Atw - Downstage Center

From NYC police officer to Broadway, actor David Zayas has had an interesting journey from the street to the stage. In the latest Downstage Center, the accomplished actor joins his fellow LAByrinth Theater member and friend, the playwright/actor Stephen Adly Guirgis. The duo speak candidly about the beginnings, body of work, and mission of LAByrinth, Mr. Zayas’ process and life, and finish sharing tales of memorable auditions.

Where are Broadway's biggest talents? Downstage Center. The latest sits down with Tony Award winner ("Avenue Q", "The Book of Mormon") Bobby Lopez. The composer and lyricist talks to Ted Chapin (American Theatre Wing Chairman of the Board and President and Executive Director of The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization) about his inspiration, the Sondheim influence, finding the comedy, and, of course, "The Book of Mormon", from its inceptions to its "I Believe" ode to "The Sound of Music."

Broadway’s premier animal trainer Bill Berloni got his foot in the door in 1976 as a teenager when he rescued and trained the original Sandy for the Goodspeed Opera House original production of "Annie." Sandy went to Broadway in 1977 and so did Mr. Berloni, and he never left. Michael Price, Goodspeed Musicals Executive Director, interviews the 2011 Special Tony Award winner and friend Mr. Berloni about his career in the theater: from "Annie" to "Camelot" (with Richard Burton) to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s "Woman in White"; the work he’s most proud of; and the special pride he takes in being an advocate for his four legged co-stars.

Where are Broadway’s hottest stars? Downstage Center. The latest episode heads down south as Memphis’ Montego Glover plays the role as interviewer to her co-star Adam Pascal. The versatile duo expounds on, among other topics, their experience in "Memphis", the skill sets needed to be a working actor, and some of the other roles they may be known for: Mr. Pascal in "Rent" and "Aida", and Ms. Glover in "The Color Purple."

Nina Arianda’s star has never shone brighter. Recreating the off-Broadway role that her made a name to watch, the actress returns to Broadway in "Venus in Fur" in what the New York Times called "the first, must see performance of the Broadway season." Downstage Center, with NY1’s Frank DiLella, sits down with Ms. Arianda to discuss, among other things, the acting process, family, her Tony nomination for "Born Yesterday", working in Woody Allen’s "Midnight in Paris", seeing Meryl Streep in "Mother Courage", theatre education, and her dream roles.

Go backstage with one of Broadway's hottest actors from Broadway's biggest show. NY1's Frank DiLella interviews "The Book of Mormon" star Andrew Rannells in the latest "Downstage Center". From "Hairspray" and "Jersey Boys" to "The Book of Mormon"'s Elder Price, Oklahoma native Mr. Rannells relishes his time in the hottest show in town. Inspired by "Into the Woods" and "The Who's Tommy", he somehow found a way to keep a straight face during each hilarious performance on his way to his first Tony Award nomination in 2011. Listen to how he ended up in the current production and pranks his co-star Josh Gad on stage, what real Mormons think of his work, working with Trey Parker and Matt Stone and the sometimes controversial subject matter of their humor, and what happens when Oprah visits him after the show. Original air date - February 1, 2012.

Marlo Thomas and Lisa Emery share the stage in Broadway's "Relatively Speaking" (an evening of one-acts written by Elaine May, Woody Allen, and Ethan Coen). In the Wing's latest "Downstage Center" they get together to swap stories on the craft they love and how they got where they are today. Ms. Thomas begins as the interviewer but soon a conversation ensues about mutual director horror stories, women in the theatre, pre-show rituals, the inspiration they receive from hearing the audience entering the empty space, and, of course, "Relatively Speaking" and working with Elaine May's words and John Turturro's direction. They wrap it up discussing their "big breaks" - Ms. Thomas with Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park" and Ms. Emery with Lanford Wilson's "Burn This". Original air date - January 18, 2012.

What happens when "Follies" star Elaine Paige sits down to interview her co-star Ron Raines? Listen now to the lively discussion about everything "Follies" and Sondheim: his lyrics, Sondheim as teacher, and the difficulty in performing "Sweeney Todd", among other topics. Sondheim isn't the only show in town. Paige and Raines also talk about balancing life and art, musical theatre vs. opera, the economics of Broadway, career longevity in the theatre, "The King and I", transitioning from film/television acting to acting on the stage, and Paige's most embarrassing stage moment while performing in "Evita". Of course, it all goes back to "Follies" and its cast and why it's so hard for Raines to follow Paige's showstopper "I'm Still Here!" Original air date - January 4, 2012.

