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[0:00] Alan Seales: Hey everyone. Welcome to a special Broadway Podcast Network, Broadway Nation live stream event here celebrating the release of David Armstrong's new book, Broadway Nation: How Immigrant Jewish Queer and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical. This is a book that has so much information that I can't wait to dive into. And so I'm Alan Seales, I'm co-founder of Broadway Podcast Network and host of The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales, and I have another podcast called Was It Chance and a Jim Carrey podcast called Carried Away. Look it all up, it's out there. And over the next 90 minutes or so, you're going to have the chance to join me in a creative conversation with David Armstrong as we go inside the creation of this book.

This is his first book, by the way. This is an amazing feat, especially for book number one. Well, close quiet. It's an amazing feat, full stop. And it's book number one, even more impressive. Okay. So you're gonna have the opportunity to ask David whatever questions you may have about the challenges and rewards of putting a book like this together. You're gonna have a chance to participate in our Broadway Nation trivia contest, and you can win a hardcover copy of the book for yourself, which is actually a hundred dollar value. That is, it's a hefty book. It should be a lot of fun. Now, it is my pleasure to introduce the man of the hour himself, David Armstrong.

[1:25] David Armstrong: Hey Alan. Hello, everybody. Hello, this is so exciting. I can't tell you if you anybody saw me on the unboxing video, you saw how excited I am about this book. And it is just amazing to have it in my hand and to have already, I know people have all received it in the mail, which I was so happy about. So I've heard from a couple of people, even someone has actually read it already, which is I don't know how they got through it all that quickly, but that's a lot of reading real fast. Yes, that's a lot of fast reading, exactly. Maybe they're one of those speed readers. It's a thrilling day, and you know, after two years of working on this book, I finally to finally have it out there is so exciting.

And of course, I need to thank Alan and the entire staff at BPN for making this possible and helping to spread the word today and sort of celebrate this pent up two years of work that now gets to be out there and people get to finally see what I've been doing for all this time. And of course, I have to thank my publisher, Matthew and Drama. I know that's a name that a lot of people will know. If you have any theater books in your house, if you plays, they publish a lot of plays. It's sort of a storied name. So I was thrilled to have them invite me to write this book. And they're an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, which will be important to remember when things come up in a couple minutes. But before we get to details, you know, get down into the details of how the book came about.

Let me just give a quick overview of the book for anybody who doesn't know what we're working about yet. Broadway Nation, how immigrant Jewish, queer, and black artists invented the Broadway musical, is a 431-page comprehensive history of the Broadway musical from the beginning to practically up to this moment, but with a special emphasis on the marginalized individuals and groups that were so crucial to its creation, including a significant number of women who didn't make it into the subtitle because there's women are already in all those groups that are mentioned in the subtitle. But I just want to emphasize that they're part of this as well. And with all of these groups, immigrants, Jews, blacks, queers, women, these are people who we may know their names, or a lot of them you won't know their names, but they're often not acknowledged or highlighted in histories of the Broadway musical to the extent that I've endeavored to do it in this particular book.

And of course, this approach will be familiar to anybody who's familiar with my podcast, because that's been the approach that I've taken with the podcast as well. But of course, in the book, I've had the opportunity to delve much into much more detail than I can do on a podcast. If you're considering purchasing the book, if you go today to the Bloomsbury website, don't go to Amazon today, go to Bloomsbury.com, and you'll see 30% off either the paperback, which ordinarily sells for $34.95, or the hardback, which sells for $100. Today at Bloomsbury.com, you can get 30% off, which is a pretty good deal. I was very happy. I was also very happy the way the publishers have priced the book, putting out both the hardcover and the soft cover at the same time.

So, Alan, I think it's time. You know, I'm usually the one who asks people questions, but I'm gonna today you're gonna turn the tables on me. And I'll be the wickdom, as we used to say. The victim. Oh man. That's an old theater story. I don't know if some people might know what I'm talking about. I'm not gonna I won't go into it now, but I'll explain the wickdom some other time.

[5:09] Alan Seales: Well, start me out at the beginning because I don't even think I know the story of why you even created the podcast in the first place. Because the podcast, of course, led to the book, which we're gonna talk about, but why start the podcast?

[5:20] David Armstrong: Because I after I left the Fifth Avenue Theater after 18 years as being the producing artistic director of the Fifth Avenue Theater in Seattle, I was asked to teach a course, to create a course for the University of Washington School of Drama. And I came up with this idea then of history of the Broadway musical, this particular focus. So I started teaching there in 2018. And of course, after two rounds of teaching, we had the pandemic, or it was looming, and I was going to go back to teaching months after the start of the pandemic. And I had already had this idea that if I that making a podcast, sort of doing more, you know, general audience friendly versions of the lectures I was using in my class would make a great podcast.

And then what reinforced that is now we were I had to teach, you know, remotely. So I started making the podcast so I could actually use them, put them out for the public, but also use them to help remotely since I wasn't couldn't be in person for that you know next almost two years that happened. So that's where the podcast came from. And then I was thrilled that Matthew and Drama, Dom O'Hanlon, who we'll hear from a little later, approached me about he knew what the podcast was. I had interviewed a number of authors of books that they had published on my podcast, and they reached out to me and said, Would you be interested? They knew about the course I was teaching, and they thought this can be adopted as a textbook?

And so that's why they came to me to see if I was interested in creating this book. I had never written the book before, but I perhaps naively said yes. I don't recommend anybody writes a 400-page book the first time they write a book, but it's what they wanted. I give the people what they want.

[7:28] Alan Seales: You're muted, Alan.

[7:30] David Armstrong: Oh, my fault. Sorry, my kids in the background are making noise. So excuse the little ones. It's seven o'clock here on the East Coast. Okay, you've got this podcast going, you got this curriculum going. And so Dom reaches out, Dom's an editor, reaches out and says, make it a book. And my first thought would be like, how can I fit all this into one book? It's a possible task. So like along with I guess figuring out what to cover, what sort of challenges did you have putting all of this together?

[8:06] David Armstrong: Well, that certainly was one of the challenges is it's a big subject. It's the entire history of the Broadway musical, 125 plus years. And it needs to be comprehensive. You want a book like this to give you the full story, and it's got added material to it than most other books have. So that was tricky, and Dom was really helpful with that, especially in the structuring of the book. And probably the biggest challenge for me is for the lectures that I done or for the podcast, I didn't have to cite anything. I didn't have to document where anything came from. So now, even though I was using some of those lectures, sort of as source material, the beginning of these chapters would be I'd find a quote and go, where the hell did I get that quote from? I have no idea. And then I'd have to backtrack and figure out where this information came from, which is the ask backwards way of writing a book.

[9:02] Alan Seales: How much of this was like, was there like Mandela effect kind of stuff in there that like people have been quote misquoting things that it just become fact? You know, I'll put it in air quotes fact.

[9:11] David Armstrong: There's absolutely a lot of things, and one of the great stories of that is there's a story about Anything Goes and about the original production of Anything Goes, and they rewrote the script because there was a shipwreck off the coast of New Jersey where thousands of people watched the ship go down and hundreds of people die. And they claimed that that's why they had to rewrite Anything Goes when it was about to go into rehearsal, because originally the story had wrecked in it. Oh, no, it turns out to be that's in dozens of books, that's in all kinds of books, completely not true. And which I didn't know I believed it was true also until I started doing this research and found other people who had documented that this was not the case.

But the general story that's out there is sort of this received wisdom about it is not what really happened. The show just wasn't good enough, and they had to fire the book writers and get new ones in, even though they were famous book writers on all sides. That doesn't make quite as good of a story as what made it into lore.

[10:17] Alan Seales: Exactly.

[10:17] David Armstrong: And it's probably that the original producer of that show made up that story in order to let everybody off the hook.

[10:24] Alan Seales: Right, right.

[10:25] David Armstrong: Yeah, let's go. I mean it's the Castle Morrow or something is the name of the boat that went down like a ferry, which was a big disaster in the 1920s, but it didn't really affect Goes.

[10:41] Alan Seales: Let me actually back up a little, not, I was gonna say a little bit more, but I think it's gonna be a lot more because little David. What got you into the arts? What felt made you fall in love with theater performing Broadway?

[10:57] David Armstrong: I was one of those weird kids that knew what I wanted to do from four years old, if not before. I was in fell in love with theater, with show business, with musicals, especially, mostly from television. I grew up in Cincinnati, and so I fell in love with Broadway through movies about Broadway that were on TV for the to begin with. But there's a famous story, I've told it on my podcast before, that when I was five years old, I think it's hard to track this exactly with when this movie came out and how old I was and what really happened. But my mother took myself and another her friend and their kid to the movies to see Dumbo, but they went to the wrong theater and we saw Gypsy instead. And from and I insisted on having the cast the soundtrack album and was and of course for it's a movie about kids in show business.

Wow, you know, you don't I I'm sure the last half hour of it was of little interest to me, but everything up to that was fascinating, and so I feel like I had I knew what quality was from the very beginning.

[12:16] Alan Seales: That's crazy.

[12:19] David Armstrong: Oh, I love this. Kelly just put in the comments. Let's see, just ordered my copy for next year's musical theater history course at LIU. CW, you can't wait to read it. So by the way, yes, we are live. Please drop your comments into the comment section where you're watching now. Because later on soon we're gonna have David answer some of your requests. So go ahead, start thinking of what you want to ask David, either about the book or about Broadway in general. But yeah, drop it in the comments because that's how it works.

[12:48] Alan Seales: So back to the book. Oh, I like this picture of Lynn and In the Heights down here.

[12:55] David Armstrong: Yeah, yeah.

[12:57] Alan Seales: How did you decide how to structure this? Because I feel like there's many, many different ways you could have gone about it, like genre shifting or decades or even stylistically. But like, how did how what were your options and what did you end up going with to present this information?

[13:14] David Armstrong: Well, one of the main things I'm interested in is the way I view the musical theater as this continuum. That it starts at the, you know, in the 1890s, basically. You could back further than that for my purposes, the Broadway musical starts around the turn of the century, right about 1900. And from that point right up today, every show and every writer leads to the next one. And so you have to, from my point of view, you have to sort of tell it chronologically, although not entirely chronologically, but you want to be able to go back and forth between to follow the thread and follow how things how each generation reacted to the generation before and to the creators who came before them, sometimes emulating what they were done, sometimes reacting against what was done.

[14:09] David Armstrong: But I find that to be a really fascinating story, and uh it's also a story of, I think one of the outstanding things about the Broadway musical is that it is handed down from person to person like a medieval craft. It is it is literally one person teaches the next person, and uh and who then passes it on to the next generation in a way that I think very few things have happened that way.

[14:37] Alan Seales: Were you able to document that? Or is that just like what you're seeing? How did you document that?

