ACTING IN A NEW PLAY PODCAST

All episodes of The Usual Unusual are out now wherever you podcast! I play Ryan, a twenty-something, self-identified “emerging media personality” and gay bookseller at fictional Boston bookstore The Usual Unusual.

The Usual Unusual is a scrappy and quaint bookstore where Boston’s LGBTQ+ community has gathered to shop, organize, and flirt since the 70’s. When the store’s charismatic founder Penn announces his retirement, neurotic staff-member Charlie persuades him to pass leadership on, rather than close the store. The staff’s efforts to unite a fractured community under one banner – or simply coordinate a weekly reading night — stoke generational disputes about identity, community, and trauma, and lead to fraught and hilarious results.

I’ve been big passionate about new play development since my theatrical infancy working at Playwrights Horizons. Over the past three years, SpeakEasy Stage’s Boston Project has been an exhilarating playground for that passion as I’ve had the occasional privilege to help grow work that negotiates making a life in Boston.

The Boston Project is SpeakEasy’s new works initiative, which supports the creation of new plays set in the Greater Boston area. In an effort to reach a wider audience and engage with new work even while in quarantine, SpeakEasy has launched a new wing of this program – the Boston Project Podcast!

This is the first series of the podcast – a fully adapted, episodic version of the play The Usual Unusual by MJ Halberstadt, performed and recorded by local artists.

The Usual Unusual, its deep questions, and its complex, beautiful queer joy have been with me since 2018. I’ve been honored to help my dear friend MJ realize this play across readings, drafts, characters, and conversations in living rooms and kitchens. It is brimming with varied expressions of queer life and loving questions for our communities in this city. Dialoguing with this work has so informed my journey here, and I’m thrilled that dialogue is given chance to grow to audiences here and beyond—by way of ingenious adaptation. 

I hope you’ll meet all this Unusual for reflection, conversation, and great fun.

Check out SpeakEasy Stage Company’s website for full cast biographies and more information.

Check out playwright MJ Halberstadt here!

Check out director Megan Sandberg-Zakian here!