Podcast appearances and mentions of steve cosson

On the latest Whisper in the Wings from Stage Whisper, we had the great privilege of speaking with playwright/director Steve Cosson of The Civilians, about his new show, Artificial Flavors. This was a fascinating conversation, and the show is even more intriguing. So be sure to tune in, and Then get your tickets!The Civilians Present Artificial FlavorsNow- November 19th@ 59e59 Theatres Tickets and more information can be found at 59e59.orgAnd be sure to follow Steve and The Civilians to stay up to date on all their upcoming projects and productions:thecivilians.org and @civiliansnycstevecosson.com

Listeners call in to share some high-stakes fiascos that have happened in their work lives, and Steve Cosson, director, writer and artistic director of The Civilians theater company (currently the artist-in-residence at The Greene Space), explains how The Civilians will turn the stories into art. Plus: Robert Johanson, a freelance performer, composer and director, plays a song he wrote based on a listener's story of a fiasco from earlier this week.

Listeners call in to share some high-stakes fiascos that have happened in their personal lives - from a runaway houseboat to a cake fiasco, and Steve Cosson, director, writer and artistic director of The Civilians theater company (currently the artist-in-residence at The Greene Space), explains how The Civilians will turn the stories into art.

This Spring, The Greene Space's Artist in Residence is The Civilians, a theater company based in Brooklyn. Tonight, The Civilians will put on a show called, "Liveness: A Performance Made From The WNYC Archives," which will mix original 1970s recordings from our archives along with performances embodying the voices that New Yorkers heard on the air during the time period. Director and writer Steve Cosson is with us to preview the show. You can find information about tickets here.

A new poll this week from AP-NORC found that when asked, close to half of Americans say they are very concerned that Russia would directly target the U.S. with nuclear weapons, and an additional 3 in 10 are somewhat concerned. Given that Vladimir Putin put his nuclear forces on high alert at the start of his invasion of Ukraine, and with the rhetoric heating up as the war continues, it's hardly surprising that people are worried.  All the talk of nukes got us thinking about a segment from a few years back in which Brooke spoke to playwright Anne Washburn, about her work Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play. In it she imagines a world that has been devastated by a nuclear incident and how the remaining civilization would process the destruction over time...by retelling an episode of The Simpsons and about what the episode's evolution over the decades says about society's need for stories and about the role of comedy in the face of tragedy. Excerpts taken from the 2013 production at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Steve Cosson, and a 2017 production at Amherst Regional High School, directed by Nathan Baron-Silvern. Music by Michael Friedman.

Maria-Christina Oliveras caught the attention of NYC theater fans with an explosive, show-stopping turn in David Byrne and Fatboy Slim's multiple award-winning musical Here Lies Love. On August 6, she brings her gift of storytelling and unique style to Feinstein's/54 Below in an electrifying night of music and surprises. In this episode, she joins our Director of Marketing, Nella Vera, for a chat about her career, her collaborations with renowned artists, including Tony nominee Alex Timbers, and why she's chosen this particular time to do her first solo cabaret show. Maria-Christina has performed extensively on and off-Broadway, regionally, internationally, and in film and television. Her career is distinguished by her transformational character work in a number of world premieres, including roles in Kiss My Aztec (by John Leguizamo, Tony Taccone, David Kamp, Benjamin Velez, directed by Tony Taccone), Amélie (by Craig Lucas, Daniel Messe and Nathan Tysen, directed by Pam MacKinnon), Soft Power (by David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori, directed by Leigh Silverman), El Huracán (by Charise Castro Smith, directed by Laurie Woolery), and Pretty Filthy (by Bess Wohl and Michael Friedman, directed by Steve Cosson). She has appeared on Broadway in Amélie, Machinal, and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. For information about Maria's show at Feinstein's/54 Below, visit https://54below.com/events/maria-christina-oliveras/ Learn more about Maria on her website: www.mariachristinaoliveras.com Follow Maria on Instagram: @mcoliveras Credits The Feinstein's/54 Below podcast is hosted by Nella Vera, Kevin Ferguson, and Grace Benigni and produced by Bailey Everett and Michael Galvez, with support from the Feinstein's/54 Below marketing staff. Original artwork design by Philip Romano. Follow Nella on Twitter and Instagram at @spinstripes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Republican love to lambaste Steve Cosson, of the theater company The Civilians, for the climate musical he wrote with a National Science Foundation grant several years ago. Climatewire editor Evan Lehmann and deputy editor Robin Bravender catch up with him to talk climate funding ahead of the release of the White House spending plan next week. Josh Kurtz, Climatewire's politics reporter, weighs in on why even Republicans won't pass the White House budget as is. Finally, Christy Goldfuss, who led the Council on Environmental Quality under President Obama, calls in on the White House's withdrawal of Texas regulator and climate skeptic Kathleen Hartnett White's nomination for CEQ chair. "Trump admin mulls deep cuts to clean energy programs" (E&E News PM. 01/31/2018), by Hannah Northey: www.eenews.net/stories/1060072557 "Yes, there was a climate musical" (Climatewire, 05/24/2017), by Erika Bolstad: https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060055053 "Skeptic's retreat sparks questions about alternative science" (Climatewire, 02/05/2018), by Robin Bravender and Zack Colman: www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060072867

A new production from The Civilians, a journalistic theater company, is called Pretty Filthy and is an exploration of the pornography industry centered in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley. The Civilians use words of ordinary people — in this case, people who work in porn — so the story is told with less concern for poetry than for verity. And, oh yes, it’s a musical, too. The show, directed by Steve Cosson, features songs by the Civilians’ in-house composer Michael Friedman, and a book by Bess Wohl. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know if Pretty Filthy is worth seeing in, shall we say, the flesh.