[14:42] David Armstrong: Well, there's there's a lot of ways to document, but the in the middle of the book, there's sort of what I call the intermission section. So the the let me let me get us there. So the book is structured into several into acts basically, which is a little cheesy, but it seemed to be the right thing to do for this kind of a book. So the first of all, there's an introduction, and then there's a sort of overture which talks about what is a musical, what uh, and also looks at the precursors of the musical before Broadway. What was there, what were the what led there was musical theater since the beginning of time, but what led to the Broadway musical and what were the things that came before it? So we talk about that vaudeville and operetta and tinpan act, all the different precursors.

[15:28] David Armstrong: Then act one I call the Genesis period, which is when the musical is forming, is discovering itself, is finding itself. And that, and you know, it's interesting that there with musical theater scholars, there are very few agreed upon names for the eras or or timelines for whatever the eras of musical theater are. So if you're teaching, you basically have to make something up because you want I needed something to to talk about. So for me, the Genesis period begins in the 1890s, 1900 basically, and ends at the end of near the end of World War II.

[16:06] Alan Seales: And is did it to the Genesis period? Does that include vaudeville or is that coming out of vaudeville?

[16:13] David Armstrong: It's coming out of Vaudeville. Vaudeville is one of the precursors. Yeah. I mean, vaudeville is happening simultaneously with much of that. It's still still a big, you know, still happening uh it hasn't died yet, so it's happening sort of concurrently with the with what's in on Broadway at the time.

[16:29] David Armstrong: Then I then the you know, people talk about the golden age of Broadway a lot, and many people will sort of say, well, think about starts in the 1920s and goes into the 1960s. But to me, that's first of all, way too much time to to identify 40 years is too much. And second of all, if you're just talking about the great songs from Broadway, that might make sense. But if you're talking about the shows, the shows change substantially in the middle of that period. So I've invented something I call the Silver Age of Broadway, which is really basically the 1920s and the 1930s. So it starts with uh with Irene, really, which opens in 1919, and then takes us through to the opening night of Oklahoma, which then kicks off the silver the golden age of Broadway. And then so I'm always looking for when does the forum change, when do things shift substantially to be something new.

[17:33] David Armstrong: So then for me, the golden age of Broadway ends on the opening night of Hare, which then kicks off what I call the modern era of Broadway, which we're still in, which continues to today. The hair kicked us into modern.

[17:46] Alan Seales: Hair kicked us into modern.

[17:48] David Armstrong: And I divide that section into two basically the mod the early modern era and then the 21st century, which takes us up to today. So those are the uh the book follows that uh progression basically chronologically, but then to get back to your question a minute ago, in the middle of that, I do what I call an intermission, where I trace one of these legacy changes, what I call them. And there's so many, you could change you could you could pick so many different artists and so many different legacy chains to chains to follow. This one I pick, and I don't want to give away one of our trivia questions uh that we have coming up later, uh but follows four artists, uh ending with Lynn Manuel, Lynn Manuel Miranda, uh, who we can basically between these four artists you can trace the entire history of the Broadway musical.

[18:42] Alan Seales: What?

[18:43] David Armstrong: And they they lead they directly teach the next person. One artist teaches the next person who teaches the next person who teaches the next person. And it's that's documented and and so clear. Who got Lynn?

[18:58] Alan Seales: Okay, I'll just give so Sondheim is one of the mentors of of Lynn.

[19:03] David Armstrong: Yeah. And Oscar Hammerstein very famously is direct mentor of Stephen Sondheim. And uh we'll I guess we'll tee this up now. When we get to our trivia question, one of us is going to be who was the mentor in the first part of that legacy chain, who mentored Oscar Hammerstein the second?

[19:20] Alan Seales: Ooh.

[19:21] David Armstrong: Ooh. So uh somebody's probably already got it. Don't put it in the chat yet. Don't put it in the chat yet.

[19:26] Alan Seales: Yeah, yeah, they're they're out there for goodness right now.

[19:29] David Armstrong: Exactly. They're they’s so much, so much history in all of this. And I mean, literally, like how immigrant Jewish queer and black artists invented the Broadway musical. How how much of these uh groups of people and they're they're minorities in the world of you know white America, to be honest, right? Like how much of their story it publicly gets has been erased, and like was it hard for you to like start digging in and pulling out giving credit where credit is due, or or is it all there and just nobody talks about it?

[20:03] David Armstrong: A little of both. I wouldn't say erased, I just ignored and and overlooked. And somewhat understandably, because we regretfully, but understandably, because we tend to focus on the things that have stuck around for a long time. And unfortunately, the many of these artists did not have a legacy, even though they did gr important shows and had a tremendous effect on the shows of their era, they didn't have the staying power that other people had, which is the people we are which we mostly knew.

[20:41] David Armstrong: And I can give some examples of that. Um I'll start just I'll just sort of do categories. Uh in terms of women, there's some amazing people who had tremendous careers that we just and I'll admit that as I went in this originally when I was putting the course together for the UW, I didn't, they were names I might have known, but I didn't really know much about them or have uh any real sense of the impact that they had on the Broadway musical. So for a couple examples, Dorothy Donnelly is probably not a name that people are very familiar with. This is from the this goes back to the very beginning of the Broadway musical where back in the in the Genesis period and moving into the Silver Age. She was she went from one to the other.

She wrote the book and lyrics for eight Broadway musicals and operettas and directed many of them. So this is in 19, this is in the 1910 teens and the so just right there, you were introducing something that most people don't think was happening. And she's not the only one. There's four or five women in that in that category from that period who were really, and Dorothy Donnelly uh, one of the shows, and she had uh The Student Prince was a show that she wrote the music and the lyrics for, or the book and the lyrics for, rather. Uh and uh was a giant hit. Well, that'll be another trivia question coming up later.

[22:09] David Armstrong: We'll talk about the student prince. Uh there's uh another person I'll talk about who's a who's a uh black woman who was tremendous uh impact in her day, is named Ada Overton Walker. She's one of my favorite characters in the book. And she was known. This is from this is now this series of musicals that most people don't know about that happened in the in between 1900 and 1910. So again, at the very beginning of the Broadway musical, there's a series of black musicals written by a whole host of black theater artists. And Ada Overton Walker was the wife of of George Walker of Williams and Walker, and that's a we we kind of know the name Williams and Walker. Ada was as famous as they were, and was really the star first of their vaudeville act and then of the series of shows that they produced on Broadway.

She was known as the Queen of the Cakewalk, and she was the choreographer for their shows, and is the first black woman credited with choreographing a Broadway musical, and may indeed have been the first black first woman to ever do so. She didn't get credit for it. She did a number of shows that she didn't get billed for. But uh she is she definitely has the uh got the was the first black woman to get billed in this again. We're talking in 1911 or something like that. I can't remember the exact year she's in.

[23:38] Alan Seales: So uh you wanted a couple more?

[23:40] David Armstrong: I'll just go.

[23:41] Alan Seales: No, this is this is yeah, give me some more because this is this is fascinating.

[23:45] David Armstrong: Uh, in terms of gay artists, uh there's so and of course we think about it's not unusual to think about there would be uh gay men in the theater, but to go back to the very beginning, they're right there from the very beginning. They're creators, they're initiating these shows, and have tremendous impact, and partly because they didn't have children and they didn't, and they they there's no one sort of tell their story later on. Hassard Short is one of my favorite people in the book, and I had heard that name before. You see his name all over, all over Billing on Broadway, all of her posters and things. But he was known as the genius of stagecraft and the master magician of Broadway. And over a 30-year career, he do he staged, he was a staging person.

Sometimes he was billed as the director, sometimes he was billed by staged by. It's hard, I can't quite get a sense of how much choreography he did because he often worked with other choreographers as well. But he was the one putting the show onto the stage, and he had a 30-year career and 50 Broadway shows.

[24:52] Alan Seales: Wow.

[24:54] David Armstrong: And every if you're talking about Fosse or you're talking of Michael Bennett, they're a legacy from Hassard Short. And the same, and his his sort of uh there's another guy named John Murray Anderson, whose name is a little more familiar to us. They have parallel careers, they're both happening at the same time. He was known as the king of reviews, and he's another staging genius. He did 31 Broadway reviews and musical comedies during this, and both of them continue into the 1950s.

[25:26] Alan Seales: That's crazy.

[25:28] David Armstrong: They're just names that we just don't we are not centered the way I think they need to be and should be. And I was thrilled to be able to do at least part of that in this book.

[25:41] Alan Seales: Did you have a bunch that you had to just like leave on the editing room floor? I mean, how did you choose what to leave what to put in and what to leave out?

[25:51] David Armstrong: I probably I don't think I left anybody out that is really significant, but there are people who are very well known who maybe don't get quite as much attention as they have in other books. Because you're right, there wasn't room for everything about everybody. I one of the people who read the book early on uh as and uh did a uh sort of provided some early feedback on it uh and a great quotes for us, said there's just not enough about Frank Lesser in it. And that's probably true. Frank Lesser may have gotten a little bit of shrift, because of course, once the book was written, then I, you know, Dom wanted me to trim it out a little bit, so it wouldn't be 500 pages. So in that process, that's probably there. There are probably some things. If I if I could write a 600-page book, there probably I would add more things, more, but it's mostly people who we already know their stories pretty well.

[26:52] Alan Seales: Is there gonna be a part two?

[26:55] David Armstrong: Broadway Bigger Nation possibly. I actually have another uh uh uh a different book in mind that will be sort of the uh sequel to it, not exactly a sequel. We'll leave that for another day though.

[27:08] Alan Seales: I think, yeah. I mean, that's that's really it's just really so cool. I mean, this looking through here, you've got all of these pictures, all of the chapters are are nice song titles, right? Everything just kind of goes through in like you say in chronological order. And is there is there something in here that you you a lot of readers are gonna find really surprising to hear about I think a couple two things that surprised me in working on this and the first thing was when I first started working on on this was this early chapter, this early uh decade of black musical theater on Broadway it that at the turn of the century. So, right at the same time that George M. Cohan, who we often credit not as the father of musical comedy, he's creating musicals side by side with black artists like Bob Cole and the Johnson brothers, James P.

[28:08] David Armstrong: And Jay Rosamond Johnson, and Will Marion Cook, who are creating hit Broadway shows that tour all over the country.

[28:16] David Armstrong: And in those days, even George M. Cohan shows, they didn't play very long on Broadway. You played like a couple months, and then you the money, the business was really a touring business. And a lot of times those shows would then come back to Broadway as their tour. This is these are just as famous and just as successful shows as the ones we know about during that period, but they've completely fallen off the radar.

