American Theatre Wing - Downstage Center

Go in-depth with the leading artists and professionals working on stage today when you go "Downstage Center." Downstage Center, a collaboration of the American Theatre Wing and XM Satellite Radio, is a weekly theatrical interview program that spotlights the creative talents on Broadway, Off-Broadway, across the country and around the world, with in-depth conversations that simply can"t be found anywhere else.
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Now in its fourth year, Downstage Center has been featured by the Associated Press and Slate.com as the place to go for theatrical talk.

Downstage Center is heard weekly on XM Satellite Radio's Channel 28, On Broadway, with new programs debuting Fridays at 6 pm, followed by encores on Saturday at 12 noon, Sunday at 7 and Wednesday at midnight (all times eastern).

Following their initial run on XM, you can listen to the programs here in Real Media streaming audio format, download the mp3 files or you can subscribe to our podcast feed. Please note that due to copyright restrictions, any pre-recorded music that was used in the interview has been deleted from all audio files.

Bernard Telsey

Casting Director of [title of show] & Legally Blonde.
Original air date - September 19, 2008
Running Time - 57:28

Bio of Bernard Telsey

Prolific Broadway casting director (and recent reality TV judge) Bernard Telsey discusses his parallel careers as the head of Telsey + Company and the artistic director of Off-Broadway's MCC Theater. He shares some tidbits about his own training as an actor, his few acting gigs (including understudying Matthew Broderick) and how that training effects his casting work; the impetus behind MCC Theater and what his plans are for the company; what he thinks of casting theatre by reality TV in general and the Legally Blonde program in particular; and he talks about the varied challenges of casting, with particular focus on the actor-musicians of both the John Doyle-directed Company and the original cast and many companies of Rent over its 12 year run, as well as the distinctive characters of Wicked.

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