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[0:00] Joshua Turchin: Hello and welcome back to the Early Night Show Virtual Edition or the Chrona Cabaret. My name's Joshua Turchin, and thanks so much for being with us today. Broadway star and Sirius XM on Broadway host Christine Pedi is here, along with Alyse Michelle Bierly, so please stick around.

[0:24] Joshua Turchin: Welcome to the Early Night Show. Daylight savings is coming up soon, and I was wondering if we could like start a petition to cancel it this year. It's the least we can do. I really don't think anyone wants an extra hour of 2020. Plus, we get an extra hour of daylight outside, which is pretty good. You know 2020 is super chaotic when they're no longer selling hex trucks, but hex ambulances. I really don't understand why we're still messing with unusual and mysterious things in 2020. From ancient mummies being unearthed to someone dumping bags of eels into a lake in New York. But for one New Jersey man, the pandemic's coin shortage brought him luck. By bringing his extra coins to Wawa, he ended up winning free hoagies for a year. This makes me super happy on so many levels, but mostly because he was my dad's camp counselor for several years.

[1:13] Joshua Turchin: Speaking of good fortune, I've been really fortunate over the past few years to be a part of the Forbidden Broadway family. For those of you who are not familiar with the show, Forbidden Broadway is an entity in New York City which has been around for more than 38 years and parodies the latest and greatest Broadway shows. I've been in three different iterations so far, most recently in Forbidden Broadway The Next Generation, which ran at the York Theater, a holiday tour at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, and at the Triad.

[1:43] Joshua Turchin: Now, Carol Channing is a Broadway legend. She was also a huge Forbidden Broadway fan. So after she passed, Gerard Alessandrini, the creator of Forbidden Broadway, wrote a new show called Forbidden Broadway Salutes Carol Channing, and I was cast to play Young Gerard, which was so cool. One of the best parts of the night was getting to perform with the Forbidden Broadway icon, Christine Pedi, who is one of the kindest and most talented performers I've ever met. She's also the host of Sirius XM on Broadway. I'm so excited to welcome her to the Early Night Show. Hi, Christine.

[2:16] Christine Pedi: Hey Joshua.

[2:19] Joshua Turchin: Hi, I'm so happy to have you on the Early Night Show.

[2:23] Christine Pedi: I know. I'm so glad I finally got on before your voice changed.

[2:27] Joshua Turchin: I really felt terrible about putting this off for so long, you know. But luckily, the plague lasted longer than we thought, so we had plenty of time.

[2:36] Christine Pedi: True. And like me, I'm sure a lot of our listeners and viewers listen to you on Sirius XM on Broadway. How did you become a radio host on Sirius XM?

[2:48] Christine Pedi: I went to Fordham University and I majored in communications. And I worked at the wonderful WFUV radio, which is a 50,000 watt radio station. Now that means that's the strongest wattage a radio station can have, even a college radio station. It's as strong as any of the major radio stations across the country. And it was all student-run when I went. And I made my best friends up at that radio station because I didn't live on campus, I lived at the radio station. So I'd go to classes, then I'd hop on a train up to Westchester to go to my after-school job, then I'd hop on the train and go back to Fordham and do the news or program the Broadway show. Then I'd hop on the train and go into the city and see shows because I became the arts editor on the radio station.

[3:43] Christine Pedi: And all the people I went to college with are working. I mean, they're major sportscasters and news announcers and incredible. And my dearest friend, Paul Cavalcante, is a DJ in New York City, has been a DJ since college. He's never had a job outside of radio. And he's on WQXR, the classical channel now, and WNYC. And Paul was working at Sirius when Sirius was still in test markets. It hadn't been launched yet for purchase. And they were looking for somebody for the Broadway channel. So this was in 2001. And my audition, he got me an audition, and my audition was September 9th, 2001. And I was gonna have another audition two days later for the jazz channel on September 11th, but they canceled that one for obvious reasons.

But I got the job, and it took them until like May of 2002 to finally like officially hire me. They were still not up and running, you know, they were still getting their act together. But I have been on the air since basically May of 2002. So, you know, it's a long time, 18 years.

[5:05] Joshua Turchin: Wow, that is so amazing.

[5:08] Christine Pedi: He's my best friend still, he's my dearest friend, and I actually got a job in what I majored in, even though up until that point I had spent, you know, a decade performing, which is not what I majored in. So I finally got a job in what I majored in, which is nice.

