Transcript
A (0:01)
Welcome to Today on Broadway for Tuesday, January 7, 2024. I'm Broadway Video's Matt Tamaneni and I'm.
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Tell Me on a Sunday podcast and sleep Goblin Grace Aki.
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Grace, you messed up your sleep cycle a little bit from these past couple weeks, huh?
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You know, loved having a glorious break. Thank you all for, I hope you enjoyed those episodes if you were able to listen to the ones that we had prerecorded, obviously, and really got to have a nice break in. Your girl stayed up late and slept in and got a lot of great, great personal growth on. But one of those things was not regulating a sleep schedule. And for that I am paying dearly. So it's, it's, it's bad. It's bad, Matt. But we're, we're, you know, pressuring on. It feels like it's 9am for me, but it's not. It's not.
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It's not. We are not recording at 9:00am of course, as Grace said, we had a ton of episodes over the past couple of weeks in the podcast feed. Some of them were with you. We had resolutions and predictions and the best of the past year, Jan Simpson had a new episode of all the drama that dropped. We had a couple this week on Broadway's Jennifer Ashley Tepper was a guest. They did their best of 2024. I had a couple interviews with stars of a production of Frozen down here in Florida, the stars of a production of Mystic Pizza that's going to be here in Florida and then up at Paper Mill Playhouse. So tons of content. Make sure you head to the podcast feeds. But we are back looking back at the news that we missed over the past couple weeks. And unfortunately, we do have to start with the Sad news of 20 winner Linda Lavin, dying at the age of 87. She passed away on December 29. So it has been over a week since this happened. So I'm not going to dive into all of the news and all of the background of Linda Lavin, as I'm sure you have heard all about this by now. But she passed away from complications dealing with lung cancer, and I'd interviewed her back in 2020 here on an episode of Tell Me More just a couple weeks after the pandemic started. But she started her Broadway career back in 1962 in a family Affair. She went on to do tons of Broadway shows, including It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Broadway Bound. She was a replacement rose in the 1989 production of Gypsy. She did the Diary of Anne Frank, the Tale of the Allergist's Wife, Collected Tales, the Lions. And her last Broadway credit was in 20 Our Mother's Brief Affair. She was nominated for six Tony Awards, winning in 1987 for Broadway Bound. She also had eight Drama Desk nominations, winning three. But she was, of course, more than just a stage star. She was an icon of television. She made her television debut in Rhoda, had a recurring role on Barney Miller, but she gained the most fame for playing the title role in the TV version of Alice, which was originally a Martin Scorsese film called Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. This was the TV version of that. The show ended in 1985, but I remember that show being on Nick at night all the time. And she was just an icon. So many people sharing memories of her when she passed away a week or so ago. But Linda Lavin, dead at the age of 87, to be remembered for a long time. And I would assume at some point, however, the Broadway League and the League of Theater Owners decides to honor people in 2025. She will be at the front of that list. Grace, unfortunately, we had another death in the theater community that happened over the break, and it actually happened a little bit earlier. We found out that poet, playwright and TV writer Aziza Barnes died at the age of 32. They had most recently been working on the TV show A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, had also worked on Snowfall and Rap Shit and Teenage Bounty Hunter. They died by suicide at their home, as it was confirmed by their family. But their work in theater was most known for the show Blacks that happened in 2019 at MCC. It was one of the best reviewed shows of that entire season, Directed by Robert O'Hara and like I said with Linda Lavin, that happened a week ago. This happened at this point three weeks ago with Aziza. So we will have information in the notes about both of their passings, but we want to send our best to everybody who knew and loved these two artists, either personally or professionally. All right, Grace, getting into some other interesting news. It was reported over the break that the Imperial Theater might be going through some pretty big renovations. On Dec. 17, the Shubert Organization that owns the Imperial Theater filed plans with New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission in order to update the inside of the theater. So what's interesting about this, most Broadway theaters that are preserved by the lpc, that is applicable to both the inside and the outside. The Imperial, for whatever reason, is only protected on the inside. So the Shuberts can Do whatever they want to the outside. And presumably whatever renovations they do will also impact the outside. But the inside has to be approved by the commission. Who knows how long that takes to get approved? But the plans that the Shuberts put forth were extensive. Not only do they have to do with renovating the inside of the space, but they also are going to take over the empty lot now next door to the Imperial, so that they are going to put in a new ticket lobby, a new commercial space, and most importantly, if you've ever been to the Imperial and had to go to the bathroom, all new bathrooms as well. So this would be a huge change for that space and for that part of the theater district as that kind of eyesore next to the Imperial is just kind of ugly. This doesn't sound too dissimilar, Grace, to what the court did with taking some space next to it. That theater has now become the James Earl Jones, but they have this amazing structure that was just kind of an alley before. You know the James Earl Jones very well. And it's a great addition where they've got a bar, restrooms, lounges. I think they even have some rehearsal space there. So if the Imperial is able to do something similar to this and perhaps even bigger because of how big that empty lot is, that would be a huge boon, not only for the Shuberts, but also for theatergoers as well.