A Tardy Celebration of 18 Years of B&Me

Even though these are crazy times, I don’t know how I let last week’s anniversary of Broadway & Me slip by. I started writing here on Feb. 14, 2007, which means it’s now been 18 years (and eight days) that I’ve had the joy of sharing my thoughts with you about the shows I've seen, theater books I've read, theater movies I’ve watched and theater podcasts I’ve listen to.

This past year was a tough one for me personally and more than ever I leaned on theater (and of course on my ever-supportive husband K) to lift up my spirits. And theater delivered in more ways than I could have anticipated. One of them was being asked to serve as the chair of last year’s jury for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which went to Eboni Booth’s lovely play Primary Trust. 

I was also delighted to be asked to be a nominator for the Lortel Awards that celebrate off-Broadway shows, which often are among my favorite shows. And I continue to enjoy joining my friend Patrick Pacheco to talk about the New York theater season on occasional episodes of his TV show “THEATER: All the Moving Parts” (our spring preview is coming up soon).

And thanks to BroadwayRadio top gun James Marino, I've continued hosting the podcasts Stagecraft, which features interviews with playwrights and musical book writers about their new shows on both Broadway and off-Broadway; and All the Drama, which devotes each episode to one of the Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. Plus James has also frequently invited me to fill in on the network's flagship "This Week on Broadway" podcast when one of its regular commentators Peter Filichia or Michael Portantiere can't make it (click here to listen to my most recent time on the show). 

In addition to writing here, I also still post articles almost daily on the Flipboard site and even added a new magazine to keep up with all the recent news about Wicked. And I’ve migrated over to BlueSky to chime in on its discussions on all kinds of theater-related subjects. But I think that maybe my favorite thing I’ve done over the past year was to launch Broadway & Me Quickies, mini-reviews of shows I’ve seen that can be read in about a minute. 

My favorite thing about these anniversary posts is that they give me the chance to once again thank those of you who over the years have subscribed to and read these postings, listened to my podcasts, befriended me on Facebook, checked out my Flipboard magazines or more recently found me on BlueSky. And I also want to welcome those of you who may have just stumbled onto this blog for the first time. I'm grateful for all of you and, of course, for the theater we all love and nowadays need more than ever.