Behind The Velvet Curtain: Broadway’s Divine Drama

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

In this weekend's special edition of Viral Mindfulness, Alexander Blue Feather invites you to step behind the velvet curtain into the sacred glow of Broadway. As CNN broadcasts George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck live from the Winter Garden Theatre and the 2025 Tony Awards light up the stage, Alexander reflects on the electric drama, both on and off stage.

From Audra McDonald and Nicole Scherzinger’s showdown to Megan Hilty’s triumphant return, this episode is a love letter to the theater. A temple of truth and belonging. You’ll hear personal stories from Alexander’s first Broadway pilgrimage in 1998, complete with tap shoes, playbills, and spiritual awakening in the balcony's glow. It’s a celebration of queer joy, memory, grief, and resurrection—told with sparkle and soul.

SUMMARY

Alexander Blue Feather hosts a Broadway-themed deep dive into the historic weekend of June 7–8, 2025. The episode covers:

• The live CNN broadcast of Good Night, and Good Luck starring George Clooney, and its political resonance in today’s climate.

• Drama leading up to the 2025 Tony Awards—snubs, surprises, and the buzz around Audra McDonald, Nicole Scherzinger, and Megan Hilty.

• A deeply personal reflection on Broadway as spiritual sanctuary, tracing Alexander’s queer journey from BYU to Broadway seats.

• A nostalgic trip through Alexander’s 1998 Playbill drawer—highlighting 9 shows from his first New York theater trip.

• A heartfelt tribute to Broadway icons lost, like Rebecca Luker and Marin Mazzie, and a benediction for the theater community and what it continues to teach us.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Broadway as Temple: For Alexander, theater is more than performance—it's a sanctuary for belonging, queerness, and the sacred stories of humanity.

Live Theater History: CNN’s live telecast of Good Night, and Good Luck marks a bold new chapter in how theater reaches its audience.

Tonys Tea: Patti LuPone controversy, Clooney’s quiet retreat, and a showdown for Best Actress signal a high-stakes award night.

Legacy & Loss: Reflections on beloved performers Rebecca Luker and Marin Mazzie weave grief into the fabric of Broadway love.

From SSA to Standing Ovation: Alexander shares his complicated journey from Mormon repression to queer expression—illuminated by tap shoes, gospel doctrine classrooms, and velvet seats.

Megan Hilty’s Wild Card: Rooting for a comeback queen with a story of devastating loss and radiant resilience.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Viral Mindfulness, the podcast. I'm your host, Alexander Blue Feather. Hello, Zelda. Thank you for joining me for this special weekend edition. It's Broadway Weekend, people.

Saturday and Sunday, June 2025, June seventh and eighth. Tonight, making Broadway history. CNN is broadcasting live a Tony nominated play. Tomorrow, the Tony Awards. And the stage isn't just set, it's sizzling.

Record breaking ticket sales. The biggest in the history of Broadway this last season, this year. There is Tony award tension. That's right. There is backstage drama.

And of course, my sacred love affair with the theater. Thank you for being here. We go behind the velvet curtains to the place I call my church. The place known as my temple, Broadway, the Great White Way. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. We are recording live in front of an audience, and I appreciate the love and the support. So, let's start first with Saturday, June 7. If you catch this in time, you can watch live.

If not, you'll probably, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to watch the replay on HBO Max. Still might be called Max for you. But what we're talking about is the Tony nominated play, Good Night and Good Luck starring George Clooney. So this will be broadcast on CNN, Saturday, June seventh at 7PM Eastern time, and the special telecast offers audiences a chance to experience the production from the Winter Garden Theater without the need of a ticket. And Ticket sells broke Broadway box office history just this week, and tickets have been upwards of $900 So, you can view, if you're a cable subscriber on CNN, without cable, there is a landing page stream live for free on CNN.

I'll put that in the show notes. After, which you might not get this in time, you'll look for streaming services with HBO Max and watch the replay. The broadcast will include special pre show coverage outside the theater. Following the performance, Anderson Cooper will host a special segment discussing the current state of journalism. And George Clooney, who co wrote and stars in the play, expressed his excitement about this unprecedented live broadcast, emphasizing the opportunity to bring the story to a wider audience.

