So this column is dedicated to anyone who might want to go on Jeopardy! one day, or anyone who wants to deepen their knowledge of musicals, musical-comedy and the men and women who have created them.

Option #1 is The Contemporary Broadway Musical being offered by the Pasadena Playhouse.

This is a ten-class series presented by Broadway producer Adam Epstein. He’s a five-time Tony Award nominee who took home the trophy for Best Musical when Hairspray won in 2003.

Here is the schedule for the ten classes:

February 22nd: High Flying Adored: Eva Peron delivers a Broadway coup de thé·â·tre; Gower Champion dies

March 1st: Michael Bennett’s Dreamgirls vs. Tommy Tune’s Nine

March 8th: The Empire Strikes Back: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cameron Mackintosh and the “colonization” of Broadway: Cats, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon

March 15th: La Cage Aux Folles and Into the Woods

March 22nd: Americans vanquish the British (again!): City of Angels, Crazy for You, and the return of the musical comedy

March 29th: Falsettos: William Finn and his Tight Knit Family move uptown

April 5th: Broadway in the 1990’s: Disney conquers Broadway; Rent and Ragtime conquer hearts

April 12th: From Celluloid to Greasepaint: The Producers, Hairspray and the changing face of Broadway in the 21st century

April 19th: Avenue Q and Wicked: a theatrical tale of David and Goliath

April 26th: Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, and the future of Broadway musicals

All of the dates above are the live presentation of each week’s topic. However, those who sign up for the classes can catch up even if you start halfway through the series. The classes will remain available to you beginning 24 hours after the conclusion of each live class. The 10-series course costs $179. (Members at Pasadena Playhouse receive at 20% discount).

Option #2: What Makes It Great?

Gershwin. Berlin. Arlen. Rodgers. Bernstein. You don’t need to add first names to the list of composers in this title. They are all legends whose work has catapulted them to the upper echelon of composers.

Rob Kapilow, the author of Listening For America: Inside the Great American Songbook from Gershwin to Sondheim, is conducting a five-episode series of classes called What Makes It Great? Celebrating the Great American Songbook beginning on February 23rd and running through March 30th.

Kapilow has teamed up with the Kaufman Music Center and JCC Thurnauer School of Music to lead explorations of these five men and their work. The classes stream on Tuesdays at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST and include a live Q&A afterwards. For those for whom that schedule doesn’t work, the classes will remain available through April 15th.

Here is What Makes It Great‘s line-up:

February 23rd: George Gershwin

March 2nd: Irving Berlin

March 9th: Harold Arlen

March 23rd: Richard Rodgers

March 30th: Leonard Bernstein

Tickets for the five classes are $50.

There is a bonus attraction on April 6th. Kapilow will be joined by Nikki Renée Daniels (the upcoming revival of Company) and Michael Winther (the upcoming Flying Over Sunset) for a performance called What Makes It Great? Stephen Sondheim. Tickets for that show are $15 and will allow ticket purchasers to watch the show through the middle of April.

With either or both of these classes, I assure you you’ll not just learn about musicals. You’ll also improve your trivia games, impress your friends who thought you knew nothing about the subject and more importantly you’ll know the difference between August Wilson and Stephen Sondheim when it’s your turn to play Jeopardy!

Photo: Broadway’s Shubert Alley (Photo by Christopher Firth/Courtesy New York Public Library Archives)

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Written by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Steven Levenson, Dear Evan Hansen tells the story of the title character (played in the national tour by Ben Levi Ross), who claims to have been the confidant of a fellow student in school who has died. Given how socially awkward Evan is, this comes as a surprise to some and a relief to the deceased student’s parents who hope to learn more about their son through Evan’s insights. The show was directed by Michael Greif.

Dear Evan Hansen is one of those rare shows whose use of technology and current social norms contributes to the show rather than feeling like artifice. This is a show very much about the world we live in. It also beautifully addresses the need to find your own place in the world. With songs like “Waving Through a Window, ” “You Will Be Found” and “For Forever,” Pasek & Paul have written songs that both beautifully fit into the story being told and will stand on their own apart from the show.

Pasek & Paul were the songwriters for The Greatest Showman and won an Oscar for their lyrics for La La Land. Having seen the show in New York, I can assure you this is one of the most emotional musicals ever put on stage.

And if you thought comparing this show to Hamilton in terms of being a phenomenon was crazy, apparently Lin-Manuel Miranda thought it was pretty powerful, too.

Dear Evan Hansen will play Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa  (January 1-13).

Fans of Pasek & Paul might be interested in attending a special evening with them at Segerstrom on January 7th. The event is a fundraiser for ASCAP, so tickets range from $189-$1000.

Photo by Matthew Murphy

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When I saw the movie in December, my first comment was that I know how good Justin Paul and Benj Pasek are as songwriters, but it was too bad that the music was so over-produced for the film I felt their work was lost.

In the music video, Ms. Bean is joined by dancer Travis Wall. The video is simple. And it is effective. Not only does the point of the song get across much better than it did in the film, it resonates with an emotionality that reflects Pasek & Paul at their best. (Just ask anyone who has seen Dear Evan Hansen.)

