Onstage/Offstage Theatre Podcast

#195: Dave Osmundsen

Dave Osmundsen is autistic playwright / dramaturg / actor whose article “Finding Autistic Theatre Artists Is a Challenge (If You Make It a Challenge)” appeared in Howlround this past February. It's a terrific article and I wholly recommend reading it because it will definitely broaden your knowledge base around autism. In the article Dave addresses several questions of how the theatre world could include, accommodate, and better understand autistic theatre artists while also allowing those accommodations to enhance and strengthen not just the needs of autistic theatre artists but the needs of everyone involved in the theatre company.
Facebook | New Play Exchange

#194: Robert Weibezahl "Doughnut Disturb"

Robert Weibazahl is a playwright and a teacher whose play "Doughnut Disturb" is the third of our 2025 Diversity/Equity/Inclusion series.
Robert's website | Facebook | New Play Exchange | Bluesky 

#193: Nick Maynard: "Things You See in the Rain"

Nick Maynard is a playwright from the UK who's worked professionally within the performing arts industry for a number of years, both commercially and academically, creating and facilitating over 300 different stage shows as writer, director or producer. His play “Things You See in the Rain” is the second of our 2025 Diversity/Equity/Inclusion-themed plays.
Nick's website  |  X/Twitter

#192: Cris Eli Blak

Cris Eli Blak is an emerging proud Black playwright and screenwriter whose work has been performed and produced around the world, from Off-Broadway; across the United States; on university stages; as well as in London, Australia, Ireland, and Canada.He is the winner of the first Black Broadway Men Playwriting Intiative, the winner of the 2024 Charles M. Getchell New Play Award, and the first place winner of Atlanta Shakespeare Company's inaugural Muse of Fire BIPOC Playwriting Fesitval. His short play, “Impact Turn,” was an immediate standout in the tidal wave of submissions for our 2025 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plays.
Cris's Website  |  Facebook  |  Instagram 
 

#191: Laura Shamas / Harriette Feliz

Our guests are playwright Laura Shamas and multidisciplinary artist Harriette Feliz, who are here to talk about Laura's play “Four Women in Red” which recently finished a run at the Victory Theatre in Burbank, CA. Harriette is one of the four cast members. “Four Women in Red” addresses the ongoing epidemic of violence against Native American women. Some of the material in this podcast may be unsettling to some audience members.
"Four Women in Red" review
Dept. of Interior - Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples
Dept. of Interior - Not Invisible Act Commission

#190: Philip Middleton Williams

Philip Middleton WIlliams has been produced around the world and published in many anthologies and seven of his plays by Next Stage Press. He has an MFA in playwriting from the University of Minnesota and a PhD in playwriting and dramatic criticism from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He also serves on the national advisory board of the William Inge Theatre Festival and the board of directors of the Midwest Dramatists Center. 
Philip's website / Facebook / New Play Exchange

#189: Diane Quinn and Bill Fuller - Unseen Theatre

This month's guests are Diane Quinn and Bill Fuller, co-founders and driving force behind Unseen Theatre, an audio podcast showcasing (unproduced), original plays, featuring---something very much after my own heart---strong female protagonists, performed by SAG-AFTRA actors. Diane is Artistic Director/Co-Producer, and also has been an actor and playwright for Unseen Theatre, (and is additionally the podcast's marketing director). Bill, her Co-Producer, audio engineers every sonic second, composes and arranges the podcast's original music,(and handles web design, graphics) and is also a playwright.
Unseen Theatre websiteBill's website
To LISTEN to A Romance in the Air: https://tinyurl.com/43rbxmaw
To VOTE for A Romance in the Air
For the Full Festival listening for all the productions heard at the UK International Audio Drama Festival 

#188: Svetlana Arestova

Svetlana Arestova is a literary translator and professor of translation at HSE University in Moscow, Russia. Her list of accomplishments is extensive, including translations of books by Andrew Sean Greer, Daniel Mason and Elizabeth Strout. We talk about the intricacies of translating not just words, but intent, meaning, and finding ways to make the differences of two linguistic cultures meet, especially for rthe genre of theatre, where the words—or is it the story?--are paramount.
Find her on Facebook!
#translation #playwriting #theatre #russian #svetlanaarestova

#187: Scott C. Sickles

Scott is an LGBTQ/neurodivergent/biracial Korean American writer. He has received five consecutive Writers Guild of America Awards for the daytime serial General Hospital, and numerous Emmy Award nominations. For over thirty years, his plays have been performed in New York City, his native Pittsburgh, across the United States, as well as internationally in Canada, Australia, the UK, Hungary, Singapore, Indonesia, Lebanon, and Dubai. His "Second World Trilogy," a speculative alt-history political/environmental love story, consists of three full-length plays spanning nearly 50 years. In addition, his sequence of short plays, "Playing on the Periphery," which tells the story of four LGBTQ+ third-graders, was previously presented as a concert reading by Reading Theatre Project, deep in red Pennsylvania. Monologues and scenes from the piece have been performed in “Don’t Say Gay” Florida.
Scott's website / Instagram / New Play Exchange 

#186: Gene Kato

Gene Kato is the mastermind behind Next Stage Press, an online boutique publishing house that has grown exponentially over the past few years. Gene has singlehandedly created a showroom for hundreds of playwrights to market their creative opuses. A lively, fun interview with lots to talk about!
NPX / X / Facebook / Genekato.com
#genekato #publishing #playwriting #theatre #nextstagepress