2019 Princess Grace Award recipient, Desdemona Chiang, is well-known around the country as a prolific director, who works primarily in Shakespeare and new plays. I got the opportunity to work with her when she directed my musical, Eastbound, at the Village Theatre's Festival of New Musicals. I was not only struck by how insightful she is as a dramaturg, I was also completely enamored by how she worked with actors, myself included. When we sat down for this episode, I was very

Last seen at Signature Theatre's Octet, written by Dave Malloy and directed by Annie Tippe, Kuhoo Verma played Velma "the newcomer, [who] relates a quiet, heartfelt account of connecting with someone in a distant land." (The New York Times) I got the pleasure of working with Kuhoo on my new musical, The Golden Threshold, set in 1930s India. She recorded the demo of the very first song I wrote for the show, Outside/Inside, in the summer of 2018. Not only were her vocals comple