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EPISODE 65. OTOJA ABIT [Writer/Director/Producer/Actor of A NEW YORK CHRISTMAS WEDDING on Netflix] joins via Zoom to talk being a Queer Ally, playing Marsha P. Johnson/LGBTQ response to the Stonewall film, how his film Jitters became the prelude to his LGBTQ+ love story, A New York Christmas Wedding (on Netflix) and the challenge of filming 2 separate LGBTQ+ weddings in a church.KEYWORDS with Allagash Beer (Allagash White & Allagash Curieux) kept us busy that we didn’t get to STORYTIME! We got a surprise visit from FATHER KELLY himself, CHRIS NOTH! @chrisnothofficial WATCH INTERVIEW:BLOG: https://www.jampackedshow.com/post/otoja-abitABOUT:Otoja Abit (pronounced O-toe-jay Abbitt), the only son of driven Nigerian parents, was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Queens, NY.A celebrated athlete and honored scholar, he attended Archbishop Molloy High School and went on to a year of post graduate work at The Gunnery in CT. Otoja completed his education at St. John's University where he played division one basketball and earned degrees in Communications, Theatre Studies and a Business minor.The "smell of grease paint and roar of the crowd" got hold of Otoja during his first ever production, William Inge's, Picnic. Consequently, Otoja committed to a pursuit of his true passions: acting, writing and directing.After interning at The Labyrinth theatre company, his first big project was working as the assistant director on Broadway's 2011 revival of That Championship Season, directed by Gregory Mosher and starring Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric and Chris Noth. Otoja then went on to book roles in both television and film including: a role in The Humbling, directed by Barry Levinson and playing opposite Al Pacino, HBO's critically acclaimed The Night Of, directed by Steven Zaillan. NBC's The Slap & The Blacklist, Paris in Aleta Chappelle's Romeo & Juliet in Harlem. And co-starring, as Marsha P Johnson, in Roland Emmerich's Stonewall.Recent credits include: Marvel's Netflix "The Defenders" directed by SJ Clarkson- acting opposite Krysten Ritter. Co-creator, producer and star of the New York Television Festival's Official Selection, "Harlem Knights". And the 2018 short film "Jitters" which Otoja wrote, directed, produced and stars in.Twitter: @OhAbitInstagram: @OhAbitFacebook: @Otoja.Abit@willfulproductionswww.willfulproductions.com #aNewYorkChristmasWedding #stonewall #lgbt #lgbtq #blacklgbt #pride #lgbtq #stonewall #riot #marshapjohnson #blacklivesmatter #translivesmatter #blacktranslivesmatterWWW.JAMPACKEDSHOW.COMJAMPACKED PHONE LINE#: 818-514-5830
This week's show is a special tribute to the life and legacy of Bernard Gersten (1923-2020), a trailblazing producer and non-profit administrator responsible for the success of the Public Theater and Lincoln Center Theater (LCT). Jamie and Rob sat down with Bernard last summer for what would be his final interview. You'll hear excerpts from that conversation along with remembrances and reflections from the Public Theater's artistic director Oskar Eustis, LCT's founding artistic director Gregory Mosher, LCT's current producing artistic director André Bishop, and celebrated director Jerry Zaks. Tune in to hear the amazing, one-of-a-kind story of how Bernard Gersten shaped and changed the American theatre.  This week's music: “Prelude”, “You're the Top”, from “Anything Goes”, “Aquarius”, “Good Morning Starshine" and “Hair” from “Hair”, “Summer, Summer” and “Where's North” from “Two Gentlemen of Verona”, “I Hope I Get It”, “At the Ballet”, “One” and “What I Did For Love” from “A Chorus Line” Find us on Twitter & Instagram: @fabulousinvalid Facebook: www.facebook.com/fabulousinvalid Rob's reviews: www.stageleft.nyc Email us at: info@fabulousinvalid.com  Jamie Du Mont Twitter: @jamiedumont Instagram: @troutinnyc  Rob Russo Twitter/Instagram: @StageLeft_NYC  Jennifer Simard Twitter: @SimardJennifer Instagram: @thejennifersimard Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
DC Cathro is a Chicago-based playwright, actor, and director from the Washington DC metropolitan area. His musical “Till,” written with award-winning composer Leo Schwartz, is one of three winners in the 2016 Main Street Musicals Festival, selected by Gregory Mosher.... The post The Book of Merman Ep. 308 The Cultural Hall appeared first on The Cultural Hall Podcast.
