Welcome to the Scene to Song newsletter! Almost four years into making this podcast, it seemed a good time to expand the experience. I love newsletters—I’m a writer, of course I do—so making one for Scene to Song seemed like the right next step. I want the newsletter to support the podcast’s mission of discussing musical theater as a literary art form while also deepening conversations around what we talked about in the latest episodes, as well as highlighting musicals that we didn’t get to talk about but are currently relevant or upcoming. I love discussing musical theater, and I’m looking forward to discussing it with all of you. Please feel free to email scenetosong@gmail.com or comment on the Scene to Song social media posts to continue the discussion. And thank you for being here for the first newsletter! — Shoshana
Recent Episodes
Episode 71: Black Women in Musical Theater History with Masi Asare
In this episode, composer/lyricist, playwright, voice teacher, and performance scholar Masi Asari discusses black women in musical theater history, focusing on their vocal performance from the turn of the century to present day. We also talk about the late Micki Grant and her song "Cleanin' Women" from the 1978 musical Working.
Music played in this episode:
Ma Rainey singing "Don’t Fish in my Sea"
Ethel Waters singing "St. Louis Blues"
Diahann Carroll singing "A Sleepin' Bee" from House of Flowers
Leslie Uggams singing "Being Good" from Hallelujah Baby
Pat Suzuki singing "From This Moment On" on The Frank Sinatra Show
"I Hate the Bus" from Caroline, or Change
"Dottie and Caroline" from Caroline, or Change
"Cleanin' Women" from Working
I wish I could have played more Micki Grant songs in this episode. Micki Grant, the first woman to write book, music, and lyrics for a Broadway musical, passed away at age 92 on August 22, 2021. I was fortune to sit near her on two occasions, one of them being while we both watched the 2018 City Center production of her show Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope. Check out two of the songs we mentioned while talking about her life and work:
"Questions" from Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope
"So Little Time" from Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope
In fact, just listen to the entire Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope cast album!
And check out Lynne Thigpen (who sings Cleanin’ Women on the Working cast recording) performing Micki Grant’s “If I Could Have Been” from Working at the Kennedy Center in 1982.
Meet the Guests!
Masi Asare is a composer/lyricist, playwright, voice teacher, and performance scholar. Her shows include: The Family Resemblance (book/music/lyrics; Theatre Royal Stratford East commission, Eugene O’Neill Center NMTC); Rishvor, a new musical about racial passing (book/music/lyrics) commissioned by Barbara Whitman/Grove Entertainment; Monsoon Wedding (lyrics), the new stage adaptation of Mira Nair’s film; Mirror of Most Value: A Ms. Marvel Play (Samuel French/ Concord/ Marvel), a play about super hero Kamala Khan; the Broadway-bound musical Paradise Square (co-lyricist) about race relations in 1863; a new musical commissioned by Victory Gardens Theatre and the Toulmin Foundation; and the secret agent musical Sympathy Jones (music/lyrics/concept; NYMF; Playscripts), with 45 productions to date internationally.
A past Dramatists Guild Fellow, Masi has received the first-ever Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award for a woman composer of musicals, mentored by Jeanine Tesori and Daryl Roth; both the Holof Lyricist Award and the Haupt Composition Prize from the O’Neill Center; an Emerging Artist Grant from the Theater Hall of Fame; and the Stacey Mindich “Go Write A Musical” Lilly Award. A voice instructor and coach with over two decades of teaching experience, Masi specializes in popular vocal styles. Masi’s scholarly book project, Voicing the Possible: Technique, Vocal Sound, and Black Women on the Musical Stage, examines the impact of blues singers on Broadway belting and makes the case for the need to feel the racial history in contemporary practices of musical theatre performance.
An assistant professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Northwestern University, she teaches courses in musical theatre history, vocal performance studies, and musical theatre writing. She also holds affiliations with the Sound Arts and Industries Program and the Black Arts Initiative and serves on the executive committee of the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama. Her writing appears in The Dramatist, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Performance Matters, TDR, and Studies in Musical Theatre .