[5:29] Joshua Turchin: Definitely. Before I had the honor to work with you in the Forbidden Broadway concert to salute Carol Channing, I can honestly say that you were pretty much the voice of my childhood car rides when I was back in Florida. Aside from hosting on Sirius XM, you are also an incredible actor, and I have to say, one of the legends of Forbidden Broadway. Like being able to meet you for the first time back in what was it, 2017?

[5:58] Christine Pedi: No, I think it was 18. It wasn't that long ago, believe it or not. I think she passed when we met at Carol Channing's memorial, that sort of our own memorial for Carol Channing that we put together with Gerard Alessandrini, who created Forbidden Broadway. And that was a lot of fun. And you were fabulous in that.

[6:16] Joshua Turchin: He Gerard wrote an original song, didn't he?

[6:19] Christine Pedi: He did. It was so much fun to sing. And you were also like amazing. Yeah, love my favorite part about that night was there were, you know, I don't know, 12 people running in and out of Feinstein's, all of them in Carol Channing wigs and big red headdresses and crazy red lipstick running back and forth. And the waiters were completely nonplussed. They were just dodging us, and it was like this happens all the time there, you know. And we were just full of so much, I don't know, so much love and appreciation because we knew her, some of us more than others, but she touched our lives because of her eccentricity and her incredible style and her enthusiasm, and we just wanted to thank her in some way, and Gerard certainly at the top of the list because without characters like Carol Channing, there'd be no need for a Forbidden Broadway, you know.

And she supported the show so much. She came to every edition she possibly could. And I think it's wonderful that you were a part of it, even though you know she was probably not somebody that you were as familiar with, I'm assuming I could be wrong there.

[7:36] Joshua Turchin: But I absolutely love Carol Channing.

[7:39] Christine Pedi: Yeah, she's, you know, she's just one of those great, they don't make them like that anymore. When we did Forbidden Broadway, one of the later editions, we didn't have any characters in the modern era of Broadway that had that stamp of unique style and extreme character. I don't mean good quality of being a quality human being, because there are many people of good character in the theater, but I mean just a character, a unique, flamboyant character. Bernadette Peters is and Patti LuPone, but even they are they don't walk into a room necessarily the way Carol, nobody walked into a room like Carol Channing did. Let's face it, nobody did. It was a great night to be able to share it with everybody, and particularly you, you know, just have a newer generation appreciate it and carry the torch. I'm just such a fan of Forbidden Broadway, and it was like absolutely incredible to be part of its latest run, The Next Generation, with lots of impressions.

[8:54] Joshua Turchin: When you were in the show, were there any favorite impressions you got to do?

[8:59] Christine Pedi: I always liked doing Liza. Liza got better. I didn't like doing her in the beginning because I didn't quite get it. They were trying to coach me in how to do it. And they kept on saying, I want you to laugh like you're a cat coughing up a hairball. And I didn't have a cat and I didn't know what that meant. And they go like that and I go, it I would kill myself I go, and it didn't work. And then I just watched her a little bit more and actually the thing that struck me about her was the way she talked her sincerity when she spoke and that's what it is. It was a little high, well for me anyway it was a little higher up in the nose more like in the nose as opposed to like coughing. It wasn't a cough it was a anyway.

So as I got better at Liza I liked doing it because I can improv as Liza. I can't improv as a lot of other people. I sometimes do Joan Rivers on the Howard Stern show but that's all scripted and I always tell them if please tell Howard not to improv with me because I can't improv like Joan Rivers could improv. I'm not funny like her naturally I can do her voice and I can mimic her timing and her pacing but I cannot even begin to conjure up the jokes you know but Liza Minnelli I can improv as it I don't know the right ideas come to my mind. So she's a favorite. And Angela Lansbury on the flip side was one that came very simply. I was a nervous wreck that I had to do her because I'd never done her.

And I said, how the heck am I gonna do Angela Lansbury? I don't even know what I mean. And I just stepped on the stage and I started and there it was. I mean it was just there. And I had one of our producers who grew up when he was about your age obsessed with Angela Lansbury. He went to see her, you know, John Friedson. Oh yeah he went to see her as a little boy when she was on Broadway in Gypsy. He saw her in everything. I mean he was obsessed with Angela Lansbury. So I had, you know, I had to be good good. I was going to be scrutinized and he was gonna, you know, come and get me if I you know if I wasn't good at good at it. And it just came out fine. And that's one of the ones believe it or not when I do it like people gasp.