In the late 1980s, A.R. Gurney created an unusual play consisting only of a long correspondence between two people. But that play, Love Letters, has endured and has been seen in innumerable regional and amateur theater productions. Perhaps that’s because it’s easy to produce: no chorus lines, no costumes, no need for a balcony or a staircase on the stage set. The text is the lifelong correspondence between a man and woman of the East Coast upper crust and it is read by the actors on a bare stage rather than performed. But perhaps, slight as the work is by some measures, its words are enough to compensate for what it otherwise does not have. Now this durable play has come to Broadway in a production directed by Gregory Mosher and featuring a rotating cast of stars. Brian Dennehy and Mia Farrow are the first two performers to kick off the run at the Brooks Atkinson Theater. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood offers his review.
Gregory Mosher: In May of 1988, Peter Van Zandt moderated a talk with director and Lincoln Center Theatre artistic director Gregory Mosher, just weeks after the opening of the Broadway production of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow. In a conversation that focuses on Mosher's longstanding relationship with Mamet, and Mosher's leadership of Lincoln Center Theater since 1985, topics include Mosher and Mamet's first meeting in Chicago in 1974; the ambiguity of Speed-the-Plow; Mamet's preference for working with the same company of actors and Mosher's desire to open up the casting to a broader range of actors, including the casting of stage neophyte Madonna in her Broadway debut; the issues involved in releasing an actor; why Mosher loves producing perhaps more than directing; how the then-new Lincoln Center membership model compares with the classic theatrical subscription model; whether he believes Lincoln Center Theater should have a resident acting company, as it did when the Vivian Beaumont opened in the 1960s; the process of moving Sarasin!; and what he had learned from his new partner at LCT, Bernard Gerstein. Originally recorded - May 25, 1988. Running Time - 1:27:21 © 1988 SDCF
What is the theater that matters? In our digital age, how does the theater speak to our times? Can theater be a force for social justice and positive change? Speakers: Oskar Eustis, Gregory Mosher, Anna Deavere Smith, Julie Taymor, Rocco Landesman
Directors Jo Bonney, Sheldon Epps, Michael Halberstam and Gregory Mosher talk about how they got started in the business; choosing their projects; their process when starting a new show; how the dual role of Artistic Director and Director informs their own work and working with other directors; and how they approach auditions.
Gregory Mosher, director of the current Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge", talks about how he initiated the production himself, personally approached Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson about appearing in it, then brought the project to a producer after 17 years away from directing on Broadway. Mosher also discusses his journey through three institutions of higher education, including the acting program at The Juilliard School -- all without once graduating; his failed efforts post-college to even get unpaid employment in New York or at the country's major regional theatres; his migration to Chicago, where as assistant to William Woodman at The Goodman Theatre, he did everything from casting to producing their Stage 2 season; his ascension to artistic director and the challenges he faced securing the rights to new plays at a time when Chicago theatre wasn't yet "on the map"; his working relationship with David Mamet on the original production of "American Buffalo" and other plays -- as well as the one Mamet play he rejected and how that turned out; his tenure as artistic director of the new regime at Lincoln Center Theater beginning in 1985, including his early pilgrimage to meet with Peter Brook to understand how to make the Beaumont stage "work" and the LCT show that proved most surprising and rewarding in its success; what prompted his departure from LCT in the early 90s; his unsuccessful attempt to revitalize Circle-in-the-Square in 1997 and the 1998 season that was planned but never produced; and his leadership of the Columbia University Arts Initiative, how that program came to be and how to measure its success five years in. Original air date - February 24, 2010.
