Episode 149: "A Song About Hope" — A Conversation with BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL

Welcome to a new season of Broadway Nation — the podcast that delves deeply into the remarkable history of the Broadway musical, with a special focus on the Immigrant, Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists who invented it.

My guest today is Tony Award-winning Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell.

After a short break, I am excited to be back with a new season that will be jam-packed with fascinating Broadway history, including interviews with an amazing lineup of authors of some brilliant new books that take us back to the earliest days of Broadway and bring us right up to the twenty-first century — from George M. Cohan to how TikTok and the digital age have impacted the Broadway musical.

Today, we start things off with a bang with a delightful conversation with Brian Stokes Mitchell, whose career spans over forty years on television, films, recordings, concert appearances, and, most notably for our purposes, ten Broadway shows. He made his Broadway debut in 1988 in a short-lived musical called Mail, and in 1990, he was cast as the lead in David Merrick’s revival of the 1926 Gershwin musical Oh, Kay! He next went on to two very high-profile gigs — first replacing Gregory Hines in Jelly’s Last Jam and then Anthony Crivello in Kiss Of the Spiderwoman. In 1998, his unforgettable Tony-nominated performance as Coalhouse Walker in Ragtime firmly established him as a true Broadway star, and the following year, jumping from musical drama to musical comedy, he won the Tony Award for his performance in Kiss Me Kate. His performance in August Wilson’s play, King Hedley II, in 2001 earned another Tony nomination, and the next year, he took on the title role in Man Of La Mancha. His most recent Broadway appearance was in 2016 in George Woolf’s behind-the-scenes look at Shuffle Along, but as you will hear, Brian Stokes Mitchell may be back on Broadway very soon in a new musical that he is very excited about. 

In addition, our conversation today ranges from two tear-inducing new video performances that he has recently been involved in creating and performing: a Ted Talk with Leer deBessonet, which you can find at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZNhuRIGQZs and "Hope" with Jason Robert Brown, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJkqV2xwars.

Also, his work with The Entertainment Fund and the soon-to-be-released video capture of their reunion concert of Ragtime, as well as a peek inside his process and approach to interpreting a song.

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