On this podcast, I chat with Steve Pacek, featured in Theatre Horizon’s production of William Finn and James Lapine's musical A New Brain. It’s been four years since Pacek won the 2012 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Philadelphia Theater Artist and the same amount of time has passed since he last chatted with us. Let’s play catch up!

About A New Brain

Tony Award-winners Finn (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) and Lapine (Into the Woods) based this musical comedy on Finn's life threatening battle with a deadly diagnosis of arteriovenous malformation. The show, similarly, explores one man’s quest for a second chance at life. After a children’s television songwriter receives a life-changing diagnosis, he struggles to come to terms with his creative ambitions and family relationships. In an unforgettable performance, Pacek leads a cast of Philadelphia’s top vocalists through this gorgeous musical about how we spend the time we are given.

On today’s podcast, we catch up with Theatre Exile producing artistic director Deborah Block to talk about Theatre Exile’s 20th anniversary season. We start off with congratulations on Exile's 13 Barrymore Award nominations (which Monday night became five wins for their production of Ayad Akhtar's The Invisible Hand:Production of a Play, Direction of a Play (Matt Pfeiffer), Leading Actor in a Play (Maboud Ebrahimzadeh), Supporting Actor in a Play (J. Paul Nicholas), and Sound Design (Michael Kiley).

We also focus on Exile's next production, Rajiv Joseph's Guards at the Taj and tease with the rest of the season, which includes John Pollono's Lost Girls, and Tracey Scott Wilson's Buzzer, It’s always a pleasure to chat with Deb. I hope you are as excited about their 20th season as I am.

On this episode of the Broad Street Review/REP Radio podcast, we discuss 1812 Productions' annual political satire This Is the Week That Is (TIWTI). Meet Sean Close and new cast member Nia-Samara Benjamin, both of whom appear in TIWTI's "Election Special." Can you guess what we talked about?

Why should Saturday Night Live have all the fun this election cycle? Host Darnelle Radford, Benjamin, and Close give you the local lowdown on how to suck up all the year's dirty politics without getting sick.

On this week's podcast, Darnelle Radford interviews Casabuena Cultural Productions founder Mariangela Saavedra about the Mt. Airy company's inaugural entry into the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. The Church Bells All Were Broken, a world premiere by Philadelphia playwright Dave Ebersole, is a fictitious story inspired by the real Westboro Baptist Church and its members. It challenges the audience to see all sides with the assistance of humor, music, and drama.

Jeff and Melissa are part of the infamous MacArthur family, a family known to take their religious beliefs to the extreme by picketing funerals with their offensive signs and parodies of pop songs. They take their messages — “God hates fags” and “America is doomed” — all over the country and even to the Supreme Court. But when Jeff decides to come to terms with his sexuality his whole life changes. He tries to maintain his faith while his family makes him an outcast. Will his sister, who loves him dearly, be able to pull him back into the fold, or will she finally see that she is really part of a cult fueled by hate?