[28:47] Alan Seales: I was gonna ask you about how much of this did you find like um telling everyone's stories, how much of it paralleled kind of world history? Because if this is immigrant, especially you know, Jews and queers and and black folks, uh like so much is happening in not even uh not only in our own country, but all over the world, causing everyone to like move around because of wars. There were literally two world wars that happened uh in during the course of this timeline of this book, right? So, did you find that parallel of the style of Broadway, what was coming, who was writing what, and like it was it affecting the business of show business?

[29:28] David Armstrong: Totally, and you can't separate the stories. The story of America is the story of the Broadway musical. And everything that's happening in our culture is affecting the Broadway musical and being reflected by it. What's weird in a way is that so much of it has to deal with immigration and migration, completely affects the invents the Broadway. The only reason the Broadway musical is invented is because of the immigration that's happening to New York at the time, and this creates an audience for show business. And then so it's the creates this audience that wants to see it, but nice people won't be in it. Nobody respectable will be in show business because, you know, and this has been true for from the beginning of history, basically. People in show business, artists and singers and dancers and songwriters, are basically considered by the you know the established establishment as being one step away from vagabonds and prostitutes. We're all charlatans.

[30:33] Alan Seales: Everyone exactly.

[30:36] David Armstrong: Totally. And so loose morals, so no one will be in it, but people want to see it, which then creates an opportunity for marginalized groups who can't afford to have those kinds of prejudices. And so they're if you have the talent and you're Jewish or you're or or you're black, there's this opportunity to be in business that you can seize because there's a vacuum there. And uh so it that it's really fascinating. And then that continues through very variations of that continue through the uh through the errors. The second big segment of black musical theater, which is in the 1920s, which kicks off with Shuffle Along, which is a show that we definitely know about, that's very famous. But there's then 20, I forget how many shows exactly, but uh a good dozen shows, black musicals written by black artists that open in the wake of Shuffle Along, many of which are hits, and uh many which we just don't talk about anymore.

Uh my Cassine Gaines, who wrote that terrific book when Broadway was black about Shuffle Along. Uh-huh. I I've always remembered what he said. He said that in 1925 there were more black people on Broadway than there are today.

[31:53] Alan Seales: Wow.

[31:54] David Armstrong: Which seems counterintuitive.

[31:56] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[31:57] David Armstrong: Yeah. It's and then but then it goes away, partly because of the depression, partly because of racism. Lots of there's this the story of the the black artist's story comes in waves and then disappears continually. And which is, you know, very, very uh sad, but also hopefully we'll pay attention to it this time and not let that happen again.

[32:23] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[32:24] Alan Seales: No, that's really interesting and very cool that uh there it's a dichotomy of we don't want to be part of it, but we want to watch it. You know, that like people can't look away from a train wreck, right? Is that is that the kind of mentality people just want to see or a dance number. People can't look away from a good dance number.

[32:41] David Armstrong: Um I would that would stop traffic if there was a chorus of of dancers on the side of uh of I-95. Um but uh I guess when when was the shift of it becoming more mainstream? Is there always sort of a separation of straight plays, non-musicals, and musicals, right? Like, or was it always just show business is show business?

[33:08] Alan Seales: That's what's that's what's kind of charlatan-esque. We don't want to get involved.

[33:14] David Armstrong: I think it's mostly the the latter. It's show business with show business, whether it was plays or or musicals. From the beginning. We have this expression, the legitimate theater. But what I just learned recently was that that originally referred to the between vaudeville and and a story.

[33:32] Alan Seales: Interesting.

[33:34] David Armstrong: So everything that was a story, including musicals, was legitimate theater happened and vaudeville was a separate thing. When vaudeville died, it seems like that separation then came between musicals and straight plays, started to inherit that that legitimate theater were straight plays and illegitimate theater were musicals. But I don't think it started there.

[33:58] Alan Seales: Well, there's a lot of illegitimate straight plays on scene too.

[34:04] David Armstrong: But yeah.

[34:05] David Armstrong: Okay. So then um, well, about to get into trivia. Everybody, if you have any comments or questions for David directly, please put them in the chat and we'll get to those here in a few minutes. But uh yeah, David, I guess just like final thought from my questions to you. Um what I mean, there have been a lot of books that have been written about Broadway. So what makes this one really different in that people are going to grasp onto there are a lot of great books out there, and some that, and I'm uh, you know, very uh grateful that they have been out there because they were inspirational to me uh in terms of that. But first of all, this is every time you write a book, there's uh since the last great book, which I think was Larry Stemple's book uh called Showtime, which was fantastic.

There's now been 15, maybe almost 20 of Broadway history that's happened in the meantime. So you you're that's the other challenge with this is every time you write one, you have more history to cover than the person who wrote the history before you, because it just keeps on rolling along. Uh so to answer your question, what I do think makes it different is this lens that it's been that I tried to position everything through and see of the centering of these artists who I don't people even though this are books, their entire books and uh documentaries about uh the Jewish creators of Broadway, and there's a lot of talk about the you know, the queer homosexual creators of Broadway, but for the first time I think uh someone is melding those stories together and laying them on top of each other, layering it this way. And you know, of course, there many people cross over in categories, so you can't really tell one story without telling the story of everybody else.

[36:01] Alan Seales: Right, right.

[36:02] David Armstrong: Yeah, I I get that. I get that. And this is this is obvious to me that the way that the way that you presented it, you can't separate them. You shouldn't separate them because we wouldn't have Broadway as we know it now without everybody that you've mentioned in the book, everybody you've talked about that everyone who's just not been talked about. And what I've tried to do, and it's the hardest thing to document actually, but I've tried to get it into the book a chance I can, is the influence these groups have on each other. Because they're existing side by side, and it's again something we don't think about. There are reviews, the Siegweld Follies, many of the editions of the Sigve Follies had songs by Irving Berlin and by uh the Johnson brothers, black artists have shows songs in the same review at the same time.

These are colleagues working side by side on Broadway at the same time. What was the interaction between them? What effect did they have on each other? They were, and and they uh they had incre tremendous respect for one another. And uh I mean there's some stories uh that uh you know Irving Berlin went to see Shuffle Along dozens and dozens of times and would sit right in the first row, right behind UB Blake, who was conducting the show, and would talk to him during the show and say, Oh, tell tell the noble sister, that's a great lyric. And there's this was a great uh kind of world, and of course it makes sense because we know theater people, that's how theater people are.

[37:34] Alan Seales: Yeah, yeah.

[37:35] David Armstrong: But somehow we for we that story is not usually told that this is one I won't say happy family, because I'm sure there were rivalries and you know, and all kinds of things going on, but there was tremendous interaction between all of these people.

[37:54] Alan Seales: That's crazy.

[37:55] Alan Seales: Okay, so we I could talk to you forever. We gotta move on here.

[37:59] Alan Seales: Um so we have actually we actually have a uh a message from Dom, your editor, yeah? You want to cue that up?

[38:03] David Armstrong: Oh, yeah, that's it. Yes, uh, Dom uh was uh did a little video for us to talk about uh about the book. Uh I'm happy for you to see it. Roll that beautiful bean footage.

[38:15] Dom Mohan: Hi everyone, my name is Dom Mohan, and I am the editor of the book Broadway Nation by David Armstrong. I am absolutely delighted that this book is published today all around the world. It is a vital resource for musical theater fans and musical theater students. I um came to know David from his fantastic podcast, which I've been listening to as a musical theatre fan, historian, and academic for many years. And after so many of them, I just kept thinking um I would love to hear more from David. He's got an expansive knowledge, um, both practical as a practitioner in the field, but also just as a researcher and academic. It is really, really unparalleled. Um hearing him interview so many of our method drama authors on this podcast.

I just reached out to him and um wanted to see if he had interest in turning this fantastic podcast into a book, and I'm absolutely delighted he did. Um, as you can no doubt see, it's a giant volume that has taken hours and hours and hours of David's time and research. It is brilliant. I've read it multiple times in multiple drafts. Um I just think it's thrilling to have an accessible textbook written for students of musical theater that doesn't just retread the um the familiar story of how musicals were created. I just loved how it shines a spotlight on um the different minority groups um who created the Broadway Musical and just gives a more diverse and a wider, more interesting, integrated um perspective on how musical theater is created.

I'm really really passionate about the book and have absolutely loved working with David. Um, so I urge you to buy it, enjoy it, give it to a friend, give it to a student. Um and his to you, David, congratulations. It's a massive achievement.

[40:02] David Armstrong: Massive achievement, really, really proud in the best accent I can't do. Dom is British in case anyone didn't figure that out.

[40:09] Alan Seales: Method is uh is a British company, they have an American, you know, uh their uh uh imprint of Bloomsbury, which is a multi you know national company. So, but Dom was just terrific, and he's been so helpful.

[40:23] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[40:24] Alan Seales: Well, it is now time for our first trivia questi uh step.

[40:29] Alan Seales: So um aren't we doing questions from the audience first?

[40:31] David Armstrong: Oh, we'll do questions first, all right.

[40:33] Alan Seales: We'll do questions first. All right, so let's say okay.

[40:35] Alan Seales: Heather Vickery, my my buddy Heather, she wants to know, David, what's your favorite musical?

[40:40] David Armstrong: Why?

[40:42] Alan Seales: My favorite musical?

[40:43] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[40:45] David Armstrong: I always say that's an imp today. What is my favorite musical? Is the is the better question. And well, I will say this. I it's impossible to answer, but there's always there's probably three or four musicals that are always on my top list, no matter how many, no matter what year it is since I for that have been there for decades. So certainly Gypsy is one of those musicals that's on my top ten. Anything goes is one of my favorite musicals that's on my top 10. Company is on my top 10. Sweeney Todd is on my top 10. And uh beyond that, things shift around a lot. But those four are definitely part of the mix.

[41:32] David Armstrong: On my podcast, I always ask is one of my wrap-up questions. If you could only watch one musical for the rest of your life, and you could, but you can see it as many times as you want. What would end by far the answer has been Sweeney Todd over 400 plus episodes?

[41:47] Alan Seales: I agree with that because I've had the pleasure of of directing that show three times, maybe four. And it's a show I could direct every year for the rest of my life, because you just can't ever tap into everything that show has to offer. There's so it's an endlessly fascinating and endlessly challenging.

[42:08] David Armstrong: Question here from Heather, who runs the Broadway fan club.

[42:12] Alan Seales: Hey Heather, what's up?

[42:13] David Armstrong: She wants to know what do you feel is the biggest responsibility of the readers of this book? Hashtag start a movement. Go like this. Hashtag start a movement.

[42:22] David Armstrong: Uh the biggest responsibility from my point of view is get other people to buy it. But uh Dom appreciate it. But seriously to enjoy it, because I even though Dom and Matthew and Drama are intending this to be adopted as a textbook, I didn't write it like a textbook.

