On this week’s episode of On Broadway, I chat with Adam Gwon, an American composer and lyricist. He made his off-Broadway debut in 2009 with Ordinary Days. He has written eight other musicals that have premiered Off-Broadway and at major regional theaters across the country.

Gwon has been a recipient of the Fred Ebb Foundation Award, presented to aspiring composer/lyricists, as well as the Kleban Prize for most promising musical theater lyricist.

This week I speak with the composing team of Tom James McGrath and Amy Clare Tasker about their new musical Rising. Songs from the show are incorporated into the episode.

Rising reimagines the 1916 Dublin rebellion through the inner life of Patrick Pearse, its most enigmatic leader. As he leads the charge against the British Empire, Patrick must reconcile his public role with the private self he has kept hidden – his queerness, his sensitivity, and his doubts.

Fighting alongside him are a community of eccentrics: artists, bookworms, socialists and socialites. Together, they form not just a revolutionary force, but a chosen family.

I speak to Nicholas Brown-Cáceres, acting chief of the Music Division, and Cait Miller, senior music reference specialist, at the Library of Congress. They talk about Inside the Vault, a collaborative, interactive and virtual exhibit that will be accompanying the national tour of The Sound of Music.

On this episode of On Broadway, I speak with Amnon Kabatchnik, the author of the book, Bloody Broadway – Plays of Menace, Murder, and Mystery – Volume 1 900-1930.

The book’s entries are presented chronologically and include a plot synopsis, production data, opinions by critics, and biographical sketches of playwrights and key actors-directors.

This week I speak with Frank Verlizzo, on his first book of the Retro Broadway Mystery Series – Scenery of the Crime.

Before becoming an author, Frank Verlizzo was a legendary graphic designer, the man behind such iconic poster art as the original Broadway productions of Disney's The Lion King; Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and Sunday in the Park with George, and Ira Levin's Deathtrap.

I speak with actress and cabaret performer Klea Blackhurst, who will be starring in the new Off-Broadway musical, Just Desserts: A Musical Bake-Off. The show opens at the AMT Theater (354 West 45th Street) beginning January 30 and running through February 22. Her podcast episode will available by Friday, January 23.

On this episode of On Broadway, I speak with Henry H. Sapoznik, a Peabody Award-winning coproducer of NPR's Yiddish Radio Project, about his book - The Tourist's Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City. The book offers a new look at over a century of New York's history of Yiddish popular culture, telling the story in over a baker's dozen chapters on theater, music, architecture, crime, Blacks and Jews, restaurants, real estate, and journalism. For the podcast, we focus on the chapter about the Yiddish theater.

I speak with David Armstrong, an American stage director, writer, producer, podcaster, and educator, about his book, The Broadway Musical: How Immigrants, Jews, Queers and African-Americans Invented America's Signature Art Form. "A groundbreaking exploration that reveals the powerful impact of marginalized groups on the evolution of the Broadway Musical."