Theater History and Mysteries
I take a musical theater production and do a deep dive to find a richer understanding about the lessons the show has for theater and life. And, I’ll never miss an opportunity to pursue any mystery, bizarre coincidence, improbable event, or supernatural suggestion along the way because, in the words of Dirk Gentley, it is all connected. You can contact me directly at theaterhistorypodcast@gmail.com Released every other Tuesday. Music by Jon Bruschke and Andrew Howat, arranged, performed, and recorded by Andrew Howat.
Episodes
There is a new show out there, and this one is, boldly enough, a re-telling of the story of Jesus Christ from the perspective of Judas. That, by itself, is likely to be controversial. And to take on this sacred topic the cast prepares itself by…covering the body of performer playing Christ and having the castmates lick it off of him, to get “closer to Jesus.”
The stage crew is pulling together the props and set piece...
It is 1432 and the small, medieval French village is abuzz. There’s a travelling theater troupe and they’re going to perform what is, far and away, the most exciting show the town will ever see. It happens every year, but only once a year, and everyone – from the smallest child to the oldest farmer – is going to see it. It’s like a modern musical; you’ve seen it before, but the performance itself is so spectacular ...
The year is 1525 and William Tyndale is doing what nobody has done before…he has translated the Bible from Latin to English. This as not well received; the church condemned the book, and one Bishop Tunstall bought all available copies and publicly burned them. Cardinal Wolsey condemned Tyndale as a heretic. The English government had sent agents out for his arrest.
That did not end matters for Tyndale. He roamed th...
I have promised that this podcast will explore the lessons that different shows have for theater and for life, and to explore the unexpected and unlikely connections the bring cross human lives on the plane of theater. To help me better understand all that, I reached out to the internet to ask, anyone who was willing, to share with me what made their favorite show work. That’s it – not anything deep or all that phil...
I am writing this on Father’s Day, 2025, and to mark this occasion I will share my greatest parenting victory. Last spring, during Taylor Swift’s eras Tour my daughter did all the things one does to try to get a ticket. Tried the presale, pre-registered, looked at the fan resale sites, looked at the predatory reseller sites, put alerts on all her accounts. But, no dice. The only tickets that were available were we...
An already famous poet is working, for the first time, on something light and fun. It’s a children’s book of poems about Cats. All his previous work has basically been about the anxious terror in the modern world, but he is going to do something delightful, for a change. His Dad likes cats, he likes cats, his friends have kids who like cats. The book is about cats.
He’s a handful of lines in when he stops himself ...
You’ve heard this one before. Maybe it’s a beautiful Siren, singing a gorgeous song only to lure unsuspecting sailors on to the rocks and eventually their death. Or a snake, promising you a delicious apple, only to curse all of humanity with the knowledge of good and evil. Or a wolf, disguising itself as an old woman, to trick an innocent child into letting it into their house, only to have the beast devour the you...
A young TS Eliot is at Harvard where the field of psychology is just now emerging. You can read Freud, of course, but there’s nothing like behavioral or analytic psychology that have yet to be developed. But there are dreams – and what, exactly, are those? Freud himself starts his book by citing what the Greeks thought that they were, which in many cases were visions of alternate realties, a channeling of the gods,...
Episode #4
The year is 1982. The liberatory vibe of the 1960s is long gone…Ronald Reagan is president, and it’s a bad time to be an air traffic controller, or a union member, or an Iranian hostage, or, maybe most tragically, if you’re gay. But there remain progressive voices, and one of those is the Village Voice, still an open champion of the avante garde in the world. If you have a new, edgy, and experimental piec...
Cats, 3rd episode
A show is about to open in two days. It features a power-packed pair of producers who would re-write Broadway history with two of the biggest musicals of all time, POA and Les Mis. The female lead is in one of the final rehearsals, and it will be her place in history to sing into the world a song so powerful, so vital, so memorable, that it will immediately become a top-10 hit, get re-recorded more ...
TS Eliot is the author of Old Possum’s Guide to Practical Cats. That’s a book of poems that will get transformed into one of the greatest broadway musicals of all time. In fact, it might be the Broadway musical – it so shaped what a Broadway musical is that it’s changed the way the world thinks about musicals at all.
But that wasn’t the poetry that put TS Eliot on the map. In fact, TS Eliot himself would have smash ...
TS Eliot had demons. He wrote about his demons. He said that writing poems were like demons escaping from his body, and that when he finished writing them he would experience a “moment of exhaustion, of appeasement, of absolution, and of something very near annihilation, which is in itself indescribable.”
He wrote a poem that would become the archetypical anthem of a newly-emerging modernist movement in literature – ...
A young music producer has just seen a production of Jesus Christ, Superstar and was hit by his muse … he wandered the streets of Manhattan, unable to sleep. A native of France, Alain Boublil felt he had to keep walking until he found a theme that could match the power and emotional intensity of what he’d just seen, and something uniquely French. He came to the defining national moment…the French Revolution. That ...
Errata: At about the 12 minute mark I say that Phantom of the Opera is a Victor Hugo story. It isn't -- it's French, but the author is Gaston LaRoux.
A young music producer has just seen a production of Jesus Christ, Superstar and was hit by his muse … he wandered the streets of Manhattan, unable to sleep. A native of France, Alain Boublil felt he had to keep walking until he found a theme that could match ...
Starting in September 1853 Victor Hugo, exiled to an island off the coast of France because the now-Emperor Louis Napoleon has told the army to shoot Hugo on sight, has been holding a series of seances. There are been hundreds of them. They have all been transcribes. Scores of people have participated. Many have served as amateur mediums.
he results have been spectacular; they’ve made contact with their tragically...
Seance transcript images:
Pages 1187 and 1189 of the seance transcripts contain the words "fille" and "morte," but neither includes the words Leopoldine. Page 1189 of the seance transcripts. Page 1187 of the seance transcripts.
Show summary:
It is September 11, 1853, and the already famous author Victor Hugo has been mourning the loss of his daughter for 2 years. He’s also been exiled from France, ...
Thanks almost entirely to his mistress, Victor Hugo escaped France with his life and an early manuscript of Les Miserables. While living in exile and on an island close to the coast but under British control, he finishes the book 10 years later. It’s an immediate international smash hit, with an appeal so broad that even soldiers on BOTH sides of the US civil war love it.
From there it’s a roller coaster…hugely pop...
This episode covers 5 real historical figures that helped inspire the novel, and a whirlwind plot summary of the original Victor Hugo novel.
Errata: For some reason I kept referring to the character Marius as "Marcus" -- please just skip that.
Here's a link to the image of the Bishop's plaque, identifying that character in the novel is based on the actual Bishop of Deign.
Introduction
Against t...
It's 1860, and Victor Hugo, having taken to the barricades against the hated Louis Napoleon, has escaped Paris with a price on his head. And his mistress, not his wife, has successfully smuggled both he and his unfinished manuscripts out of France. But now he's in exile, living in an island off the French coast but under British control. How is he ...
It’s 1848 and there is yet another violent transfer of power going on in France. One of its greatest citizens – both a member of the legislative body and the Legion of Honor, has been in hiding for 9 days with a price on his head. If he’s found by the wrong people he will surely be killed. He is an author and he does have a pile of manuscripts he’s working on, but first he’s got to get out of France. How did he do...
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