[42:42] David Armstrong: And I tend, although it's very scholarly and incredibly well researched and documented, I particularly have an aversion to academic speak. And so I don't tend to write that way. It's very much in my style. If you know me from the podcast, you will have a sense of what the book is going to be like.

[43:05] David Armstrong: So my I guess my main uh direction for you is just enjoy it. I think it's a book you can read straight through and really, you know, have a great time. But it's also a book you can go, you can delve into at various times, because I think there's some really fascinating things uh that you probably won't know about or know enough about every page, basically.

[43:32] David Armstrong: Yeah, yeah. Just learn, learn and spread. Spread the stories of the people whose stories need to be told.

[43:37] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[43:38] David Armstrong: Um okay, one more question, and then we'll go to trivia because I'm excited for the trivia. Gail, uh, this is interesting.

[43:45] Alan Seales: Gail Wright wants to know Lyndar Wright. Sorry if I pronounced mispronounced your last name.

[43:50] David Armstrong: Leander, yeah.

[43:51] Alan Seales: Leanne.

[43:52] David Armstrong: Leander.

[43:54] Alan Seales: Hi, Gail.

[43:55] David Armstrong: Hey Gail.

[43:56] Alan Seales: Can you speculate as to why Gypsy is closing well before?

[44:01] David Armstrong: It is a little surprising, but Gypsy has never been a giant seller. It's the greatest show ever, and most people in the theater think it is at the top. It's probably, and I think Sondheim had this considered it to be this, and I think he's right. It is the high point of the golden age musical, uh of the Rogers and Hammerstein style of musical.

[44:25] David Armstrong: And I think it's partly why Sondheim and other people wanted to move on after that, because there was nowhere else to go. That show and Fiddler on the Roof. There's several shows in that period that sort of just do it to its nth degree.

[44:38] David Armstrong: And I think the generation that came after, well, what are we going to do? We can't, they've already done that. We need to do something else. And then they did. But Gypsy is I've produced that show, and you you at your own risk, you over anticipate ticket sales for that show.

[44:57] David Armstrong: If there is it all of who's Mama Rose. I mean, is that is that kind of where we are now in the churn that is Broadway?

[45:06] David Armstrong: I think it was that way from the beginning, even when Merman was in the original production was not the mega hit that I mean it, you know, it was the same year as Sound of Music, and the difference in those two runs and the difference in the in the two reactions to that show were drastically different in terms of the audience's affinity for it.

[45:27] David Armstrong: But I think it's just more of a specialized taste for a lot of people. And you know, she's not an easy character. I love when my students, I make my students watch Gypsy, and they are blown away by Rose because they're just surprised.

[45:42] David Armstrong: They're so most of them are not musical theater people. This is a big lecture class that with university with students from all across university. So they do have never seen it before, and they don't expect a character that complex, that interesting to be on the stage.

[45:57] David Armstrong: But I also think it's not the easy show that some people are might want to expect when they go to a musical.

[46:05] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[46:06] David Armstrong: You're right. Easy is not what I would call Gypsy, not at all.

[46:07] Alan Seales: Not at all.

[46:11] David Armstrong: I mean, so I mean, uh, and of course, I want we people like us go to be challenged a little bit, at least to a certain extent. And I wouldn't say that's a challenging show the way Sweeney Todd is a challenging show, but I do think the character of Rose leads to Sweeney K character, these sort of anti-heroes who do things that horrify us and we still are on their side.

[46:35] David Armstrong: But it's relatable because there's so many of us that have parents that or friends who have parents like that, and we know it's not it's not out there in left field.

[46:45] Alan Seales: So anyway.

[46:46] David Armstrong: Or our parents like that.

[46:47] Alan Seales: Or our parents, yes, exactly.

[46:49] Alan Seales: All right. So now we can do some trivia.

[46:52] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[46:52] Alan Seales: Great.

[46:53] David Armstrong: Okay.

[46:54] Alan Seales: And I want to bring in another friend, another friend of us here.

[47:01] David Armstrong: Um if she'll turn her camera on, I'll bring her in here any any second now.

[47:05] Alan Seales: Let's see. Michelle there, there you are.

[47:09] David Armstrong: Hey, hey, Michelle Simone Miller.

[47:11] Michelle Simone Miller: Hi.

[47:12] David Armstrong: So Michelle Miller is uh she's the host of Mentors on the Mic. And she also does uh a lot of she has great podcasts, all with some really good career advice and business advice.

[47:23] David Armstrong: And I feel like uh Michelle, you probably have a lot you could take away from you know, with conversations that that David's been talking about from this. This has been so interesting.

[47:35] Michelle Simone Miller: Well, maybe you can help me figure out what to do next, too, after now that this book is done.

[47:42] David Armstrong: Well, I think I think there's gonna there's gonna be more musicals. You could do you could do a whole book all about uh uh what happened in COVID and how that like reset this the finish line.

[47:52] Michelle Simone Miller: Totally.

[47:53] David Armstrong: Absolutely, or the starting line. I don't know, whatever, because everything's shut down.

[47:56] Alan Seales: Okay, let's do some trivia uh trivia music.

[48:01] David Armstrong: All right, I oh I'm the first one.

[48:03] Alan Seales: Okay, you're up.

[48:04] David Armstrong: I'm up. So everybody. So just one note. I've tried to make these trivia questions challenging because I know we have a very sophisticated audience.

[48:14] David Armstrong: They're not particularly easy, but I think uh we have I think with this group, I couldn't be too basic. So we'll see how it goes. This is these are hard questions, and they're not simple one-word answers in most of the time.

[48:27] Alan Seales: All right, so we're gonna pick the winners based on who got the closest to the answer that we have. And we'll show the answer after Set.

[48:33] David Armstrong: All right, so first Well, let's just talk about what they win.

[48:35] Alan Seales: Oh, yeah, what they win.

[48:36] David Armstrong: What they so everybody who gets a question correct, and you'll be the first to put it into the chat. Did we tell people we didn't tell people to go to BPN?

[48:48] Alan Seales: Yeah, so that was my next thing. So if depending on what platform you're listening on, we're live right now on Instagram, Facebook, and multiple YouTube channels.

[48:56] Alan Seales: So depending on where you're listening, there might be a delay compared to others, would give the others an unfair advantage.

[49:02] David Armstrong: So or you a disadvantage, yeah.

[49:04] Alan Seales: Yeah, or you put your disadvantage.

[49:06] David Armstrong: Uh so uh we say go over to uh the BPN YouTube page, which is so everybody in the same spot, which will give everyone kind of an equal playing field.

[49:15] Alan Seales: Quick short link is bpn.fm slash live. Just put that in your browser or uh yeah, browser, you can get there.

[49:23] David Armstrong: And um, okay.

[49:25] Alan Seales: Repeat that one more time for us, bpn dot fm slash live.

[49:31] David Armstrong: L-I-V-E. That'll forward to the uh the BPN YouTube page.

[49:35] Alan Seales: Right.

[49:35] Alan Seales: Okay, question one.

[49:37] David Armstrong: Good, which is what is the old active Broadway theater? Or another way to say it, what is the oldest theater currently in use as a Broadway theater?

[49:48] Alan Seales: Who knows the answer?

[49:54] Michelle Simone Miller: No, I don't. But I'm curious. I feel like I read in Jeffrey Sellers book, put this detail in it.

[50:01] David Armstrong: So I'm trying to remember it from that, but I don't know.

[50:05] David Armstrong: And there's actually, it's not a trick question, but there's actually three correct answers because there's three theaters still being that are in operation today that were all built in the same year.

[50:17] David Armstrong: It was 1903.

[50:19] Alan Seales: Is there multiple choice for this?

[50:21] David Armstrong: I see, I see Broadway fan club is up with Lyceum. Is that the first one?

[50:25] David Armstrong: Yeah, that's that's the first one.

[50:26] Alan Seales: Yeah, that's so Broadway fan club, you get uh double kudos because the three correct answers are the Lyceum, the Hudson, and the New Amsterdam.

[50:40] David Armstrong: But Lyceum is the only one that's been continually in active from the from then until now. The other two were closed for a while and then have come back uh are now Broadway theaters again.

[50:55] Alan Seales: The new am.

[50:56] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[50:56] Alan Seales: Oh, oh we got a couple other correct answers in there.

[50:58] David Armstrong: Kelly Sweeney says Lyceum.

[50:58] Alan Seales: Yeah. Good, good.

[51:01] David Armstrong: Okay.

[51:02] David Armstrong: Next question.

[51:04] Alan Seales: Oh, this is me.

[51:05] David Armstrong: Yes, you so we talked about George M. Cohan, the Irish American playwright, composer, director, producer, and song and dance superstar.

[51:14] David Armstrong: He his very first show or his first hit show was in 1904, and he went on to create 20 Broadway musicals and more than 500 songs. What was the name of that first hit show?

[51:28] David Armstrong: And two still famous songs were featured in that score. Did he write for the score of that first hit show?

[51:39] David Armstrong: So there's three things you have to put in this answer. The name of the show and the name of the two still famous songs.

[51:48] David Armstrong: Songs almost everybody on this podcast could sing if they had to. I'm I'm trying to not hum them.

[51:56] Alan Seales: This is hard.

[52:09] David Armstrong: Totally. They're like shows that seem like songs that have always been there.

[52:12] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[52:12] David Armstrong: Yeah, this was too hard for 30 Saints here.

[52:15] Alan Seales: That's Dane.

[52:16] David Armstrong: We appreciate you still trying to participate and contribute.

[52:24] Alan Seales: Kelly's got the two songs.

[52:26] David Armstrong: Yep.

[52:26] David Armstrong: Two songs. What we don't have yet is actually the real title is Yankee Doodle Boy, but we accept Yankee Doodle Dandy because nobody knows Yankee Doodle Boy is the actual title to the song.

[52:38] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[52:39] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[52:41] Alan Seales: So that's Kelly.

[52:41] David Armstrong: Now what you don't have for us yet, Kelly, is the name of the show, which is probably the hardest part.

[52:47] Alan Seales: Can we give it to her?

[52:48] David Armstrong: Because she's got two out of three.

[52:52] Alan Seales: Yes.

[52:52] David Armstrong: Let's give it since nobody else is chiming in.

[52:54] Alan Seales: Let's get Kelly.

[52:55] David Armstrong: Kelly's the winner. That was a hard one.

[52:58] David Armstrong: Yeah. The tie the the missing title is Little Johnny Jones.

[53:02] Alan Seales: There we go.

[53:02] David Armstrong: Little Johnny Jones, Yankee Doodle Boy, or Yankee Doodle Dandy, and give my regards to Broadway.

[53:09] Alan Seales: Oh, 30 Saints knows all the answers.