And this event marks a rare occasion where a Broadway performance is broadcast live. It's really a unique opportunity for viewers to engage with the theatrical experience from home. The play is based on the story of broadcast journalist, Edward R Murrow, and this is according to NPR, quote, who set the standards, Murrow did, for excellence in news reporting for the entire industry. First, as a CBS radio reporter during World War two, and then as the host of the TV news magazine, See It Now in the nineteen fifties. He used that TV pulpit to challenge Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy, whose communist witch hunting tactics of lies, bullying, and unfounded accusations had divided and paralyzed the country.

And that's what according to NPR. And don't forget that a big part of community that was wounded and very much bullied by McCarthy's accusations was the LGBTQ community. Tomorrow, Sunday, June 8, the curtain rises on the twenty twenty five Tony Awards at 8PM Eastern time. You can catch it live on CBS and Paramount Plus. And it's hosted by Yaz, our green witch, the luminous Cynthia Eribo.

And this year's juicy drama Off the Stage, includes Patti LuPone who ignited controversy after criticizing Alicia Keys' musical Hell's Kitchen, prompting backlash over accusations of racially charged commentary. And over 500 artists responded publicly in protest. Audra McDonald and Nicole Scherzinger are locked in a fierce race for best actress in a musical with Patti LuPone with the with Patti LuPone's controversy potentially tipping the scales towards McDonald. And, of course, stars like Denzel Washington and Kieran Culkin, They were surprisingly snubbed from Tony Award nominations, raising eyebrows and social media rants. And George Clooney quietly stepped back from his Tony his own Tony campaigning, sensing the inevitable triumph of Cole Escola for best actor in a play.

And, you know, this year, Broadway has made, huge profits in Broadway history. There are so many productions and ticket sales, the highest in the history of Broadway, including how many productions are running. So it's really cool because the nomination the nominees this year are really being pulled from a larger pool. So, for example, Denzel Washington, Kieran Culkin, I read something that was talking about how, yeah. So, the people who are nominated are really lucky and it's really the competition has been much heightened this season.

Alright. Well, as you all know, Broadway is my sacred space. It takes me back to a time where one of my girlfriends from college, I've talked about her a little bit before. Old friend. We're not in contact anymore.

Jane. Jane and Fife. So we went to college together, and we spent a lot of time together over the years. And, I saw her probably the last time I saw her was, maybe in 2016. And I think this is when she asked me this question.

It was around the time that Jay and Kenny, Harvey's dads, got married. And I saw her for a date, like a lunch date in the city. And she asked me this question about like, why, why is Broadway so important to me? And so I think it definitely got me thinking and feeling about it. And in the last few years, it's really become clear to me that, you know, Broadway was a place where I truly found, inclusivity.

A place that was a sanctuary for me long before I found my deeper connection in meditation or sobriety circles. And Broadway was where I first felt truly welcome and could see myself, a reflection of my queer self. In those velvet seats under that luminous chandelier glow, no one questioned my queerness, my gender. Instead, they actually celebrated it. They they elevated it, not eva eva, evolutioned it.

And there's such a big difference too. You know, to be accepted or to be tolerated is so different than people who actually celebrate you and people whose lives and ref and relationships and friendship pools, they they reflect people like me. Their their circles are filled with other LGBTQIA plus people. And growing up religious, I often felt othered and marginalized and excluded. But theater, especially Broadway, it said clearly and loudly, you belong here as you are, and you are perfect as you are, as well as so many other humans along the lines of race, religion, gender, sexuality, you name it.

Theater embraces the outsiders, the misunderstood, and the fierce, and they tell the stories of all people. And I listened and I loved. My Broadway journey started in the late nineties. And so this next segment is kind of a love letter to my love letter to Broadway. And it's the drawer of playbills, close to my piano bench, maybe tucked behind a watercolor tray is a drawer that a couple drawers actually that holds over a thousand playbills.

And they're not all New York playbills. A big chunk of them are from LA and West Coast Premiers. But each one of those playbills and other programs is kind of like a passport for me. A memory and a resurrection. And I was able to go through and find, and I have them right here in my hand.

