A Labor Day Salute to Theater Podcasters

The summer of 2026 has been a strange one for me. Nothing truly dire but my husband K and I experienced some challenges, some disappointments and a few losses. So I’m regarding this Labor Day as the fresh start of a new season and new possibilities. But I’m also going to stick with my long established tradition of marking the holiday with a salute to a group of theater workers. 

As longtime readers will know, over the years I’ve celebrated the labor of ushers, union leaders, stage managers, set designers, producers, drama teachers, composers, casting directors, actors and back office workers from the folks who clean the theaters and order the supplies to the ones who work in the box office or manage the marketing campaigns. But this year, I’m moving a little closer to home and singling out a handful of my fellow theater podcasters who work hard to make shows that offer truly informed ways of looking at and appreciating the theater we all love.  

THE THEATER HISTORY PODCAST: It’s been around for years but I only recently discovered this terrific series that takes deep dives into subjects ranging from ancient Greek drama to the musicals of Lin-Manuel Miranda through lively conversations with archivists, theater historians and working artists. The show’s producer and host Mike Lueger seems to have read everything about anything to do with theater and so knows how to ask the right questions but, just as importantly, he knows how to get out of the way so that his guests can share their impressive knowledge. The episode on the almost-forgotten 19th century actress Charlotte Cushman, who specialized in male roles and romanced some of her leading ladies, knocked me out.

MICKEYJOYTHEATRE: If you follow theater on social media, then you probably already know Mickey-Jo Boucher, the energetic theater critic, who’s based in the U.K. but who is equally up-to-date on what’s happening on this side of the Atlantic too. There are lots of theater TikTokers and vloggers but few are more savvy about the theater scene than Mickey-Jo, whose reviews are so detailed and vivid that you feel as though you were sitting in the theater right next to him. But what really sets him apart is his thoughtful analysis of news and trends which provide the kind of context that not only clarifies what’s happening but why it’s happening, as he did with a recent episode on Jonathan Bailey’s decision to bail on the West End revival of Sunday in the Park with George.   

THE PRESENT STAGE: CONVERSATIONS WITH THEATER WRITERS: In the interest of full disclosure I have to say that this show’s host Dan Rubins is a fellow board member of the Outer Critics Circle but he’s also one of the hardest working people I know. In addition to running a non-profit organization that helps kids with physical and developmental disabilities compose their own songs, Dan manages to see some 200 shows a year and to engage in deeply-researched discussions with many of the people who create them. When Moisés Kaufman appeared on Dan’s show to discuss his Pulitzer finalist Here There are Blueberries, which will open on Broadway in November, Kaufman said he’d agreed to do the interview because knew that Dan always did his homework. And he really does.

CHASING PHANTOM: Despite the title this isn’t a show about The Phantom of the Opera, instead it’s a celebration of all Broadway’s longest running shows. Its Virginia-based host David Timberline delves into the backstage stories of the shows that ran for 1,000 performances or more. Phantom still holds the top spot with 13,981 but episodes range from now-almost forgotten productions like the 1943 romantic comedy The Voice of the Turtle to such modern-day crowd pleasers as MJ, the Musical and Timberline and his guests always manage to find some new tidbit to share about them.

BROADWAY BOUND: THE MUSICALS THAT NEVER CAME TO BROADWAY: True Broadway fanatics love flops almost as much as they love hits and this show’s host Robert W. Schneider has a ball digging up and recounting the stories about the shows—many of them with big stars— that died out of town, from such notorious failures as Breakfast at Tiffanys to such now nearly-forgotten disappointments as The Prince of Grand Street. Himself a director, producer and writer, Schneider knows what he’s talking about; and an irrepressible wit, he's totally entertaining while he’s doing it, whether he's playing often-hard-to-find excerpts from the shows or breaking into impressions of Carol Channing or Gwen Verdon. 

BROADWAYRADIO: My southern-born grandmother used to say that it’s a poor dog that doesn’t wag its own tail and so I have to give a shout out to this network of shows, which has provided a home for my podcasts "All the Drama" and "Stagecraft," but most especially to its head honcho James Marino, one of the OG theater podcasters who began streaming shows back in 2009 and who not only continues to host its popular weekly review show but recently introduced an app that’s available for IOS and Android users.

