A Broadway opening often marks the culmination of a years-long journey for the collaborators who have created a show, whether they’re working on a new musical or a revival of a familiar play. On the final, supersized episode of Variety’s theater podcast, “Stagecraft,” the stars behind some of the buzziest titles of the 2025-26 season shared some of their backstage secrets now that their own shows have opened on Broadway after years of development.
Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below:
Speaking earlier this month at the Variety Business of Broadway 2025 breakfast presented by City National Bank, notable names including Keanu Reeves, Kristin Chenoweth, Stephen Schwartz, Lea Michele and more brought listeners behind the scenes of four productions now turned heads in the theater district: “Chess,” “Ragtime,” “The Queen of Versailles” and “Waiting for Godot.”
The morning’s discussions and panel conversations are presented in full in the latest episode of “Stagecraft.” Among the tidbits dropped along the way:
- During three years of prep for the revival of “Waiting for Godot,” now raking in big bucks at the box office each week, headliners (and “Bill and Ted” stars) Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter studied clowning and butoh, the Japanese dance-performance form, in order to bring physical life to the two tramps they portray in the show.
- That production’s striking, funnel-like set has spawned a host of nicknames, including “the eye,” “the sewer,” “the portal,” “the Habitrail” and “the subwoofer.”
- In the rehearsal room for “Chess,” there was an ongoing, open chess game available for the actors and creatives to play. (Stars Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher may portray rival chess prodigies in the show, but they’ve never faced off across a chess board in real life. At least not yet.)
- Brandon Uranowitz, now starring as Tateh in “Ragtime” on Broadway, appeared as a young boy in the musical’s 1996 world premiere in Toronto before the musical moved to Broadway in 1998. “They brought everyone in that cast to Broadway except for me,” Uranowitz laughed.
- Chenoweth is not only the star of “Queen of Versailles” — she’s also a first-time Broadway producer on the show. “Still learning. Love it,” she said. “I really do enjoy the process and I hope to do more, not just for myself but for other actors that I believe in.”
Also during their conversations, both Michele and Chenoweth said their latest roles gave them a chance to try something new. For Michele (“Spring Awakening”), it was the opportunity to portray a full-grown woman: “It’s the first time that I’m really playing an adult on Broadway,” she said. “Every show that I’ve ever done — I literally played the Little Girl in ‘Ragtime’ [in 1998], and even in ‘Funny Girl,’ she starts off at 16 before she ages up,” the actor said.
Meanwhile, Chenoweth said she relishes the opportunity to play a real person in “The Queen of Versailles,” which is based on a 2012 documentary. “I won a Tony for playing a cartoon [in ‘You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown’], and I played a girl from Oz [in ‘Wicked’],” she joked. “‘Queen of Versailles’ just seemed like the right move.”
The day’s Business of Broadway panels also revealed the secret origins of some of the season’s big shows — including the moment of divine inspiration that led to the new “Godot.” As Reeves recalled: “I was in a hotel room around 1:00 am with jet lag in London, and I was in a fugue state, and then something came from the universe and said: Do ‘Waiting for Godot’ with Alex.’”
To hear the entire conversation, listen at the link above or download on podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the Broadway Podcast Network. “Stagecraft” will be ending with this episode, but listen for more theater talk in upcoming episodes of the “Daily Variety” podcast.
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