I Wanna Be Like You with Elbi Cespedes

Mairi Dorman-Phaneuf is cellist with more than 20 Broadway credits. She currently plays in the pit of The Great Gatsby on Broadway! Some of her theater credits include the original Off Broadway production of The Last 5 Years, The Bridges of Madison County, A Little Night Music (2009 revival) and many others. In 2021, she released her debut album Music of Broadway For Cello and Piano which featured new orchestrations of music by Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Alan Menken and many more! We discuss all of that, the quote Elaine Stritch gave her for her website, and even get a LIVE CELLO PERFORMANCE IN STUDIO!

Julia Murney is currently starring in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee as Rona at The Cape Playhouse running now to September 19th! She's most well known for having originated the role of Queenie in Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party for which she received a Drama Desk Award nomination! Her previous Broadway credits include Wicked (Elphaba) and Lennon the Musical! We get to chatting about all of that and more!

David Lindsay-Abaire is a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning playwright, book writer and lyricist whose work has appeared on screen and stage! He won the Pulitzer Prize for his play Rabbit Hole in 2007 (which was adapted into a feature film starring Nicole Kidman) and the Tony Award in 2023 for Best Book of a Musical as well as Best Musical for Kimberly Akimbo (a musical based on his play of the same name) which he wrote with Tony Award winning composer Jeanine Tesori. The show just concluded a national tour and has now begun performances in the UK starring Maria Friedman! His latest work The Balusters just wrapped up a successful Broadway run having won the Drama Desk Award for Best Play! Some of his other stage work includes his first collaboration with Tesori: Shrek the Musical as well as the plays Good People, Ripcord, Fuddy Meers, Wonder of the World and many more! His work on screen includes the films Robots, Poltergeist (2015), The Family Fang and more! He currently serves as the Co-Director of Julliard's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrighting Program. We get to talking about all of his stage work as well as his new musical that he's writing with Tesori and much more!

Al Tapper is a composer and producer who's composed more than a dozen musicals including his latest show After All These Years which opens at the AMT Theater on September 10th! He's produced the documentaries Broadway: The Golden Age and Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy which featured interviews from Broadway legends such as Stephen Sondheim, Carol Burnett, Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera, John Raitt, and many many more! We get to talking all about that, his experiences with Marlon Brando, Neil Simon, and Steven Spielberg and much more!

Howard McGillin is a 2 time Tony Award nominated Broadway actor who also holds the record for most performances as the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera. He also originated the role of Jasper in The Mystery of Edwin Drood on Broadway! He also led the cast of the Stephen Sondheim musical Bounce (as Wilson) which premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC opposite Richard Kind, Michele Pawk and Gavin Creel. His other Broadway credits include the latest revival of Parade, Gigi, She Loves Me, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Secret Garden (as Archibald), Sunday in the Park with George, and Anything Goes (as Billy, opposite Patti LuPone)! We get to talking all about that, his time working on iconic Sunday scene from tick, tick...boom, and much more!