[53:12] David Armstrong: Oh, that's what it is.

[53:13] Alan Seales: Well, no, you should still participate.

[53:15] David Armstrong: Yeah, participate.

[53:16] Alan Seales: Come on.

[53:16] David Armstrong: I know who that is.

[53:17] Alan Seales: He would be cheating to participate on that particular answer.

[53:20] David Armstrong: So then Kelly does.

[53:23] Alan Seales: All right.

[53:24] David Armstrong: Fourth card.

[53:25] Alan Seales: All right, Michelle, you're up.

[53:26] Michelle Simone Miller: Mine, okay. This is a fun one. What do the songs in the musical Six have in common with the songs in the musical Chicago?

[53:37] Michelle Simone Miller: This is an open-ended question.

[53:39] Michelle Simone Miller: I know.

[53:40] Michelle Simone Miller: This is yeah, this will be a little challenging to put into to uh for somebody to put in the chat, but I think you can figure it out.

[53:48] Michelle Simone Miller: What is it about the songs in the musical Six that is almost identical to the way the songs in the musical Chicago are used?

[53:58] David Armstrong: They're all about Henry the Eighth.

[54:02] Michelle Simone Miller: I didn't know Kendrick Edwards.

[54:04] David Armstrong: Yeah, exactly.

[54:04] Michelle Simone Miller: Yeah.

[54:05] David Armstrong: Who knew that was a subtext for Chicago?

[54:07] Michelle Simone Miller: Yeah.

[54:07] David Armstrong: Well, there's death in both of them, right? Like d the guy Chicago die murders, six deaths, beheadings.

[54:16] Michelle Simone Miller: You know.

[54:17] David Armstrong: Certainly it's it's it's certainly uh they uh somebody says female perspectives, yes.

[54:22] David Armstrong: That wasn't what I was going for, but that is a uh that is correct.

[54:27] David Armstrong: They are i it's a it's though not all of the songs in Chicago are from the female perspectives.

[54:34] Michelle Simone Miller: True Kelly uh there's cheating going on.

[54:38] David Armstrong: Now I just want the Henry VIII women to come messing pop sticks, squish, uh Sisera lipshits.

[54:44] Michelle Simone Miller: You know, like that's now I feel like that would be the TikTok cross.

[54:48] David Armstrong: That would be uh oh, that would be so funny.

[54:50] Michelle Simone Miller: To break Broadway talk.

[54:51] David Armstrong: Broadway should do that.

[54:52] Michelle Simone Miller: I feel like Broadway should do these like cross Broadway TikToks.

[54:57] David Armstrong: I like it.

[54:58] Alan Seales: Let's see.

[54:59] David Armstrong: Okay.

[55:00] David Armstrong: I I don't know what you want to choose, David. There's a couple good ones.

[55:02] David Armstrong: Female perspectives, Heather from the Broadway fan club said, uh let's see.

[55:07] David Armstrong: Presentational Brechtian says Gail.

[55:11] David Armstrong: Um Denise D says multiple stories.

[55:13] David Armstrong: Which one you want to go with?

[55:15] David Armstrong: Because I could also give a clue.

[55:16] Michelle Simone Miller: Should we do you want to give a little bit of a clue for people?

[55:19] David Armstrong: Yes.

[55:20] David Armstrong: Uh what fascinates me about this is and I talk about I compare these shows in the book, is that the concept that the authors are using to write these shows is is almost identical.

[55:34] David Armstrong: They're just using different eras of music in the way that they do it.

[55:40] Alan Seales: Good clue.

[55:41] David Armstrong: Clue both show you pop music, says Daniel O'Connor.

[55:45] David Armstrong: Good Daniel, very close.

[55:46] David Armstrong: Keep do elaborate, Daniel.

[55:49] David Armstrong: Tell us more.

[55:53] David Armstrong: Let's see.

[55:54] David Armstrong: Uh yeah, top three.

[55:57] David Armstrong: I'm looking over in Instagram, top three musical songs.

[56:01] David Armstrong: I mean, that's not part of the answer.

[56:03] David Armstrong: I think I think go into what David was saying about the conceptual part.

[56:07] David Armstrong: I think that's that's what I would underline, right?

[56:09] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[56:10] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[56:12] David Armstrong: I uh Vaudeville.

[56:14] Alan Seales: Vaudeville is the Chicago part, yes.

[56:17] David Armstrong: And that so let me just uh well let's give half the answer since you that's that's great, Ben. Is that um Chicago wrote all the songs the Candor Neb created this show, and each song is modeled after specific artist from the 1920s.

[56:37] Alan Seales: Uh Sophie Tucker and Bert Williams and Helen Morgan and Eddie Canton. The songs are created to mimic the songs that those those creators sang.

[56:48] David Armstrong: How does that parallel itself in in six?

[56:53] Alan Seales: Oh, sorry. I thought I just thought you were explaining the answer.

[56:56] David Armstrong: Yeah, I just put the answer up.

[56:58] Alan Seales: Uh oh, you did okay, good, okay. That was you know what it's interesting. I uh I really do I mean, obviously, I knew that to be true about six, right? That's a defining part of the show, but I didn't know that about Chicago, which is the you know the same sort of concept that the signature songs were for different artists.

[57:15] Alan Seales: That's so cool.

[57:17] David Armstrong: Totally. I mean, when you're good to mama is a Sophie Tucker song, who's you know was the last of the Red Hot Mamas and had many several songs about Can we say this about Hamilton then too? Because didn't Lynn Manuel do the same thing where like uh Jefferson and Lafayette, everyone had a different artist influence.

[57:34] Alan Seales: That's very interesting.

[57:35] David Armstrong: Yeah, I hadn't I hadn't didn't draw it that far, but that uh there is an element of that that's absolutely true. Yeah, so just so everybody understands the songs in six are contemporary are modeled after specific contemporary pop divas like Beyoncé and Ariel Grandi and Britney Spears, and each of those characters wears costumes that reflect those artists and sings songs that reflect those artists.

[57:57] Alan Seales: So it's yeah.

[57:58] Michelle Simone Miller: Oh, SUFS Two such a pick tell me tell me a winner, or do we want to do multiple winners for this one? Tell me who to add into the list of possible booklets.

[58:07] David Armstrong: I think definitely add Daniel and Ben.

[58:09] Michelle Simone Miller: Daniel O'Connor.

[58:12] David Armstrong: I'm taking notes here. And then Ben.

[58:15] Michelle Simone Miller: What was Ben's last time?

[58:17] David Armstrong: All right. Ben Daniel Connor, Ben Francis. You you do you do get the W on this one?

[58:22] Alan Seales: All right.

[58:24] David Armstrong: So this is a more straightforward one. That one was hard. Complicated. What Broadway musical is the highest grossing entertainment property of all time?

[58:39] Alan Seales: And that is that I trades at that way and perfect. Not just the highest grossing Broadway musical, the highest grossing entertainment property of all time that has grossed more than Avatar and more than all the Star Wars films combined.

[58:53] David Armstrong: Good distinction on that, by the way. Yeah, we're talking full TV, movies, everything.

[59:00] Alan Seales: Free entertainment. It's at the top of the heap of all entertainment in the history of the world.

[59:06] David Armstrong: Wow. Come on. You've got to have some guesses, people.

[59:09] Alan Seales: I mean, Phantom of the Opera.

[59:13] David Armstrong: No.

[59:14] Alan Seales: No.

[59:15] David Armstrong: There we go. You got it. Broadway fan club. Right?

[59:19] Alan Seales: Yes.

[59:19] David Armstrong: Yes, Phantom of the Opera has grossed nearly 10 billion dollars in sales. Phantom's number two. And again, this is not, this has nothing, not counting the movies. I'm sorry, did we wait, wait? No, no. Did I say Phantom? Fanny Opera is not correct. Sorry.

[59:35] Alan Seales: Phantom of the Opera is number two.

[59:36] David Armstrong: Yeah, Phantom's two.

[59:38] Alan Seales: Phantom is number two. Lion King is number one. Did anybody say Lion King?

[59:43] David Armstrong: Yes. Broadway fan club said Lion King.

[59:45] Alan Seales: Okay. I didn't hear that part. Great. So just again, I'll say that again. The stage version of Lion King has grossed nearly $10 billion in sales. And number two is Phantom of the Opera, which I think is around six billion dollars in sales. With both of those has nothing to do with any of the film versions, just the stage versions of those shows internationally, obviously.

[1:00:07] Alan Seales: So wait, we're saying, are we including like uh you're saying we're not including the movies?

[1:00:12] David Armstrong: We're not including any of the like additional how about merch.

[1:00:16] Alan Seales: None of it, just the stage show. Probably the stay the merch they sell uh uh in the when you go to the show, yes.

[1:00:22] David Armstrong: Right, okay. So just anything that has to do with being.

[1:00:26] Alan Seales: I think it's the gross ticket sales, so I think that I think the number is based on gross ticket sales.

[1:00:31] David Armstrong: Yeah, yeah, that's pretty gross. That's a lot of ticket sales.

[1:00:34] Alan Seales: Okay. Um dad jokes. Okay, so speaking of Phantom, with nearly 14,000 performances of the opera, it is the longest running musical of all time. So since 1920, only 10 other shows have held that title. Name five of the others.

[1:00:54] David Armstrong: So there's 10 possibilities, 10 shows have reached have been the longest running since show in Broadway history, and then replaced by the one that ran longer and replaced by the next one that ran longer. It's only 10 shows, which is kind of amazing. And the last one is Phantom of the Opera.

[1:01:11] Alan Seales: Okay.

[1:01:13] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[1:01:14] Alan Seales: Some of these, I'm looking at the answers. Let's see. I only knew I only knew a couple of them, to be honest. This these this was interesting. Uh we've got three in the chat already.

[1:01:26] David Armstrong: Yep.

[1:01:26] Alan Seales: So Gail has two of them, I see, which is great. Ben has one.

[1:01:33] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[1:01:35] Alan Seales: Let's see. Kelly's got one also, yeah.

[1:01:39] David Armstrong: So cats, yep.

[1:01:40] Alan Seales: Kelly.

[1:01:40] David Armstrong: Yeah. Kurt uh Kurt has one. Did you guys see Kurt?

[1:01:44] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[1:01:46] David Armstrong: Cat's Fiddler on the Hello Dolly is one.

[1:01:49] Alan Seales: Yep, we've got another one from Ben Francis.

[1:01:52] David Armstrong: Yeah, Chicago is a little bit of a little bit of a little.

[1:01:55] Alan Seales: Yeah. Could you guys um are you getting all this, Alan? In terms of I'm waiting for somebody to put five of these into a single method.

[1:02:03] David Armstrong: Oh, that's what we need, guys. We need five in one.