Eugene Lee, resident designer for Rhode Island's Trinity Rep since 1967, set designer for "Saturday Night Live (SNL)" since its inception, and three-time TONY Award winner, talks about the realistic set of "Sweeney Todd"; growing up in Wisconsin and his early theatre memories and experiences; why he dislikes proscenium stages; what led "SNL"'s Lorne Michaels to hire him; working with Hal Prince on "Sweeney Todd", "Candide", "Merrily We Roll Along", and "Showboat"; how he got involved in "Wicked"; working with Gordon Edelstein at Long Wharf Theatre; working with playwright Athol Fugard; and his love of teaching. Original air date - July 27, 2011.

American actress Lois Smith, whose career in theatre, film, and television spans five decades, talks about her experience of playing the originally male role, Alcandre, in the Signature Theatre production of Tony Kushner's "The Illusion", an adaptation of Pierre Corneille's "L'Illusion Comique". She also talks about her upbringing in Kansas; experience in working on the film "East of Eden"; working with Helen Hayes on "The Wisteria Trees" and "The Glass Menagerie"; working with Andre Gregory at the Philadelphia Theatre of the Living Arts at the beginning of the regional theatre movement; doing Chekhov; her experience as a company member of Steppenwolf and performing "The Grapes of Wrath" as the first American theatre company to play The Royal National Theatre in London; her experience in playing Halie in Sam Shepard's "Buried Child"; and working with playwright Horton Foote on "The Trip to the Bountiful" again at Signature Theatre. Original air date - July 13, 2011.

Returning to Downstage Center five years after a 2006 conversation, the legendary Angela Lansbury talks about her most recent Broadway roles, in Terrence McNally's "Deuce", Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit" and Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music". She also discusses her experiences with artists with whom she's frequently worked - Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Arthur Laurents and Edward Albee; her foray into Shakespeare, playing Gertrude opposite Albert Finney's "Hamlet" in London; why her career began on film rather than on the stage, her first love; and her opinions about the necessity of training and young people entering the acting profession to become celebrities, rather than excellent actors. Original air date - June 29, 2011.

John Guare talks about his two Broadway plays of the past season: considering how the world has caught up with and changed audience responses to "The House of Blue Leaves" and which portion of the play is drawn directly from his own life, as well as the origin of "A Free Man of Color" and whether it's his practice to write plays based on ideas suggested by others. He also discusses his development as a playwright while at Georgetown University and the Yale School of Drama; why being an Aquarius was instrumental in the start of his professional career; his never-completed collaboration with Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein; how "Two Gentlemen of Verona", a musical with 37 songs, was never meant to be a musical; finding a home at The Public Theatre and his conflicted emotions about being a part of the institution at that time, where such plays as "Landscape of the Body" and "Marco Polo Sings a Solo" premiered; how place affected his writing of the "Lydie Breeze" plays and why he chose to revisit and rewor

Just as she departed for Massachusetts and her first season as the Williamstown Theatre Festival's first female artistic director Jenny Gersten discussed her plans for the company under her leadership and tells the story of how she sold herself as Associate Producer to prior artistic director Michael Ritchie, which resulted in her nine year tenure in that previous position at WTF. She discussed WTF's relationship both to its local audience, those who summer in the Berkshires and visitors from New York, as well as how she's reconfigured the season to allow for longer runs, but fewer productions, on the mainstage. She also talks about growing up in a performing arts household (as the daughter of Lincoln Center Theater's Bernard Gersten and The New 42nd Street's Cora Cahan, both previous Downstage Center guests); her post college job with the the highly praised 52nd Street Project; her time as artistic director of New York's Naked Angels as they began their renaissance; and her work as Associate Producer for Osk

"Priscilla Queen of the Desert"'s Tony Sheldon talks about his six year journey with the show, from his dislike of the original film on which it's based to his transcontinental success as Bernadette in Australia, New Zealand, England, Canada and now the United States. He also talks about growing up in a multi-generational show business family in Australia (including his mother Toni Lamond, who's still performing at age 79, and his aunt Helen Reddy) which saw him working professionally at age 7; his performing hiatus from age 12 to 17, after which he rebelled against his family's singing and dancing tradition by embarking on work in plays; his youthful roles as Alan Strang in "Equus" and Tom in "The Glass Menagerie" (as well as the hit show "Hamlet on Ice"); his first exposure to Shakespeare; his success -- after a shaky start -- as Arnold in the Australian debut of "Torch Song Trilogy"; how the burgeoning Australian film industry and resident theatre movements ran in parallel, rather than intertwined, paths;