Theater Talk welcomes actress Joely Richardson, Emily Dickinson, & director Steve Cosson from William Luce‘s "The Belle of Amherst." Also, our "Broadway Update" has journalist Stephanie Cohen and Imogen Lloyd Webber discussing up and coming productions.

The beauty pageant that takes place in the national women's prison in Bogotá, Colombia is the subject of this week's episode. Steve Cosson spent a month visiting the prison during the lead up to the pageant, working with a group of Colombians, playwright José Rivera, and songwriter/musician Hector Buitrago of the Latin Grammy award winning band Aterciopelados. They interviewed the pageant's contestants, other inmates, and prison staff. In this podcast, you’ll get a chance to hear some of our raw interviews, which were translated into English and performed for the first time at the 92YTribeca in June of this year. Our first interview, performed by Vanessa Aspillaga, is with a woman serving time for being part of one of the various guerilla groups who are part of a long-standing armed conflict with right-wing paramilitaries. Next up is Carolina Ravassa playing an inmate who is incarcerated for her part in an attack on the presidential palace in Bogotá in 2002. The attack didn’t succeed in hitting then President Alvaro Uribe, though one missile overshot the palace and landed in the nearby neighborhood of El Cartucho, killing a number of people. To close this episode, our Associate Artist KJ Sanchez performs an inmate who, while she proclaims her innocence, was convicted of working for the paramilitaries through her political office. These interviews were conducted by Lorena Lopez and Alejandro Jaramillo. Thanks for listening. For more, please visit http://www.thecivilians.org.To leave a comment, please visit The Civilians' blog http://blogforthecivilians.blogspot.com/!

A special guest joins us in this week's episode: Kristin Ross, Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University. She has written extensively about Paris Commune. Her book “The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune” was what inspired Steve Cosson and Michael Friedman to start working on our latest show, Paris Commune, which premiered at ArtsEmerson last month and is having a run in BAM's 30th Next Wave Festival. The play investigates the Parisian working-class uprising in 1871, and we want to extend a special thanks to Kristin for sharing her expertise on the commune, shared social space, revolution, and more with us in this podcast. This episode kicks off with Brian Sgambati performing Leur Bon Dieu, a nineteenth century song in the show originally from the Commune with Lyrics by Eugene Pottier, Music by Emile Bouillon. Wrapping up this week, we have Aysan Celik, singing Mon Homme by Jean-Baptiste Clement, adapted and translated by Michael Friedman. For more, please visit http://www.thecivilians.org. To leave a comment, please visit The Civilians' blog http://blogforthecivilians.blogspot.com/!

Our latest show, Paris Commune, will be having its world premiere run at ArtsEmerson in Boston followed by a run at BAM's Next Wave Festival this fall. The play is about the explosive Parisian uprising of the working class in 1871, in which French citizens launched an attempt to overthrow the government and reinvent society. We wanted to give you a look behind-the-scenes at our efforts to recreate these historic events for the stage. This episode features interviews with Paris Commune's director and co-author Steve Cosson; co-author and translator and adapter of the songs Michael Friedman; and actor Aysan Celik who has been with the project throughout its development. The episode closes out with Quincy Tyler Bernstine singing "La Canaille," a song performed at the radical cabaret of the actual Commune in the nineteenth century. For more, please visit http://www.thecivilians.org.To leave a comment, please visit The Civilians' blog http://blogforthecivilians.blogspot.com/!

Anne Wasburn's new play is currently receiving its world premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington, DC. In the show, Armageddon has struck and the electric grid has gone down permanently. For one group of tenacious survivors, sitting around a fire and reminiscing about The Simpsons proves to be the greatest escape from despair. Almost all of the episode recollection that the characters do in the first act is from a Civilians workshop in 2008, in which a group of Associate Artists led by Anne Washburn and Steve Cosson attempted to recreate the Cape Feare episode of The Simpsons from memory. This episode features some of the hilarious audio taken during that workshop. This episode also has an interview with playwright Anne Washburn, who discusses the role of the workshop in her creative process and her interest in this subject matter. Matt Maher, an actor in the original workshop and a Simpsons savant, then speaks about the exercises in the workshop and even tells us about his personal favorite Simpsons moments. Composer Michael Friedman talks about the music in the play and shares an excerpt of his post-Apocalyptic score of jumbled pop hits, as well as some of the music from the third act in which The Simpsons have spawned a whole new mythology and entertainment. For more, please visit http://www.thecivilians.org.To leave a comment, please visit The Civilians' blog http://blogforthecivilians.blogspot.com/!http://blogforthecivilians.blogspot.com/2012/06/mr-burns-podcast.html

The elevated public park, the High Line, is built on historic freight rails elevated above the New York City streets. This week's episode features a show about Robert Hammond, a co-founder of the High Line, and the process behind getting the park built. Interviewees featured in the show include Robert, Robert's mom and dad, staff at Friends of the High Line, Bronson Van Wyck, 2005 NYC Democratic mayoral candidate Gifford Miller, Director of the Department of City Planning Amanda Burden, and Florent Morellet. The show was created for our Annual Spring Benefit at The Highline Ballroom in the spring of 2012. It was written by Steve Cosson with songs by Michael Friedman, and performed by Associate Artists Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Matt Dellapina, Dan Domingues, Daoud Heidami, Nina Hellman, Daniel Jenkins, Kelly McCreary, Greg McFadden, Maria Elena Ramirez, Robbie Collier Sublett, and Sam Breslin Wright. For more, please visit http://www.thecivilians.org.To leave a comment, please visit The Civilians' blog http://blogforthecivilians.blogspot.com/!