[1:02:05] Alan Seales: Hold on. We've got I think I think Heather from Fan Club just did it. Uh let's see.

[1:02:11] David Armstrong: Lion King is not on the list.

[1:02:13] Alan Seales: Oh no.

[1:02:13] David Armstrong: Uh Lion King and Chicago is not on the list.

[1:02:17] Alan Seales: Right.

[1:02:17] David Armstrong: Yeah, neither. They're they're long runs, but they haven't broken the record yet.

[1:02:27] Alan Seales: Well, I think we should get since Gail started this off. Let's sure make sure Gail there. And uh we'll put we'll add Gail to our list of winners.

[1:02:37] David Armstrong: And I think we've got everybody else in there already as winners.

[1:02:44] Alan Seales: Are you doing repeats though, Alan? Are you gonna be including an extraordinary?

[1:02:45] David Armstrong: We will do repeats.

[1:02:49] Alan Seales: No, Wicked is not in there. I'm gonna read them now to you, so we'll we'll cut this off. Uh great job, guys. Starting, yeah, really good. It's a hard question.

[1:02:58] David Armstrong: This is hard. Starts with Irene in night when which opens in 1919. Then it goes Hell's a poppin', Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, Hello Dolly, Fiddler on the Roof, Grease, a Chorus Line, Cats, and the Phantom of the Opera.

[1:03:17] Alan Seales: Wait, what's to Heather's point? Chicago is considered the longest running over Phantom over last year from what they announced.

[1:03:22] David Armstrong: Maybe it's just from actively running?

[1:03:25] Alan Seales: It's the one still running, yes.

[1:03:27] David Armstrong: Yeah, I think currently still running as opposed to evolved kind of thing. But hasn't run longer than Phantom of the Opera did, even though it's not running anymore. Same thing with Wicked. Those are the probably the two shows that have a possibility of passing Phantom.

[1:03:42] Alan Seales: I mean, look at those numbers though. 13,981 performances.

[1:03:48] David Armstrong: Yeah, it's gonna be hard to beat.

[1:03:50] Alan Seales: That's a long time to not upgrade your your tech.

[1:03:54] David Armstrong: And not make your seats better.

[1:03:59] Alan Seales: God. Anyway.

[1:04:01] David Armstrong: Um, nothing could beat my phantom.

[1:04:02] Alan Seales: Well, isn't isn't Phantom is isn't there rumors that Phantom's coming back? Is that true?

[1:04:07] David Armstrong: Yeah, yeah.

[1:04:07] Alan Seales: Well, they're doing this off Broadway uh uh thing.

[1:04:12] David Armstrong: Hard to beat Phantom if it comes back.

[1:04:14] Alan Seales: It doesn't count as longest running, maybe if it's stopped.

[1:04:19] David Armstrong: It's gonna be different. They're gonna have like lasers and fireballs and like laser cats.

[1:04:23] Alan Seales: Like Phantom with laser cats is definitely it.

[1:04:26] David Armstrong: I have that from a reputable source.

[1:04:28] Alan Seales: Like actually The Lonely Island and SNL are co-producing.

[1:04:31] David Armstrong: Totally true.

[1:04:32] Alan Seales: Totally true.

[1:04:32] David Armstrong: Really?

[1:04:33] Alan Seales: No, not at all.

[1:04:34] David Armstrong: Oh god, I don't know why I'm so gullible.

[1:04:37] Alan Seales: Can you imagine?

[1:04:38] David Armstrong: I was like, do they have a penchant for for Phantom that I didn't know about?

[1:04:42] Alan Seales: That's crazy.

[1:04:44] David Armstrong: Actually, then they take it to space and they do space opera.

[1:04:47] Alan Seales: Okay.

[1:04:47] David Armstrong: Yeah, right. This is everything.

[1:04:49] Alan Seales: Okay, so um, real quick, if you have any questions for David, throw them in the chat again. We'll take a look at it. Let's go back to questions.

[1:04:59] David Armstrong: Oh, sure. Let me scroll up.

[1:05:03] Alan Seales: Well, I see one from Ben Francis thinking about the immigrant experience. What do you think of the end of Fiddler on the Roof? Is the move to America scene positively?

[1:05:14] David Armstrong: Yes, I do think it's as positive as it can be in that story because we know where the story is going. We even the audience who saw it originally knew that if though if you don't escape to America, you're going to end up with then cabaret continuing the story. And which so I do think it is a positive thing, although their world has been completely, you know, ripped asunder. Uh it certainly, but and you know, it has the greatest, one of the greatest moments, I think, in theater history, which is when Tevya turns and tells the fiddler to come along, he's gonna take tradition with him to the new world. Tradition's going to go along and you know, of all change and be different, but still be there. It's it's uh uh so yes, I think it is a bittersweet positive ending to that.

[1:06:10] Alan Seales: Just thinking that it's bittersweet because the one of the last songs is Anna Tech to Anna Tevka, right? Where it's like this bittersweet minor chord sort of thing of you know, saying goodbye to the place we love, but also like you said, looking forward to where we're going.

[1:06:23] David Armstrong: That's Darth Vader's big 11 o'clock number, yeah.

[1:06:29] Alan Seales: And the thing that's interesting about that song is it's filled with humor and jokes still because that's just so much a part of the of the you know, the yiddish uh uh milieu that the show came from.

[1:06:41] David Armstrong: Yeah, yeah. Such a good song. Heather, Broadway fan club, uh, she wants to know what kind of show would you like to see come to Broadway next. And do you prefer known IP or original concept shows you know the the fact is that in the history of Broadway, almost every show the hit has been based on an existing story.

[1:07:04] David Armstrong: I hate the word IP because I think it just comes, it's it's a movie term and it really doesn't apply to Broadway, even when shows are based on movies. Steven Sontti based three of his shows on movies. Uh so it's it's not the fact that the show's based on an existing story from back to the princess musicals back at the you know in the teens, they establish this pattern that you're gonna base it on a story that already works. And I always say it's because writing a musical is really, really hard. The only thing more more difficult is writing an original story that works. And you put those two things together in one and you have an almost impossible task. In recent years, we've had a few more shows than usual do that.

Dear Revin Hansen, and you know, there's a number of them, but most things are based on something, and I think that's great. It's just there's nothing wrong with that as long as you uh so I think to answer your question, I think using an existing story is what I would recommend. Just choose your story. You know, it doesn't have to be uh pop movie, it doesn't have to be if it's gonna end up being back to the future, I don't want to see that. But if it's gonna end up being Hamilton, I do want to see it.

[1:08:21] Michelle Simone Miller: Well, I have a follow-up question to that, if you don't mind. Um so my question is if there was some creator out there that you'd want to create a musical would it be? Like who would it be? And then also what would it be about? If and that could be a separate question by a different person, but is there some sort of person that you'd want like a story you'd want to highlight?

[1:08:43] David Armstrong: So first would be who would create it and then what would your musical be about or ideal musical be about that's I've I'm not sure I have a ready answer for that one.

[1:08:53] Michelle Simone Miller: That's fair.

[1:08:54] David Armstrong: That's fair.

[1:08:55] David Armstrong: Ben Folds Ben Folds can create a music I've always thought he was somebody he's talked about it. It has been in in the there's been you know some even he I think talks about it at some point. It's just harder every all those pop songwriters get into it and they find out oh this is really hard and I have to do a bunch of things that I don't yet know how to do and then the great ones figure it out and do it but it defeats a lot of people who are not used to that to I mean to I really like this answer.

[1:09:29] Michelle Simone Miller: Broadway podcast network is a goal.

[1:09:32] David Armstrong: Oh wait well okay so it's just gonna be sorry it's just gonna be me like saying fix your audio I would love David Daniel I would with Dan Taylor Swift to make a musical all about yes yes the answer is yes for me I'm a huge Swifty. But um I did have a question about that too uh before that which is um who what pop singer has created a musical that is your favorite because we've had some really great pop singers who've created thank you they're just coming. I'm talking about a jukebox musical in this case. Not talking about jukebox. That's a great question.

[1:10:06] David Armstrong: Yeah, a new musical created by some sort of pop scene.

[1:10:10] David Armstrong: Would you classify Hades Town in that? Because Aeneas Mitchell was she wrote like non-musical songs first.

[1:10:17] Alan Seales: Yes, absolutely. And she's somebody who has and same thing with uh with Waitress, though.

[1:10:22] David Armstrong: So those are two pop songwriters who have succeeded.

[1:10:25] Alan Seales: Hell's Kitchen.

[1:10:27] David Armstrong: Yeah, which is partly a jukebox musical.

[1:10:29] Alan Seales: Partly, you're right. I feel like it's a jukebox musical of someone's creative work.

[1:10:35] David Armstrong: So I think I feel like that's a bit of a distinction. It's not like I just saw Moulin Rouge, right? So it's not like it's a ju you know, it's not that kind of jukebox musical. I feel like it's a little maybe a little different if it's like the one. And the artist herself is creating it.

[1:10:48] Alan Seales: So exactly. But do you have a favorite?

[1:10:55] David Armstrong: Uh none of those are my favorite shows, I have to say. Uh I respect them, and I think they do well. I, you know, it's interesting. It's one of the things I get uh disagree with all most of my students about is I just didn't get Hades Town, it just left me completely cold. And uh I've seen it twice now, and that's you know, that's how that's horse races, that's how things go. Everybody likes different things, so yeah.

[1:11:21] Alan Seales: And if you want to throw eggs at David Armstrong's house, he live no uh exactly that's a hot take. You're you're you're gonna offend some listeners with that one, but I'm gonna do it.

[1:11:34] David Armstrong: No, I think it's good to have strong opinions allowed, yeah. But yeah, it's good to have strong opinions about I love the first of it, and then it then I checked out.

[1:11:46] Alan Seales: Well, okay, so there's a great question from Gail in here that I'm gonna put a pin in a start it. I've started Gail, I promise you we're gonna come back to it, but I want to make sure we get some more trivia winners uh into our our wheel of random winner that we're gonna pick later. So I think we should move on to a lot of things.

[1:12:04] David Armstrong: Just in case anyone's just the prize is the hardback 100 edition of the book signed by me. Uh so autographed copy for whatever that's worth. Uh and uh, you know, uh we so that's the prize. That's what you were we'll all be in the pool for. We actually have a wheel of fortune that you're gonna get into at the end. And the book is priced, the hardcover is priced at 100. This is a very, very nice prize. You can also go over to Bloomsbury.com right now for 30% off paperback or hardback. And then you can win, get a signed copy to save for yourself and give your 30% off to a friend. You know, do what you want to do. Or you give or you could give something maybe.

[1:12:50] Alan Seales: That's right. This is a gorgeous, great gift for people. Your friends who love musical theater. This is this is it. This is it.