Bookwriter John Weidman talks about creating a new book in the 1980s with Timothy Crouse for the 1930s musical "Anything Goes", now playing in revival at Roundabout Theatre Company in New York, and how their version of the oft-revised musical became the now-standard script. He also talks about growing up as the son of novelist and sometime Broadway librettist Jerome Weidman; his academic career at Harvard and then Yale Law School (though he's never practiced law); his part in the creation of the highly influential "National Lampoon" magazine in the 70s; how his law school-era fascination with the opening of Japan to the West ultimately became his first Broadway musical, "Pacific Overtures"; the true origins of his second collaboration with Stephen Sondheim, "Assassins"; why he was dissatisfied with his work on the musical version of "Big"; how one writes a dance musical that is largely told without words, namely "Contact"; and whether the long-aborning "Road Show" (aka "Bounce" aka "Wise Guys") is finished, o

Marc Kudisch, currently appearing in "A Minister's Wife" at Lincoln Center Theater, talks about performing in a musical where the transitions between speaking and singing are instant and fluid, how the show, based on Shaw's "Candida", focuses its emphasis on the romantic triangle at its core, and the similarities between his character of Morrell and his early role as Conrad Birdie. He also talks about discovering himself as a performer as a senior in high school and then more fully in college; why he has always considered himself to be a character actor and how he defines that term; his performances as The Devil (in both "The Apple Tree" and "The Witches of Eastwick"), as comic villains (Franklin Hart in "9 to 5", Baron Bomburst in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"), comic foils (playing Count Carl-Magnus in four productions of "A Little Night Music", including the depth he finds in a character described by others as "an idiot") and leading man (as Jeff Moss in "Bells Are Ringing"); his admiration for directors Georg

Joe Mantello talks about returning to the Broadway stage as an actor after a 17-year hiatus to play the role of Ned Weeks in Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart" -- and what it's like to play a role that the play's author has based on himself when the author is at the theatre nightly. He also talks about his acting days in school and community theatre in his hometown of Rockford, Illinois (with classmates that included Marin Mazzie); his training at North Carolina School of the Arts and why he had to relearn his idiosyncrasies when he got to New York; his work with playwright Peter Hedges and actress Mary-Louise Parker in the self-founded Edge Theatre; the opportunities offered to him by the Circle Repertory Company; why he decided to stop acting after making his Broadway debut in "Angels in America"; the development of his directing career, including the highs and lows of his first two Broadway assignments, Terrence McNally's "Love! Valour! Compassion!" and Donald Margulies' "What's Wrong With This Picture?"; h

Jason Robert Brown, who prefers the title "songwriter" over "composer," talks about why he spends so much time performing his own material and engaging directly with his fans. He discusses writing all of his songs "in his own voice"; his short time at Rochester's esteemed Eastman School of Music; coming to New York, getting work in piano bars and how that led to rehearsal pianist jobs; the evolution of "Songs for a New World" and whether it began as a collection of existing songs or whether the material was newly created for the show; the nature of his collaboration with William Finn on the vocal arrangements for "A New Brain"; how he got hired for "Parade" after Stephen Sondheim passed, having the opportunity to choose his collaborators when the musical team was assembled for "Parade", and the changes he has made more recently to move the show away from Hal Prince's vision; how the origin of "The Last Five Years" began out of a desire to be free of collaborators and how it fuses "Songs for a New World" and

Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire talks about returning to his South Boston roots with the play "Good People", how the characters are amalgams of the people he grew up with in that private neighborhood and why he chose it as the setting for a play about the class system in America. He also talks about moving beyond his "Southie" roots as early as seventh grade, when he received a scholarship to a private school and how he had to learn to fit in there; his earliest plays, written for his classmates at that same private school; his theatrical studies at Sarah Lawrence College and later at The Juilliard School; his professional "Plan B", a career in arts administration, fostered by his work at New York's Dance Theatre Workshop; his excitement at his first New York production, "A Devil Inside", at SoHo Rep, which began his long collaboration with (and perpetual atonement for) actress Marylouise Burke; how Manhattan Theatre Club, now his longtime creative home, showed early interest in, and then almost passed on, hi

Laurie Metcalf talks about her role in Sharr White's play "The Other Place" at MCC Theater, and the challenge of playing someone whose mental faculties are diminishing in a non-linear play, requiring her to constantly leap between varying states of mind. She also talks about her embrace of theatre during her college years at Illinois State University, where she first studied German, then anthropology, before settling on theatre; being one of the original company members of the acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre and her satisfaction with her day job during those early years; her Chicago breakout role in "The Glass Menagerie" and how that production fit with the company's reputation for "rock and roll theatre"; her participation in both the Chicago and New York productions of Lanford Wilson's "Balm in Gilead", and how she is still approached on the street by people recalling that show 25 years later; her regular returns to the Steppenwolf stage throughout her television run on "Roseanne" and other TV and film work;