[11:26] Christine Pedi: And I I it that's just that one's just dumb luck. That's just dumb luck, you know. So everything is different. But the biggest common denominator is that I had something that most people don't have which is eight shows a week the opportunity to have a laboratory for eight shows a week where I could get better at it. You know, I could get better at it. And then with every new addition I had you know I had developed aud I had developed impressions and they were like in my stable of people and then we'd add some new people and I'd get better at them, you know Patty Lapone wasn't really in the show not the way I you know I got really good at Patty Lapone but not in the beginning. We didn't have that many Patty LePone numbers in the beginning but towards the end I got better at her and uh Bernadette Peters wasn't in the show in the beginning, and then towards the end of my run, we added her in, and I got much better at her.

So I had the luxury of being able to practice eight times a week on stage and fiddle around with new words and sounds and ways of molding a word and little physical tricks, audible tricks and things to do with my body physically that might remind me or the audience of that person. Um and when you're a cabaret performer, you know, and you're only doing one show every couple of months, there's not a lot of opportunity to hone it and get really, really good at it. So, you know, somebody like Oprah Winfrey, when I was doing musical, you know, I could only do one thing. The color purple. That's all I could say was the color purple. And and that was it. But then we had this long sketch where I had to talk as Oprah.

And so every night I would ad lib a little line here or try something new, and and because of that luxury, I got better at Oprah. So I'm very grateful for that opportunity to have had those opportunities.

[13:29] Joshua Turchin: That's so cool. With musical, did you get like a different script like every week based on like the news?

[13:38] Christine Pedi: No, we didn't. It didn't change that much. Um, it it I mean, it we would have preferred had that. Well, we would change sometimes an opening. We had an opening number that was like, you know, uh had little moments in it, little uh moments where we would talk to the audience musical interludes where we would say things like today in the news or it it, you know, it's been recently discovered that you know, we would say little bits from the headlines. And a lot of those, a lot of those could last for weeks and weeks, if not months. But then again, some of them would be God. What we would have done with I mean, we closed when did we close? Uh 20 in the middle of 2019. But it's just what's been going on, oh my lord.

In the in the government would now we would have been changing that section of the show constantly. And then of course there would have been, you know, there would have been more Trump numbers, and it would have changed so you know we would we in an ideal world it would change, you know, maybe every month or so because it takes time to write a comedy song and then learn it and stage it, and you want to do it a while. Um, but it it you know, we would have preferred that it change even more. But it's it's it's a bit bit of a bit of a investment of time and money and energy. Um but even so I still got to bring learn to do some new people, which was nice.

[15:08] Joshua Turchin: Impressions. Now I know that you usually have different cabarets throughout the year. Do you have any plans to do any live stream concerts or cabarets?

[15:19] Christine Pedi: Well, I haven't done anything since the the shutdown, and I haven't figured out how I would do it, although I have some suggestions, and I know that I have to do my holiday show because this will be my geez eight, my thirteenth snow business. There's no business like snow business, and I've been doing it for maybe the past six years or so. Uh I'd say six years, um 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. Yeah, this would have been the sixth or seventh year that I would have been at Feinstein's, but it's not gonna happen at Feinstein's. So I've got to figure out a way to live stream it. And it's a lot of fun, and I need to do it because it is a lot of fun, and because that's you know, I mean, we just wanna uh we just want to like performing.

Yeah, we'll perform and just think about tinsel and snowflakes and you know, Holly and Santa Claus for a while. Um, and just you know, divert our attention from everything else. And God knows where we're gonna be in December, what kind of a world we're gonna be living in in December. So, or if we'll even have a president in December, you know, who knows if we'll have a president chosen by then because of all the things that have been churning in the air about what might happen. So, but you know, the everything we've been through in this world uh since February has taught us, if nothing else, that we we can't obsess and pla and over plan. And we I don't think we've all realized just how much we overplan things.

And as a kid, nobody overplans more than the people around a child's life. You know what I mean? That's just the natural instinct is to plan, plan, plan, and plan, plan. But in some ways, I think that the fact that we've all realized that we kind of have to just accept the world we're living in and find new ways to learn and find new ways to grow and find new ways to educate ourselves and entertain ourselves. And if we don't do it by the old rules, nobody's gonna drop dead or die, or nobody's you're not gonna grow up and be a you know, a competent adult. You know what I mean? It's it's it's gonna be amazing how you're actually gonna be able to, you know, grow up and maybe even get a job and pay your bills just because this year kind of screwed around with the plans a little bit or a lot.

