger Theatre, among many others, and his father was a playwright -- and how he began his own theatrical career as a hobby while working at the family real estate concern. Among the shows he discusses are his first theatrical foray with two magicians he first saw in a 50 seat theatre in Los Angeles -- Penn and Teller; the extraordinary auditions of two now well-known actresses, Donna Murphy and Laura Benanti, for Song of Singapore and The Sound of Music respectively; the counterintuitive decisions that led him to produce Theatre de Complicite's Mnemonic as a commercial production and to revive Gypsy with Patti LuPone on Broadway only five years after the prior production; the travails of producing Smokey Joe's Cafe; and why in his spare time he's so committed to his volunteer role as chairman of Connecticut's Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.
Additional resources:
Gypsy: Official Site
Hairspray: Official Site
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