A Labor Day Salute to Set Designers

It’s been a lazy summer.  Only a few shows have opened. I took no trips. No out-of-town guests came to visit. My husband K and I just spent most of our time lolling around on our terrace and occasionally going out to a favorite restaurant with good friends. So once again Labor Day weekend has sneaked up on me, signaling that it’s time to get busy again—and time to post my annual Labor Day tribute to some of the folks who work hard to make the theater we all love. 

To paraphrase the familiar saying, it takes a village to make a show and as longtime readers will know in past Labor Day posts I’ve celebrated actors, playwrights, stage managers, casting directors, drama teachers, musicians, ushers and even dramaturgs. And now this year I want to salute the people who literally build the world in which shows come to life: set designers and their crews.

Designers’ names appear prominently on the Playbill and there are lots of awards—Tonys, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Obies—that celebrate their work but they don’t have the kind of high profiles that actors, directors or composers do. I mean when is the last time you heard someone say "I can’t wait to see the new Scott Pask show" even though Pask's scenic designs have been nominated for 10 Tonys over the past 20 years and won twice. 

But recognition is beginning to pick up. The Cooper Hewitt museum here in New York just completed a nine-month exhibit devoted to the work of the innovative British designer Es Devlin.  And a museum in Tucson is scheduled to begin a tribute to the designer David Korins this September. 

It's about time that set designers get their—ahem—props because they’re among the first people hired for a production. It’s their job to create a show’s physical environment by deciding whether to follow the script directions exactly or to create a more metaphorical representation that reflects the show’s mood and themes. 

And while set designers obviously need to collaborate closely with a show’s director, they also need to work well with the scene shops that build the sets, the scenic painters or video designers who create backdrops for them and the stage crews who move all of it into, out of and around the theater. As I said, a village.

Some designers’ names will be familiar to devout theater lovers. Jo Mielziner whose iconic sets for shows like Death of a Salesman are so revered that some revivals have replicated them wholesale; Boris Aronson who won six Tonys, half of them for his smart spins on the Stephen Sondheim concept musicals Company, Follies and Pacific Overtures; Ming Cho Lee who in addition to designing over 30 productions for the Public Theater, taught generations of future designers during his five decades at the Yale School of Drama; John Lee Beatty whose exquisitely detailed sets regularly draw applause as soon as the curtain opens; Mimi Lien, the MacArthur genius winner who, as she did with Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, has led the way in immersive designs that encompass an entire theater.

Luckily, some of the best designers working today are also as gifted when it comes to words (or at least at choosing co-writers) as they are at creating images and over the past couple of years, three of them have published terrific books that delve into their craft and why they so love what they do.

David Rockwell grew up with a mother who was a dancer and choreographer who often cast her son in community theater productions. He went on to study architecture and now heads an international firm that specializes in hotels and restaurants around the world but Rockwell never lost his love for the theater and over the past two decades, he’s designed the sets for over 30 Broadway shows, transformed the Hayes Theater into Second Stage Theater's Broadway home and curated the artifacts and spaces in the Civilian Hotel, which has become kind of a clubhouse for the Broadway community.  His lavishly illustrated book, “Drama,” explores how his love of the theatrical informs all of his projects.

Beowulf Boritt’s career got a big boost when he met Hal Prince and the legendary director and producer introduced him to his daughter Daisy who was looking for a set designer to work on a show she and Jason Robert Brown were putting together called The Last Five Years. Since then Boritt has worked on dozens of Broadway shows, won two Tony awards and forged close partnerships with some of the leading directors in the business. So it makes sense that his book “Transforming Space Over Time: Set Design and Visual Storytelling with Broadway’s Legendary Directors” should center around his conversations with five of them—James Lapine, Kenny Leon, Hal Prince, Susan Stroman and Jerry Zaks—detailing how he came up with his visions for their shows and the steps he took to bring those ideas to life.

If he had designed nothing else, Derek McLane would probably still be remembered for his extravagant—and Tony-winning—design for the still-running musical Moulin Rouge but McLane has created sets for some 350 other shows around the world and he’s written “Designing Broadway: How Derek McLane and Other Acclaimed Set Designers Create the Visual World of Theatre,” an appreciation of some of the most iconic sets in Broadway history along with case-study examples of the different approaches he and his designer peers have taken to create the look of a show. 

Like a jeweler, a scenic designer provides the setting for the jewels—in this case the story and the actors—to shine. These hard-working creative artists and their books provide an up-close look at the efforts that go into making the jewels glow, which is the kind of work we should all cheer. So Happy Labor Day to them, and to you.