Masi holds a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude from Harvard and a PhD in performance studies from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She is a member of ASCAP and the Dramatists Guild, and serves on the membership committee of ASTR and the advisory board of MAESTRA. She divides her time between Chicago and New York City.
Masi also has a podcast! Check out Voicing Across Distance, a podcast she hosts and produces that brings together scholars and practitioners to listen for voices and vocal sound in our historical moment, across social distance.
Musical of the Month
Tick… Tick… Boom by Jonathan Larson
Jonathan Larson would have been 62 today, February 4th, but he died at age 35, a little over a week before his 36th birthday, on January 25, 1996. This 1996 article from the New York Times chronicles the last few days of his life and how he went in and out of hospitals with chest pains as Rent was going up off-Broadway. I find this article devastating, and I read it every year on January 25th to remind myself how horrible it must have been for him, especially as he was opening a new musical.
We talked about Rent in the season four episode on artist characters, but Jonathan Larson is also an artist character in his musical Tick… Tick… Boom!, a semi-autobiographical musical about an aspiring composer named Jon, who lives in New York City in 1990. The recent film version on Netflix, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, really highlighted this for me. When I first saw a stage production of Tick… Tick… Boom! in 2014, it didn’t make a huge impression on me, although it did make me nostalgic for the early 90s NYC of my childhood, going to the Broadway stage doors to see the actors come out with their big hair, leggings, and puffy show jackets. In the film I saw Larson as a typical musical theater writer who thinks he’s all that but isn’t actually, and we get to see him struggle with the possibility of that and with the very human task of trying to balance his life. That’s an artist character arc if I ever saw one.
Jonathan Larson first performed Tick… Tick… Boom! off-off-Broadway from September 6 to September 9, 1990 at Second Stage Theater under the title Boho Days. He then changed the title to Tick, Tick... Boom! and continued to perform the show as a monologue over the next few years. After his death, playwright David Auburn restructured the monologue into a three-actor musical with one actor playing Jon and the other two actors playing Michael and Susan, as well as all the other roles in the show. This version of the piece premiered Off-Broadway at the Jane Street Theater on May 23, 2001.
Also in February…
Black History Month! Listen to the latest episode on black women in musical theater history.
February 6: Dear World by Jerry Herman opens on Broadway (1969). Listen to episode 34 on the musicals of Jerry Herman.
February 14: Hedwig and the Angry Inch opens off-Broadway (1998). Love is in the air, and one of our recent guests, Daniel Mate, talked about his love for this show on episode 68 on Sondheim and rhyme.
February 15: Happy Birthday, composer Harold Arlen! In addition to composing the music for The Wizard of Oz film (1939), he wrote the musical House of Flowers with Truman Capote, which we talk about on the latest episode on black women in musical theater history.
February 17: Happy Birthday, lyricist and librettist Tom Jones! Listen to episode 23 on the musicals of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt.
February 19: On the 20th Century by Cy Coleman, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green opens on Broadway (1978). Listen to episode 61 on the musicals of Cy Coleman.
February 22: Happy Birthday, Lea Salonga and Ellen Greene! Celebrate Ellen Greene by listening to episode 62 on Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s Little Shop of Horrors.
February 23: Happy Birthday, composer Robert Lopez! We haven’t really talked about Robert Lopez’s work (Avenue Q, Book of Mormon, many things Disney) on the podcast, but he’s coming up in our next episode!
February 25: Two great musicals 20 years apart! A Little Night Music opens on Broadway (1973) and Wonderful Town opens on Broadway (1953).
February 28: What a day! Passing Strange opens on Broadway (2008) and Happy Birthday, William Finn and Bernadette Peters! Listen to episode 67 about the musical roles of Bernadette Peters and episode 58 on sung-through musicals, which features the work of William Finn. Then check out episode 47 on The Bridges of Madison County, which features the song “Keys (It’s Alright)” from Passing Strange and episode 31 on rock musicals as a vehicle for coming-of-age stories and biographies, which also features Passing Strange.
Find more musical theater history for February at musicals101.com.
New Musicals!