Gregory Mosher, director of the current Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge", talks about how he initiated the production himself, personally approached Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson about appearing in it, then brought the project to a producer after 17 years away from directing on Broadway. Mosher also discusses his journey through three institutions of higher education, including the acting program at The Juilliard School -- all without once graduating; his failed efforts post-college to even get unpaid employment in New York or at the country's major regional theatres; his migration to Chicago, where as assistant to William Woodman at The Goodman Theatre, he did everything from casting to producing their Stage 2 season; his ascension to artistic director and the challenges he faced securing the rights to new plays at a time when Chicago theatre wasn't yet "on the map"; his working relationship with David Mamet on the original production of "American Buffalo" and other plays -- as well as the one Mamet play he rejected and how that turned out; his tenure as artistic director of the new regime at Lincoln Center Theater beginning in 1985, including his early pilgrimage to meet with Peter Brook to understand how to make the Beaumont stage "work" and the LCT show that proved most surprising and rewarding in its success; what prompted his departure from LCT in the early 90s; his unsuccessful attempt to revitalize Circle-in-the-Square in 1997 and the 1998 season that was planned but never produced; and his leadership of the Columbia University Arts Initiative, how that program came to be and how to measure its success five years in. Original air date - February 24, 2010.
Gregory Mosher, director of the current Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's “A View from the Bridge” (Tony Award winner for Anything Goes and Our Town), talks about how he initiated the production himself, personally approached Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson about appearing in it, then brought the project to a producer after 17 years away from directing on Broadway. Mosher also discusses his journey through three institutions of higher education, including the acting program at The Juilliard School -- all without once graduating; his failed efforts post-college to even get unpaid employment in New York or at the country's major regional theatres; his migration to Chicago, where as assistant to William Woodman at The Goodman Theatre, he did everything from casting to producing their Stage 2 season; his ascension to artistic director and the challenges he faced securing the rights to new plays at a time when Chicago theatre wasn't yet "on the map"; his working relationship with David Mamet on the original production of “American Buffalo” and other plays -- as well as the one Mamet play he rejected and how that turned out; his tenure as artistic director of the new regime at Lincoln Center Theater beginning in 1985, including his early pilgrimage to meet with Peter Brook to understand how to make the Beaumont stage "work" and the LCT show that proved most surprising and rewarding in its success; what prompted his departure from LCT in the early 90s; his unsuccessful attempt to revitalize Circle-in-the-Square in 1997 and the 1998 season that was planned but never produced; and his leadership of the Columbia University Arts Initiative, how that program came to be and how to measure its success five years in.
Actor Liev Schreiber and director Gregory Mosher discuss “A View from the Bridge,” Mosher's critically-acclaimed Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's 1955 tragedy in which Schreiber stars with Scarlett Johansson.
In May of 1988, Peter Van Zandt moderated a talk with director and Lincoln Center Theatre artistic director Gregory Mosher, just weeks after the opening of the Broadway production of David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow". In a conversation that focuses on Mosher's longstanding relationship with Mamet, and Mosher's leadership of Lincoln Center Theater since 1985, topics include Mosher and Mamet's first meeting in Chicago in 1974; the ambiguity of "Speed-the-Plow"; Mamet's preference for working with the same company of actors and Mosher's desire to open up the casting to a broader range of actors, including the casting of stage neophyte Madonna in her Broadway debut; the issues involved in releasing an actor; why Mosher loves producing perhaps more than directing; how the then-new Lincoln Center membership model compares with the classic theatrical subscription model; whether he believes Lincoln Center Theater should have a resident acting company, as it did when the Vivian Beaumont opened in the 1960s; the process of moving "Sarafina!"; and what he had learned from his new partner at LCT, Bernard Gersten.
Bernard Gersten, Executive Producer of Lincoln Center Theater, takes listeners on a highly condensed tour of his 60-year career in the theatre, including his joining Maurice Evans' US Army Special Services Unit while stationed on Hawaii during World War II; his subsequent New York debut as assistant stage manager, ensemble member and understudy in Evans' "G.I." "Hamlet"; his years as a stage manager, including the threat to his job at the American Shakespeare Festival in Connecticut after he was called before the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee; how he met and came to work with Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival, a tenure that included the construction of the "temporary" Delacorte Theatre, the opening of The Public Theater on Astor Place with the original "Hair", and the phenomenal success of "A Chorus Line"; his work with Frances Ford Coppola on four films, including the oft-discussed but little seen "One From the Heart"; how he signed on at the inception of Lincoln Center Theater in 1985 when the Vivian Beaumont was thought to be a highly undesirable venue; and his role in the selection of Andre Bishop as LCT's artistic director upon the departure of Gregory Mosher in 1991. Original air date - December 21, 2009.