[1:12:57] David Armstrong: All right, David. I just want to acknowledge that a couple of people put Kinky Boots in that in that last when we were talking about that last question. And there I I I would uh second that Kinky Boots, I think may be the the answer to your question.

[1:13:12] Alan Seales: Yeah, we did a really terrific job of yeah, yeah.

[1:13:15] David Armstrong: Oh, yeah.

[1:13:15] Alan Seales: All right, what's our next question, David?

[1:13:17] David Armstrong: Oh, it's me. Yes.

[1:13:20] Alan Seales: All right, so it's well known, and this is the one we alluded to earlier. It's well known that Oscar Hammerstein II directly mentored Stephen Sondheim, and Sondheim mentored several songwriters, including Jason Robert Brown, Jonathan Larson, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. But who was Hammerstein's mentor and early collaborator? Who taught Hammerstein how to make musicals? Who taught the godfather of musicals how to make musicals?

[1:13:51] David Armstrong: To a great extent. We have a winner. I see a winner in the chat.

[1:13:55] Alan Seales: Oh, yes. Yes. Are you seeing Gail or are you seeing something else?

[1:14:02] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[1:14:02] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[1:14:03] David Armstrong: Not almost Gail.

[1:14:05] Alan Seales: Almost.

[1:14:08] David Armstrong: Kurt Powers says the whole name. Otto Harbach.

[1:14:11] Alan Seales: Harbaugh. Harbach.

[1:14:12] David Armstrong: Harbaugh.

[1:14:13] Alan Seales: Gail said, what did you guys say?

[1:14:14] David Armstrong: Gail said Hamburg.

[1:14:16] Alan Seales: Yeah, exactly. I've done the I've done that same thing myself sometimes. So typo.

[1:14:22] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[1:14:23] Alan Seales: All right. Let's give it, let's give it to both of them.

[1:14:26] David Armstrong: Okay.

[1:14:27] Alan Seales: Gail and and uh and Kurt.

[1:14:31] David Armstrong: Kurt. All right. So Otto Harbach, and that is the chapter, that's the centerpiece of the book is this legacy chain from Otto Harbach to Lin-Manuel Miranda. It's four degrees of separation between them.

[1:14:45] Alan Seales: Next question is me. At what musical did young Stephen Sondheim break down in tears while attending its opening night performance? He told this story himself several times.

[1:15:02] David Armstrong: Oh, we got it. Got it all ready.

[1:15:03] Alan Seales: Ben Francis.

[1:15:07] David Armstrong: That there's no mistake there because Ben wrote a fantastic book about Carousel. So it's it's he should be getting this. What's the book?

[1:15:16] Alan Seales: It's called uh uh Round in Circles. It's a fantastic history of the musical Carousel.

[1:15:23] David Armstrong: All right, Michelle, you're up next.

[1:15:24] Michelle Simone Miller: Oh, I'm loving this. Okay. Who was the first woman to write the full score, both words, right? For a Broadway show. And we have words and music. We have a lot of things. And you can read off these examples. Read off a multiple choice question. Anne Caldwell for The Night Boat, nineteen twenty. Dorothy Donnelly Poppy, nineteen twenty-four. Kay Swift, Fine and Dandy, nineteen oh, I shouldn't say the date. Yeah, the dating. You can say the day 1930 and Anne Ronell, Count Me In, nineteen forty-two. So again, Anne Caldwell, Dorothy Donnelly, Kay Swift, or Anne Ronell, who was the first woman to I took a second.

[1:16:14] David Armstrong: I'm sorry, I got am I giving the dates? I shouldn't give the years, and then I realized I credited Ben with the wrong book. We'll correct that in a minute. Sorry about that. Anne Caldwell, Dorothy.

[1:16:25] Michelle Simone Miller: Another great Kay Swift and Swift.

[1:16:29] David Armstrong: So uh Broadway Club Kay Swift is a great answer because she is the first woman to compose the full score of a Broadway musical. The first but she didn't write the lyrics. Anne Caldwell and Dorothy Donnelly wrote both the book and the lyrics, but not the music. What we're looking for is which we may have just answered our question there because Nobody got this process of elimination. Anne Ronell was Nobody got this one. But you get us a chance. What are the what two famous what are Anne Ronell's most famous songs? And they're not from a Broadway musical. Which is the next official question, by the way.

[1:17:14] Michelle Simone Miller: Yeah.

[1:17:15] David Armstrong: Anne Ronell is the correct answer. But what what what would be her most famous song? And there's actually two, there's two possibilities. Did you know these, Michelle?

[1:17:34] Michelle Simone Miller: That's very close. That's a good qu that's a good guess, but not quite the right one, but you're in the right territory.

[1:17:42] David Armstrong: And Gail said cry me a river. I did not know this one. This one's harder for me.

[1:17:46] Michelle Simone Miller: Yeah, I know.

[1:17:48] David Armstrong: Daniel's also the question mark, question mark, question mark. All right. That's okay. I like stumping people.

[1:17:54] Alan Seales: Oh, we got the fan club is exactly right. Now maybe pulling it out.

[1:17:59] David Armstrong: Well, Kelly also got one.

[1:18:04] Alan Seales: And Gail got it.

[1:18:05] David Armstrong: Yeah, I think Gail was headed there with her other answer. Will I Weep for Me is a great jazz standard, fantastic song. And then bizarrely, their other big hit is Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf. So you wouldn't think two people wrote the same person wrote both those songs.

[1:18:21] Alan Seales: Kelly has it too, it's she says there.

[1:18:23] David Armstrong: Kelly got it first, I think, because it's an or question, right?

[1:18:27] Alan Seales: Oh, yeah, will I from my answer?

[1:18:29] David Armstrong: Yeah. So I think Kelly Kelly gets that. All right, we're gonna give a bunch of credit here, I think. Yeah, Kelly, Broadway Fan Club. We've got Gail also at this you know, similar timing.

[1:18:40] Alan Seales: Yeah, all right.

[1:18:43] David Armstrong: And we have one more question, David.

[1:18:46] Alan Seales: One more question.

[1:18:47] David Armstrong: All right. So uh let me find it here. Sorry. Oh, this is a fun one, I think. So during the decade following the opening of 1921's Broadway smash hit Shuffle Along, two dozen musicals written by and starring black theater artists opened on Broadway in its wake. One of those was the 1923 hit Run and Wild, which introduced a song and dance craze that still define the spirit of the 1920s and the Jazz Age. What is the name of that song and the dance? The song and dance that define the spirit of the 1920s and the jazz age.

[1:19:25] Alan Seales: It's the Macarena.

[1:19:34] David Armstrong: It is the Macarena. It's an early, not many people know it came from the 1920s.

[1:19:43] Alan Seales: So this is a song you anytime you see a documentary about the 1920s, any s any movie about the 20s, we saw.

[1:19:53] David Armstrong: Right.

[1:19:54] Alan Seales: Kurt got it. I see Kurt first. Is it you guys concur?

[1:19:55] David Armstrong: Kurt first.

[1:19:59] Alan Seales: All right. Good job, guys.

[1:20:01] David Armstrong: Yeah, Kurt and Ben and uh Broadway Fan Club all got the correct answer, which is the Charleston. The Charleston was uh uh and uh another little tidbit there is it was choreographed by a woman named Elida Webb, who had been one of the trend setting chorus girls in Shuffle Along. The chorus girls in Shuffle Along were a sensation because they danced in a way that nobody had danced on Broadway before. And with then she went on to choreograph and also Running Wild, and with that, she became the fur, she became the second black woman credited with choreographing a Broadway musical. There were probably women, black women who had choreographed other shows and other numbers and shows, but they didn't get any billings. So she's the second one to get billing for that.

[1:20:41] Alan Seales: That's cool.

[1:20:52] David Armstrong: All right. So we've got Gail said this is really fun. We appreciate that.

[1:20:57] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[1:20:57] David Armstrong: I'm okay. So we're gonna go for about another eight minutes here. And uh I want to get back to some audience questions that I promised I'd get back to. So David Gail here wants to know can you speak to the role of nonprofit regional theaters and the current threats to their sustainability?

[1:21:16] David Armstrong: Oh, what a what a sad topic, but I will, it's an important one. Um theaters across the country are really, really, really in trouble. The audience and you know, may have struggled also, and Broadway, you know, has had some wins, but is also not back to not to back to where it was. For regional theaters. The pandemic broke the habit of people going to the theater. And now, and I'll talk about especially here in Seattle with the Fifth Avenue Theater and other theater companies that uh that I know about. We we have so we have a problem that every city's having, but multiplied here. People have not come back to work still, people are working remotely. And so about half the people, maybe it's a little better than that.

Now there's been some improvement, but about half the people who used to work downtown in Seattle are work downtown today. The rest of them are are in there, are wherever they are. So now a theater company has to convince people to get out of their pajamas and come to the theater, as opposed to why don't you just stay after work and come show? So it's a giant problem. But and then, of course, we have uh funding issues besides the audience at the same time. So it's really a challenge. Uh the number one thing anybody could do to improve the situation is subscribe to a theater company. Buy a subscription. It will make it'll make it's a huge difference for I don't know if I answer that uh fully, Gail, but that's it's a if you have any money that you can throw at that, and what will you get in return?

You'll get to see some great shows. You'll get you'll get to go to the theater, you'll get out of your house and go to something. Uh so that's really that's this the only solution, plus you know, uh, in terms of uh politically lobbying for for other directions as well. Thank you.

[1:23:34] Alan Seales: All right, Kelly Sweeney says, I miss the reviews of the 70s and 80s, like Sophisticated Ladies, Blue in the etc. What would you what would you produce if you could do anything with any budget?

[1:23:47] David Armstrong: Yeah, I'm right with you, Kelly. I miss we the reviews have fallen off the face of the earth. And when I was coming up when I was in college and when I moved to New York, reviews were front and center, and now people hardly even know what a review is. You describe it to them, they think it's a theme park review. They don't know the quality that a review can actually have and the impact it can have. I mean, any uh Ain't Misbehavin' was one of the greatest shows, bar none I've ever seen in my life.

[1:24:19] David Armstrong: That cast in that show, even multiple casts in that show, was one of the greatest theatrical experiences I've ever seen. But people don't understand because we just haven't been exposed to that. So I do think I really wish somebody would figure out how to bring back how to reinvent the review. And especially the reviews, the book reviews are right up there with subject matter in this book, especially the reviews of the 30s, the 1930s, especially, which is sort of the heyday of the review. Sophisticated political, amazing reviews that were done, topical reviews that again fell off, began fading in the 1950s when television sort of took it over, and then came back again in the 70s to a great extent.