Everybody's gonna be able to be just fine, you know, even though uh we we were all punched in the gut and tripped down the stairs and thrown a monkey wrench into our plans over and over again. We'll we'll come out of it fine and uh probably prouder at our abilities like you here doing what you're doing to you know create something in your living room, probably in your pajama bottoms like me. I I may be wearing sparkles right now, but um I have on plaid flannel pajama bottoms right now. That is the zoom tradition. That's what they tell me. I it's a little weird feeling. I don't know if I'm gonna do it again. It does so feel right. It's a little bizarre, you know.

[18:39] Christine Pedi: Yes, but it's my first uh attempt at this in my pajama bottom. So I kind of I don't know. We'll see. Well, I am so so excited to sing with you today. You had suggested get happy slash happy days duet performed by Barbara Streisand and Judy Garland. It's such a great duet. What making selects that song?

[19:03] Christine Pedi: I I can't remember. It was so long ago when we talked about this. I just can't remember. I my my my dear neighbor, um John Fricky is the like world's leading authority uh uh on Judy Garland. He is a historian, and in fact, if you watch Thernoclassic movies, he's always on their little, you know, Judy Garland specials talking about her, and he in fact gave me the sheet music, which if you you were playing it, that's like the original copy, not the original copy, but a copy of the original copy. That's the original style of the music. And and um he actually gave me a bunch of her charts uh to to use, and one of the, you know, they have the different, you know, the trombone part and the saxophone part and stuff like that.

One of them was the vocal part, and it said Miss Garland on the top of it. Now, that was not the original, that was a Xerox copy. Clearly, the original must have been kept by him or been put in a museum somewhere because it was touched by Judy Garland. But um I tell you, I tell you, uh Joshua, I think in initially when we picked this, which would have been back in what, May, maybe when we started talking about this, April. I don't know when the emails were, but we we picked it way back then, and I just thought, okay, there's not a lot of duets I can think of, so that's a good one. And okay, you could play it, and okay, I had the music, and okay, it was in the right key, and you know, everything seemed to align nicely.

But boy, oh boy, you know, I've waited like five months, or March, May, June, July, August, or yeah, five months almost to finally sing it, and singing it after all this time has passed, and so much has happened in the world. The words are have an entire new meaning.

[21:04] Joshua Turchin: Absolutely. I mean, what did you think when you were singing it? Were you listening to it?

[21:09] Christine Pedi: Well, they're really just two beautiful songs in this incredible medley mashup type thing. But together, like on their own, they're amazing. But together, the lyrics provide an entire new meaning to what's going on right now in the world. It's amazing how well there are a lot of songs I find on Sirius, it happens all the time. That I'll play a song that we've played forever and ever. And the song has always been a beautiful song. And then suddenly I listen to it with the ears of someone who's been deprived of human, you know, connection of a certain kind. You know, we've had human connection, but it's but but a lot of the kind that we're accustomed to have been deprived of. And you suddenly just you're kind of blown away.

And like even the song Sunday from Sunday in the park with George, which they sang in uh TKT the TKTS booth a few weeks ago, I've always thought the song was beautiful, but I never once had to look at it from the from the perspective of someone who wasn't allowed to really hang out freely with other people. I mean, we can hang out, but we can't hang out freely. There are so many conditions to where we can stand and what we can say and what and and how we have to be masked and who we can touch and who we can't touch. And then you hear a song like Sunday, which is just talking about people out commingling with one another, not even there because they want to meet new people.

[22:51] Christine Pedi: They don't go to the park necessarily to make new friends, they usually go with their friends and stay with their friends, but they want to be around the presence of the energy of other people.

[23:03] Christine Pedi: And just everything about that song resonated differently with me. Listening to it with the ears of someone who had lived through what we've all lived through. So I think there's a lot of songs in musical theater that are gonna sound very different because of what we've all been through, a lot of them, you know, and this song, this song, it just made me hopeful as I sang it and made me long for the moment when I can sing it and mean every word, when it would actually apply, you know, meaning our cares and troubles are gone. I was sort of projecting myself into however many six months from now, eight months from now, when you know the masks can come off and we can sing this song, and it's gonna be the absolute truth. Right now, I'm just projecting and imagining all of that as I sing it, and it still works in its own way, you know. And I'm so, so, so excited to hear you sing the song with me. Here we go.

[24:30] ♪ Musical number ♪

[26:09] Joshua Turchin: That song just makes me feel so hopeful to the days when COVID is behind us and the bright lights on the Broadway marquees are back and shining and lighting up midtown. I do miss that New York City, but I do truly believe that through all of this, we will learn and grow through this experience and hopefully emerge stronger than before. I know that my next guest can't wait until she gets back up on a stage soon. I'm so happy to welcome Alyse Michelle Bierly to The Early Night Show!