By the way, speaking of Dear Evan Hansen, if you haven’t seen the mash up of songs from that show and Hamilton performed by Ben Platt and Lin-Manuel Miranda here is another example of simplifying songs to reveal new shades of emotion that you might not have realized previously. This is called Found Tonight.

If you download This Is Me, every penny will go to the Los Angeles LGBTQ Center.

Proceeds from Found Tonight will go to the March for Our Lives Initiative.

The post The Way “This Is Me” Should Sound appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

In other words, Seth Rudetsky lives and breathes Broadway. So if you want to know the inside stories about all the famous folk who have spent time treading the boards in New York, Rudetsky’s book, Seth’s Broadway Diary #3 is essential reading.

Talking to someone who regularly interviews people himself is an interesting challenge. Since we spoke on the day of the Grammy nominations, we got right into it.

In the category of Best Cast Album the Grammy’s only have three nominees: Dear Evan Hansen, Hello Dolly! and Come From Away. Did they miss something or is that a reflection of the past year of musical theatre?

Literally that to me is not the greater issue. The complete lack of caring about Broadway at the Grammy Awards is. Because they don’t give a shit. There’s no criterion? How can Hello Dolly! be up against Dear Evan Hansen? Are you comparing the scores? The recording? What are the Grammy Awards voting on? Where they have a thousand sub categories in other genres, they don’t have a best album of a show or best revival. It’s so insulting. It makes me angry.

When you tell these stories, whether in your columns or on your show, do the performers involved give you permission to do so? Or does it come with the territory when they tell you the stories?

Yes and no. I think I have a really good sense of what I can say and what I can’t. Last night after the concert [a series he produces called Concert For America: Stand Up, Sing Out! that raises funds for civil rights organizations] someone was telling me a story “not as a friend and not as a columnist.” I maybe have gotten someone annoyed at me three times. Do they realize it would go into my columns? Who cares? The stories are hilarious. If you don’t like it, don’t tell me anything. I’m not Pollyanna and I don’t want to write only positive stuff, but I won’t write mean-spirited stories.

Of all the relationships you’ve developed over the years, which one surprises you the most that it actually exists?

Probably Andrea Martin – because she’s such a close friend of mine. I was so obsessed with her growing up. It’s just weird how close we are and what a fan I was with the TV star. Almost every idol I’ve met has been exactly what I wanted them to be. She’s hilarious. Just the other day it was really weird talking to Andrea McArdle. I remember reading that Annie book with the red cover. She was a photograph on an album. I had never seen her live, but she was such a megastar. It’s nice that everyone has lived up to who I wanted them to be.

Do you think the price structure for Broadway shows will make it impossible for a future Seth Rudetsky’s to get exposure to shows the way you did?

I’m not an expert, but it began with the Broadway Inner Circle with The Producers. That was the first crazy megahit, more than Rent, where scalpers were making a lot of money and this scheme came up to bust scalpers. I was just thinking the other day it’s so expensive to put on a show. Most of those costs are initial costs. I wonder if there is a new tactic. Why can’t you borrow money on the run of the show? For every three months you run, you pay back what it would have cost.

If you’re going to talk about the next young Seth Rudetsky, the problem is the devastating destruction of arts in the schools. There has been such a marginalization of Broadway as something gay. The arts are considered gay and feminine and it can be cut because of misogyny. The arts were not feminine in the old days. Ed Sullivan was right wing, ultra-straight and he had Broadway on every week. Now if you like Broadway you are gay. How does a kid know they like to sing or act if they don’t have a chance to do it? That’s really where the fault is in finding our next Stephen Sondheim.

You did your own jukebox musical, Disaster! A Musical. But are you concerned that shows based on pre-existing material or jukebox musicals show a lack of imagination on producer’s parts?

Yes and no. People say, “Oh Seth, you took the lazy way out. You wrote a jukebox musical about disaster movies.” I did it because I really wanted to. I love disaster movies and 70s music. I think there’s this theory if you have a well-know title, that’s a surefire way to have a Broadway show. It isn’t. But it is a surefire way to get investors. It’s not a way to sell tickets.

I was talking to Hal Prince [director of Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd and more] about when someone came to him with an idea. He said, “Nobody did that. We would talk and create it together. It used to be much more artistic.” There are still some producers that still do that. We don’t have a lot of them like we used to.

If you could go back in time and see any productions you never got a chance to see and performers you never got a chance to experience, what and who would they be?

100% Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand and West Side Story with Chita Rivera. I would die to see what Barbra sounded like live and would have died to see Chita do the original choreography for “America.” I think about it all the time. Those two 100%. [For the record, it took Seth about 2 seconds to start his answer to that question.]

You produced the Broadway for Orlando project after the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Florida. And you have the Concert for America series. What’s the next phase of advocacy you have planned?

We are going to start in January doing salons. We did one in Judy Kuhn’s apartment [She starred in Fun Home, Les Misérables]. These are for causes or particular candidates we believe in. We’ve raised so much money. If anyone is reading this and wants to help a particular candidate or cause, keep us in mind.

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