So I'm gonna give you some ASMR. Hear that? So I've got nine different Playbills from 1998. Can you believe it? And it's awesome because as I was looking through the Playbills, July 1998.

So this takes you all the way back to the year before I graduated from Brigham Young University. And if you want a little more context to like Wicked, when I first saw that in 02/2003, you can listen to my previous episode. It's entitled still defying gravity, but this takes us back to my very first trip, which was I was finishing my bachelor's degree at Brigham Young University and I was still trying to be straight and thinking that my queerness was a temptation. And I was still subscribed to Mormonism. And I was finishing BYU and I was teaching.

I was a teacher for gospel doctrine for the Mormon Sunday program, and I was so good at it. And there would be this huge weight room of, like, the classroom was packed full, and I met these friends, and it was just a really interesting time because I would be working with my bishop confessing my, my my my dancing my dancing with boys where I was going up on the weekends to Salt Lake City and, dancing and meeting boys and giving room for my queerness and kissing and touching and playing with boys in just sort of flirty, you know, foreplay, sexually charged ways. And I would confess to my bishops. It was bizarre and it was where I was at. But I met these two women, Tia and Trudy, and they definitely were it was very complicated because they adored me, and I was so effeminate.

I am so effeminate, and we became friends. Trudy actually taught gospel doctrine. And there were a couple teachers and, you know, cause it had a lot of young, everybody in the, the church ward is what they're called, were young adults at college. So there would be a couple doc gospel doctrine classes happening at the same time. And mine would just be packed full.

Cause I was fun and creative and I was really struggling with, you know, I called it same sex attraction or SSA at the time. My SSA, I was struggling with my SSA and it was like a portal for me to teach and be really interesting about how I shared their gospel. So, we planned a trip. This woman, Tia, haven't seen Tia or Trudy. How funny.

Tia, Trudy, and David. I went by my first name, David at the time. We all scheduled this trip to Broadway, and Tia had been before, and she loved Broadway. And she helped facilitate this whole trip for us. They stayed in a hotel together, and I stayed with my friend Jane, actually, because this was before they had kids and I always had a place to stay with them and then I could save money and plus, you know, you don't stay with girls in a hotel room when you're when you're at that time and that's in that decade.

Anyways, so we went for like oh maybe ten days. Maybe it was only a week but we saw nine shows. So, we went to double theater days. So, we saw Ragtime the musical. We saw Les Miserables.

I saw the original production of Ragtime at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts. I saw a revival of The Sound of Music. I saw Jekyll and Hyde. I saw Bring in the Noise, Bring in the Funk. I saw a play at Shakespeare at Lincoln Center Twelfth Night with Helen Hunt.

I saw a Tony winning play drama straight play called The Beauty Queen of Lanon. It blew my mind. I saw a production of Chicago, and I saw a production of Titanic. So, yeah. It was the beginning.

It was the beginning of my Broadway. And mind you, you should know that I've never been to London's West End. And I hope to get there within the next year. So I'm just gonna tell you a couple highlights. So Titanic was a musical they did, and it was actually pretty great.

I don't really recognize anyone major in the cast, so I'm gonna move along to Chicago. So Chicago had been on Broadway for years. I did see Bebe Neuwirth in it. She played one of the women. I saw Hinton Battle in it.

Chicago, you know, fun fact, I did see theatre, here on the West Coast when I was in high school. And my first year, couple years of college and in my twenties. And would often see West Coast premiers of musicals and plays here. But I did see a production of Chicago in high school. The original Chicago production before it moved and opened to Broadway and it still has never closed with BB Newworth, Joel Grey, and Reinking at the the Long Beach Pacific Light Opera.

So they were workshopping it before it made its way to Broadway. I also saw a production of Bye Bye Birdie with Tommy Tune which was incredible. I was definitely into musical theater and show choir and tried to pursue it my first few years of college but it didn't work out for me and I was afraid to pursue it because I knew I was attracted to men, that I was gay, and I was trying all this religious stuff and it, I made a decision to leave something I loved. It was one of the great losses in my life and grief because I thought it would be better for me to be a therapist and to do something that didn't put me around gay people. Beauty Queen of Laenanne was such an interesting straight play.