[26:38] Alyse Michelle Bierly: Hi, Elise!

[26:54] Joshua Turchin: Hi! I'm so happy to have you on The Early Night Show!

[26:58] Alyse Michelle Bierly: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

[27:00] Joshua Turchin: So am I! How have you been impacted by COVID?

[27:04] Alyse Michelle Bierly: Yeah, so it's been weird. I think so the first like three months of quarantine, I stayed inside except for walking my dog. I didn't go in a car or anything. Um, but yeah, I've been doing online school and my whole family's on Zoom. So we have like five days a week, five of us are on Zoom calls all at once. So it's been weird, but yeah.

[27:29] Joshua Turchin: That's so cool. It's definitely been like a bit of a challenging time to basically adapt to this new virtual environment. But because we were able to thrive and perform safely in a new way. Speaking of performing, how have you remained connected to the performing arts during this time?

[27:51] Alyse Michelle Bierly: So I've been taking a lot of classes. Um, I go to a performing arts school, but I've been taking classes outside of school, like acting classes, master classes, voice lessons. Um, I've been doing some Zoom project things that have been fun. So yeah.

[28:07] Joshua Turchin: That's so cool. I know that you actually started an incredible organization that really gives back to the community. Can you tell us more about it and how our listeners and viewers can get involved?

[28:20] Alyse Michelle Bierly: Yeah, great. So uh Scenes of Hope, I started that when I was 13, so in 2014. Um, and I make blankets and pillows for kids with DIPG, which is an inoperable brain tumor around the world. Um, and it occurs most in kids ages six to ten, and it's fatal. So it's a six to nine month prognosis, and there's no cure, no treatment, nothing. So I make blankets to raise awareness for it. I've sent them all over the world. So it's a really rewarding opportunity. And um, yeah, so I just raise awareness for like donating for clinical trials, um, just so people can support families, and I have my website is seamsofope.org. Seams is like sewing seams. And um, yeah, there's a lot of organizations on there that you can donate to or go to like get involved pages. Um, and there's instructions on how to make blankets if you would like to do that.

[29:19] Joshua Turchin: Oh, that's amazing. And thank you so much for what you're doing for children everywhere around the world and for making such a positive impact in their lives.

[29:21] Alyse Michelle Bierly: Thank you.

[29:30] Joshua Turchin: I would love to have you sing a song with me today. What song would you like to sing and why did you select that song?

[29:38] Alyse Michelle Bierly: So I'm gonna sing "Vanilla Ice Cream" from She Loves Me. Um, it's just a really fun song. Amalia's character, she's like so peppy and outgoing. So I really like that. Um, and my nan and I actually watched the ProShot version of the Broadway show a few nights ago and we absolutely loved it. So it's really fun.

[29:58] Joshua Turchin: Yeah. That's so cool. The new school is so amazing, and I love the song, especially. I'm really, really excited to hear you sing it. Here we go.

[30:07] Alyse Michelle Bierly: Thank you. Let's go.

[30:11] ♪ Musical number: "Last Night" — performed by Christine Pedi ♪

[31:54] Christine Pedi: Last night, I was so nasty. Well, he deserved it. But even so that George is not like this, George. This is a new George that I know. Somehow it all reminds me of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Before my eyes, a man that I despised has turned into a man that I like. It's almost like a tree. As strange as it may seem, he came to offer me.

[32:58] Joshua Turchin: If you want to perform and sing along with me, make sure to check on my TikTok at Joshua Turchin and look for Smypiano videos. Record a duet and use the hashtag SingmaJosh, and you may get featured on The Early Night Show. Also, if you're a student whose show was canceled, please send us a link to a video of you singing to earlynightshowcasting@gmail.com, and you may get a chance to go on the show. If you're enjoying these virtual cabarets, please consider making a donation to the Actors Fund's Emergency Relief Fund at www.actorsfund.org to support people working in the entertainment industry who have suddenly found themselves out of work. Any bit helps. You can also find The Early Night Show on the Broadway Podcast Network wherever podcasts are found, and videos of our episodes online on theearlynightshow.com. Thanks again to my guests, Christine Pedi and Alyse Michelle Bierly.

And let's keep entertaining. Any artists who want to be virtual guests, send me a direct message on my Instagram at Joshua Turchin, and let's keep making music to help the world. Stay healthy, wear a mask, and vote.