While Scene to Song mainly looks at musicals already part of the canon, I definitely want to highlight new musicals and musicals in development.
American Morning
American Morning has come up in a couple episodes (episode 46 on Horror in Musical Theater and episode 24 on The Formation of White and White Jewish Identity in America and the Racial History of America Constructed through Musical Theater) Find out more about the musical American Morning!
Creative Team: Book, Music, and Lyrics by Timothy Huang
Synopsis: American Morning is a full length musical that tells the story of two immigrant cab drivers, Chin and Eng, who share opposite shifts off the same medallion. While Eng slowly climbs the ladder of success by day, his partner Chin, falls short by night, suffering disappointment after unforeseen disappointment. The two men’s fates become intertwined as forced competition drives a wedge between them that culminates in a single, desperate act that leaves one dead and the other brutalized.
Development History Highlights: American Morning was the recipient of a 2016 Richard Rodgers Award, a 2015 B-Side Theatericals New American Musical award, and an official selection of the National Alliance for Musical Theater's Festival of New Works in 2015. It was also a selection of the ASCAP Musical Theater workshop in 2011 as well as the Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop's 2012 Master Class, moderated by Stephen Sondheim. In 2019, it had a workshop staging with Prospect Theater Company.
Listen to Songs: Stream or buy the album on Amazon or on Apple Music.
Get more info on American Morning
New Cast Albums Coming in February
February 11: Love in Hate Nation by former podcast guest Joe Iconis (episode 6: Outsider Characters in Musical Theater)
February 18: Flying over Sunset, recently on Broadway, with lyrics by Michael Korie, music by Tom Kitt, and book by James Lapine
Something Wonderful
Some additional recommendations for February:
Podcast: David Armstrong’s Broadway Nation, a lively and opinionated cultural history of the Broadway Musical that tells the extraordinary story of how Immigrants, Jews, Queers, African-Americans and other outcasts invented the Broadway Musical, and how they changed America in the process.
Podcast Episode: Jewish Currents’ On the Nose podcast episode on West Side Story. Editor-in-chief Arielle Angel spoke with filmmaker, writer, and scholar Frances Negrón-Muntaner, theater historian Brian E. Herrera, and writer and scholar Daniel Pollack-Pelzner about the parallel resonances of West Side Story in Jewish and Latinx communities, and the tensions that emerge over questions of power and control.
Video: A Conversation with Composer Stephen Sondheim. These interviews with Stephen Sondheim were conducted in his New York home for six-and-a-half hours over three days in 1997. With his music manuscripts at hand, they are a deep dive into his compositional process, though the conversation is wide-ranging, touching on many aspects of Sondheim’s career and craft.
Instagram: The Theater Lovers! They combine memes with theater history to great effect. Check them out to laugh and learn.
Newsletter: Margaret Hall’s Musical Theatre Monthly. A free monthly newsletter with show, person, book, and album recommendations. Previous themes have included Black Women of 1973, The First Tony Awards, Lesbians on Broadway, and Pulitzer Prize Winning Musicals.
Hosted by writer Shoshana Greenberg, Scene to Song brings on a guest to talk about a musical, musical theater writer, or a topic or trend in musical theater. The theme music is by Julia Meinwald.
You can write to scenetosong@gmail.com with a comment or question about an episode or about musical theater, or if you’d like to be a podcast guest. Follow on Instagram at @ScenetoSong, on Twitter at @SceneSong, and on Facebook at “Scene to Song with Shoshana Greenberg Podcast.”
Shoshana Greenberg is a lyricist, librettist, singer, and theater journalist. Her musicals include Days of Rage with Hyeyoung Kim and Lightning Man with Jeffrey Dennis Smith. She has also written the opera “The Community” with Kevin Cummines. Her songs have been heard at venues from Lincoln Center to the Duplex, where she performed her one-woman show Not Coming Back. She’s written for American Theatre Magazine, is a contributing editor for the publication Musical Theater Today, and created and hosts the musical theater podcast Scene to Song. She holds an M.F.A. from the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU and a B.A. from Barnard College.