Just loved it so much. So they call non musical plays, some people do straight plays. Twelfth Night was interesting at Lincoln Center Shakespeare. It starred Helen Hunt, who was very popular back in the day in the nineties. And also, Kira Sedgwick was in it.

Paul Rudd was in it. And it was really fun to see them on stage. The thing about Bring In The Noise, Bring In The Funk, this was a tap dance, musical or not even musical, but a production like, and Savion Glover, famous tapper and, starred in the original production. And so we were watching the show and there were only, like, four principal dancers. And at some point, like halfway through the production, this fifth dancer just comes on stage and people close to us in fact, maybe this girl this this girl this lady, Tia, our host, my friend at the time, she might have, recognized Savion Glover.

And so he just came in and just, like, came in halfway through the show at intermission, and then dance the second half. And I had my tap shoes with me. So I was a tap dancer, started tapping in high school, and I learned tap for a production of anything goes for my senior year of high school. And and in fact, I was nominated for what were those awards called? It was like high school Tony Awards here in Southern California.

A Macy's Award. I think it was called the Macy Award. And I was nominated for my role as playing Moonface Martin in Anything Goes. And I got to perform my big number at the, like, Macy's, like awards. And it was such an honor.

I didn't win, but I was nominated out of all these high school productions. And so I learned how to tap and then I kept tapping and I would take tap classes at BYU. I would continue, oh, at Orange Coast College before I went to BYU. I would take tap classes. I'd become a teacher's assistant for tap, and then I would substitute teach for this, woman who was my, my, friend as from that I was a TA at BYU teaching.

And anyway, I had my tap shoes and I would sometimes go take tap classes at Broadway Dance Theater in New York when I would visit. It was really hard classes. Their their skill was, you know, cream of the crop. So a beginning class was very hard for me, New York style. But after the musical of singing, bring in the noise, bring in the funk, I had my Capezio 360s and I had Sabion Glover sign underneath on the bottom of my tap shoe where it didn't touch the ground.

The part right next to the heel that doesn't really touch the floor and I still have those and have his signature. So I did see a production of Jekyll and Hyde with the original cast Linda Eder, Cristiano, Robert Cuccioli, And I don't know. It was just great. And the of course, seeing The Sound of Music on stage was very cool. The lead, her name was Rebecca Luker, which, you know, she died recently of I think she had some, I don't know.

And also another one of the women that I saw. I'll tell you in a minute. Recently died from some disease. The production I saw of Les Miserables, interesting enough, Sutton Foster, famous Broadway star these days, was in this in 1998. So I think this could have been she was just an ensemble.

She actually was one of the whores. That's what it says right here. So she played one of the whores, the sailors, the woman workers, the factory girl. No famous people that you would know in Les Miserables. And then Ragtime, the musical, oh, Marin Massey, she played mother in ragtime.

She also died. I gotta do a fact check on that. So I'm gonna come back and fact check on that. But, like, Audra McDonald, she was in this. This was when she was very young and and then Lea Michele played a little girl.

The little girl is what her part was in this production of Ragtime. So it's super fun to revisit these. K. Let me check these fact check these two women. Okay.

So the Sound of Music star, Rebecca Luker, she died from ALS in 2020. And there's a really interesting, like, interview with her, I think on NPR's Fresh Air. Beautiful Broadway Star. And then Marin Mazzie or Marin Mazzie. She played mother in Ragtime and she died from ovarian cancer in 2018.

So, it's really interesting just to know and follow some of these people who, you know, run my church, my church of Broadway. For example, you know, I got to see Leah Michelle do her Broadway, huge role of, you know, funny girl a couple years ago. And I it was incredible. I didn't see her in spring awakening. And then she just announced recently in the last week or so that she's doing a revival of chess with a couple powerful actors on Broadway.

And so it's fun to kind of grow with people. Sutton Foster, I've seen her in so many different shows now. I've seen Idina Menzel in quite a few, and Kristen Chenoweth, and Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone and you know, it's just fun to it's fun for me. It's something I love and it's fun to share with you. So, I have one more item for you.