And the review is also very important in most of those 70s musicals because Hair is a review. Company is basically a review format. All the artists started using the review format from the past to make shows that we don't necessarily think of as reviews, but are utilizing the format of it. A Chorus Line is sort of a review. Cats is a review. So it's something I'm very passionate about. Cats is also an acid trip, but well. Yeah, I have a love my little section on Cats in the book. I encourage people to check that out. It's actually, it just sort of identifies what Cats is in relation to other shows and how it relates to some other quite famous shows. The beginning of that section just says W T in big bold letters with cat eyes. All right, not really. Um, so I think this is, yeah, that one's a great one. I wanted you to do that.

[1:26:14] Alan Seales: Yeah, this question from Heather again, Broadway fan club. What is your opinion on theater influencers compared to media outlet reviews? Alan and I have thoughts, so I'm curious what yours are because I know his.

[1:26:25] David Armstrong: I could get in trouble with this one. Um, I think fans of the theater are great. So I'm very happy for anyone to have great enthusiasm for Broadway. The challenge with some influencers is finding the balance, and maybe I've been guilty of this at times too, is it's not about you, it's about the show. So how, and that of course the audience is responding a lot to the influencer and is connected to that person. So I think it's, I just would encourage figure out a way to keep that relationship that you have with your audience, but try to make sure that the focus stays on the shows, on Broadway, on the material. And I think stay informed, right, David? Like I feel like, I mean, listen, influencers are what's, you know, I get that's how people hear about stuff right now.

So I think they're great. I think I get it, but stay informed. Like your opinion can't just be I hated it. You know, like understand that there's a show, there's a lot of people involved. I don't want to hear I hated it. I want to hear what don't you like about it, what you do like about it, and be specific about it so that I can go in making an informed decision whether I should see the show as well instead of trashing it, right?

[1:27:53] Michelle Simone Miller: Totally.

[1:27:54] David Armstrong: Yeah, critical assessment of it is exactly what we want to. We want to tune in for something like that. We want to hear that. But it's in a way, influencers to a great extent have replaced journalists to a great extent, but without the credentials behind them. So I encourage people to say, now you're the journalist, so back that up with informed opinions. And what I might like in a show might not be what you like in a show. And so if they hear, for example, my review, they might be like, oh wait, Michelle doesn't like this part of the show, but I love that stuff. And then it's still a great review, and it's still exciting to someone. So I encourage people to be nicer and also be more specific and specificity.

I was gonna say is because like, oh, this show is terrible, but why? What was it, the performances? Was it the staging? Was it the lights? Was it the book? Like the songs are great. Like, yeah, just be specific and explain yourself because there's some people who are gonna come in and just have completely different opinions where if you just go out straight up and just say, like, that stunk, then not give them a show a chance. Anyway, yeah, and it's so hard to get on Broadway. It's so hard to get to that place. It's like just if anything, I would tell people, and I think media outlets most of the time have done this in the past, but just have some respect for the production. Have some respect for the fact that there's a lot of people's livelihoods at stake. You might not like something, but that's what I would, you know. So not that this really is about your opinion, David, but I have strong feelings about people being unnecessarily mean and critical.

[1:29:33] David Armstrong: I'm totally there with you. And it's something I try not to ever critique something without some reasoning what that critique is. And you're, there's shows I can say I didn't like it, but that doesn't mean I try to then say it wasn't for me.

[1:29:49] Michelle Simone Miller: Exactly.

[1:29:50] David Armstrong: Yeah, there's nothing wrong with the show necessarily. It just didn't resonate with me. Yeah, there have been some songs, even shows even this current season, past season that I was just like, no, I don't ever need to see that again. People are like, this changed my life for the better. And I'm like, I don't get it, but good for you. And I remember Alan, you had a very, because we see a lot of Broadway shows together, Alan and I. You loved Boop, right? I remember you walked out going Boop was amazing. And I remember being like, Spoop, nice. Like I thought I liked it, but you loved it. And like there's room for that.

[1:30:25] Alan Seales: Yeah, yeah.

[1:30:26] David Armstrong: All right. So, oh man, we have been talking for an hour and a half. This is great. Thank you all for sticking with us this long. Um, I'm gonna cue up our little wheel of winners to pick an ultimate winner. But in the meantime, while I do that, let's switch over to David, who's gonna read us a little bit from the book.

[1:30:46] David Armstrong: And I promise this is very short, everybody. I don't know, you probably don't want to sit here and listen to me read a giant section of the book. So I tried to find something that I thought would work out of context. Sorry, I just need to put my glasses on, or no one will hear anything. All right, and of course, with my headset on, that's even more challenging. So this is coming from the opening paragraph of chapter 11, which is called, has a long title. It's called Let the Sunshine In: The Modern Era of Broadway, Part One, and then there's a subtitle to that, The Multiple Revolutions of the 1970s. And the focus of this chapter is how multiple, there were multiple ways that the musical was reinvented and revolutionized in the 1970s, all sort of happening simultaneously.

And this section I call Time Destination Number Two, April 1968. Another of my top time travel fantasy destinations would be the week of April 22nd, 1968, because it would provide an exceptional opportunity to witness a key turning point in Broadway history. I'd start that week by if I could go back in time, I'd start that week by seeing two great Jerry Herman musicals back to back. Main, choreographed by Anna White, and now starring Janice Page on Monday night, and Hello Dolly, directed and choreographed by Gower Champion, and starring Pearl Bailey and Cab Callaway on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, I'd catch most of the original cast of Cabaret, directed by Harold Prince and choreographed by Ron Field at the matinee.

And then that night, I'd see Cabaret's already departed Tony Award winning star Joel Gray play the father of the musical comedy in the biomusical George M, directed and choreographed by Joe Leighton. On Friday, I'd attend Jones and Schmidt's big Broadway hit, I Do I Do, also staged by Champion, and now starring Gordon McRae and Carol Lawrence. Then on Saturday, I'd start with the matinee of Man of La Mancha and catch the Fiddler on the Roof at the evening performance. Broadway shows didn't play on Sundays in those days, but off-Broadway shows did. So that day I would venture down to the village and see the matinee of Jones and Schmidt's original off-Broadway hit The Fantasticks, now in its eighth year.

Then to top the week off, I, sorry, I lost my place. To top the week, we would stick around 1968 for one more day to attend the opening night performance of the American tribal love rock musical Hair. In just eight days, I would experience eight of the prime musical prime examples of the crowning achievements of the golden age of Broadway musical play and musical comedy at its peak, and then witness the shocking and abrupt jump cut to what I call the modern era of Broadway. It is a place I would, I think that would be mind-blowing to be able to experience all of those shows in that one week period. That would be a good week.

[1:34:13] Michelle Simone Miller: You're muted.

[1:34:14] Alan Seales: You're muted, Michelle.

[1:34:15] Michelle Simone Miller: That was such a good thing I wanted to say. Um, luckily I can say now. David, that was so great. Um, are you reading a portion of the book kind of like that, like an excerpt on your podcast as an episode?

[1:34:26] David Armstrong: I have not yet, but I'm sure I will be doing some of that at some point.

[1:34:30] Michelle Simone Miller: Yeah.

[1:34:31] David Armstrong: I don't think it's an easy thing for people to send. Be like, hey, here's a cool excerpt. I think you'd like it. Let, you know, listen to it and see what you think.

[1:34:40] Michelle Simone Miller: Absolutely.

[1:34:40] David Armstrong: And we are discussions about an audiobook, so I'm very excited about that.

[1:34:44] Michelle Simone Miller: Very cool.

[1:34:46] Alan Seales: Well, let's pick our winner here. I've got all the names of everybody who won in the order that they won. And uh let's see, I got a blogging. Looks good to me on my list, by the way. You told me to make my own. This looks exactly like what I have.

[1:35:00] David Armstrong: Good, good.

[1:35:03] Alan Seales: So here we go. I don't know who the winner is gonna be. This is random. It is going to be Yale.

[1:35:13] Michelle Simone Miller: Wow.

[1:35:15] Alan Seales: Terrific, terrific. So, uh, Gail, please send me a message in Instagram or on Facebook just to make sure I can get the book to you and get your address so we can send it off to you. Again, if anybody else is interested in purchasing this book, let's put it up one more time today. And I don't know how long they're gonna keep this up. I was surprised that it that happened today. I think it's because it's the debut day of the book 30% off of either the paperback or the hardback at Bloomsbury.com today. So don't go to Amazon, go to Bloomsbury to get the discounts. Congratulations, Gail.

[1:35:55] Michelle Simone Miller: Congrats, absolutely.

[1:35:58] Alan Seales: And with that, Michelle, thank you so so much for joining us.

[1:36:03] Michelle Simone Miller: Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, guys.

[1:36:07] Alan Seales: I think you guys should do like a podcast guest swap. You'd be guests on each other's podcast. Just saying.

[1:36:11] Michelle Simone Miller: I'm there.

[1:36:12] Alan Seales: All right, we'll do it.

[1:36:13] Michelle Simone Miller: All right, yeah.

[1:36:13] Alan Seales: So check out Mentors on the Mic, Michelle's podcast. Michelle, thank you.

[1:36:16] Michelle Simone Miller: Bye-bye.

[1:36:18] Alan Seales: Bye, everybody. Thanks so much.

[1:36:20] David Armstrong: All right, and then David, thank you so much for joining me this evening. Uh, and Gail, congratulations for winning. David, any final closing thoughts before we wrap up?

[1:36:31] David Armstrong: This has been really fun and so. And I love the participation of it. So that was, it's just so fun to end with people. And you know, I hope I'll be able to do that in person at various events. But this one is probably just such a great opportunity to be able to do that. So thank you all. Thank you. I mean, the audience for Broadway Nation podcast has been instrumental in the creation of this book. Uh, so the two things can't be separated. So if you thank you, thank you to everybody who's supported the podcast over the years. And it really is, I think, and you and I thank you in the acknowledgments in the book. I definitely thank the podcast audience and Broadway Podcast Network, who've just been, you know, again, none of this would have happened without the Broadway Podcast Network.

[1:37:28] Alan Seales: Yeah, so thank you, Alan. Thank everybody on your team.

[1:37:33] David Armstrong: Thank you. It's great. Everybody, please. Uh, you can get more of the Broadway Nation podcast at BroadwayPodcastNetwork.com, of course. Um, what we need to add, because today's launch day, we need to add the link to the book on the page. So we'll let's do that. Um, so we'll add the link to the book, throw that in there. Um, David, this has been so great. Everybody who was listening and who was participating, thank you so much for making this a wonderful live stream. And then let David, let's do this again.

[1:38:00] David Armstrong: Absolutely.

[1:38:00] Alan Seales: Anytime. Thanks so much.

[1:38:01] David Armstrong: Right.

[1:38:02] Alan Seales: Bye, everyone.