Bernard Gersten, whose tenure as Executive Producer of Lincoln Center Theater has scored them numerous Tony Awards, including the recent revival of South Pacific, Coast of Utopia and Contact, takes listeners on a highly condensed tour of his 60-year career in the theatre, including his joining Maurice Evans' US Army Special Services Unit while stationed on Hawaii during World War II; his subsequent New York debut as assistant stage manager, ensemble member and understudy in Evans' "G.I." Hamlet; his years as a stage manager, including the threat to his job at the American Shakespeare Festival in Connecticut after he was called before the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee; how he met and came to work with Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival, a tenure that included the construction of the "temporary" Delacorte Theatre, the opening of The Public Theater on Astor Place with the original Hair, and the phenomenal success of A Chorus Line; his work with Frances Ford Coppola on four films, including the oft-discussed but little seen One From the Heart; how he signed on at the inception of Lincoln Center Theater in 1985 when the Vivian Beaumont was thought to be a highly undesirable venue; and his role in the selection of Andre Bishop as LCT's artistic director upon the departure of Gregory Mosher in 1991.
Bernard Gersten, Executive Producer of Lincoln Center Theater, takes listeners on a highly condensed tour of his 60-year career in the theatre, including his joining Maurice Evans' US Army Special Services Unit while stationed on Hawaii during World War II; his subsequent New York debut as assistant stage manager, ensemble member and understudy in Evans' "G.I." "Hamlet"; his years as a stage manager, including the threat to his job at the American Shakespeare Festival in Connecticut after he was called before the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee; how he met and came to work with Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival, a tenure that included the construction of the "temporary" Delacorte Theatre, the opening of The Public Theater on Astor Place with the original "Hair", and the phenomenal success of "A Chorus Line"; his work with Frances Ford Coppola on four films, including the oft-discussed but little seen "One From the Heart"; how he signed on at the inception of Lincoln Center Theater in 1985 when the Vivian Beaumont was thought to be a highly undesirable venue; and his role in the selection of Andre Bishop as LCT's artistic director upon the departure of Gregory Mosher in 1991. Original air date - December 21, 2009.
The panel - playwright/actor Dan Butler ("The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me"), playwright Tom Dulack ("Breaking Legs"), director Scott Ellis ("A Month In The Country"), playwright Keith Glover ("Dancing On Moonlight"), director Sean Mathias ("Indiscretions"), director Gregory Mosher (Cryptogram), director Lisa Peterson ("Slavs"), and literary agent Jack Tantleff - talk about where they began their careers, playwrights who direct their own work, funding for non-profit and regional theatres, and the role of casting directors.
The panel -- playwright/actor Dan Butler (The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me), playwright Tom Dulack (Breaking Legs), director Scott Ellis (A Month In The Country), playwright Keith Glover (Dancing On Moonlight), director Sean Mathias (Indiscretions), director Gregory Mosher (Tony Award winner for his revivals of Anything Goes in 1988 and Our Town in 1989), director Lisa Peterson (Slavs), and literary agent Jack Tantleff -- talk about where they began their careers, playwrights who direct their own work, funding for non-profit and regional theatres, and the role of casting directors.
The production team of "Stanley" -- press representative Bill Evans, producers Gregory Mosher and Edgar Rosenblum, and marketing representative Evan Shapiro -- discuss the process of bringing the play from the Royal National Theatre in London to Broadway, working with director John Caird, extensive press coverage, and target marketing including a new $10 ticket program aimed at young people.
The production team of Stanley -- press representative Bill Evans, producers Gregory Mosher (Tony Award winner for his revivals of Anything Goes in 1988 and Our Town in 1989) and Edgar Rosenblum, and marketing representative Evan Shapiro -- discuss the process of bringing the play from the Royal National Theatre in London to Broadway, working with director John Caird, extensive press coverage, and target marketing including a new $10 ticket program aimed at young people.