So, I have, so I saw all but one of the five women who are nominated this season right now for best performance by an actress in a leading role. So, Megan Hilty for Death Becomes Her, Audra McDonald for Gypsy, Nicole Scherzinger for Sunset Boulevard which came from London's West End, and then Jennifer Simard who stars with Megan Hilty in Death Becomes Her. So good and the one I didn't see was Boop the musical Jasmine Amy Rogers and this is her Broadway debut. So, of course, as I told you earlier, Audra and Nicole Scherzinger, there's talk that that Nicole Scherzinger was the shoo in for her role and that Audra McDonald will probably get it because of the controversy and what's been going down with Patti LuPone and that it will bring in votes for Audra McDonald. She's the most awarded, person for Broadway in the history of Broadway.

She recently was on the cover of Time Magazine in the last couple weeks. So, I think that I saw Nicole Scherzinger. It was really awesome. I'd never seen Sunset Boulevard. I saw her last fall.

My sister and I went to New York and she was incredible and the show was a really cool production. And I heard it was trimmed down and it was just really fun. Death Becomes Her with Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard was absolutely enjoyable. My two favorite shows from my last trip were Gypsy with Audra McDonald and Death Becomes Her. And they're just so different.

I mean, the role for Gypsy is like, it's such a renowned difficult musical theater role to play. And in fact, some people were saying, you know, Audra's missed enough shows and Nicole Scherzinger hasn't missed one show in her run on Broadway. And so, like, all this just scorekeeping about who deserves the awards. But, you know, the people who are the voters get to make that decision, the board. I don't know how that works.

I think it'd be really fun if Meghan Hilty took the Tony partly because, do you know who Meghan Hilty is? If you want to, do a little Google search. She spells it m e g a n, Hilty. She was the first person to understudy Kristin Chenoweth for Elphaba, or not Elphaba, Glinda on Broadway. And then she ended up taking over the role on Broadway for a short period.

And then she, she did a musical nine to five on the West Coast. I don't think it was on Broadway very long where she played Dolly Parton's character. She was also in NBC's two season smash. She was nominated for a Tony for, a straight play, Noises Off, a few years ago. Did not win.

But the thing that's interesting about her, I like her, I followed her, and I see her cabaret shows here on the West Coast. She's been living in California for a lot of years until she moved back to New York to produce or to star in this show and has scored a Tony. She had this tragic accident happen where, let me fact check this so I don't give you. Okay. So, the reason I know this is, like I said, I I saw her cabaret performances here on the West Coast.

Maybe three of them I've seen. I just saw one this last Christmas. I haven't seen her for a couple years. And lo and behold, it's because her sister, Lauren Hilty Mickel, she was tragically killed in September of twenty twenty two along with her husband and a kid, a boy. So Megan Hilty lost her sister, her brother-in-law, and a nephew.

And it was this really weird like float plane crash. And it was very tragic with some other people off the coast of Whidbey Island. And oh yeah. She was also pregnant at the time of her death. Anyway, so she talked about it this last Christmas concert, Megan Hilty, and didn't know if she would ever find her voice again.

And it was so touching to me, her grief. And she shared the most beautiful music, and then she was getting ready the next, you know, year to head out to start to work on a show that she was talking about that she said would premiere in another city before hoping they would make go to Broadway. And lo and behold, they are. They have. She's nominated.

I would love it if she totally got the Tony. That's my wild card vote. It's for Megan Hilty. In fact, Moana, let her win. Audra McDonald has enough.

She was phenomenal. So, death becomes her. If you wanna just have a great time, fun. Just laugh and laugh. It was just amazing.

Alright. So, I have one final thing for you today which is kind of like a blessing, a closing benediction. So, if you're watching live, much love to you and the Tonys and to George Clooney's very interesting play. It's very timely. It was a different decade many years ago in our country with information and news and journalism.

And it it's very relevant to some of the things happening today in our government. It's concerning, and we need to pay attention. So more than oh, so what I wanna say is that theater doesn't just entertain us. It also reminds us how to be human, how to listen and how to weep and how to rise again after the curtain falls. So I will be watching from my home perch, sending love to all the actors, the techs, the ushers, the understudies, to the writers, and to Broadway, to these beautiful humans, the ones telling truth out loud.

So I hope you have yourself a wonderful weekend, and I will be back here very soon.