Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1314: BroadwayCon 2026

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Every year, my oldest daughter Rachel and I attend BroadwayCon, a convention dedicated to Broadway, and each year I make a podcast about it, taking all the things I learned and comparing them to Magic design. This podcast is about this year's trip.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time another drive to work. Okay, well, I just got back from New York City where my daughter, Rachel, and I attended Broadwaycon. So for longtime listeners, this is something my daughter, Rachel, and I do every year. We've done it since 2016, maybe.

We've done it for a while. Or maybe a little bit on them. Anyway, we've done it for a while. Maybe it was 2018. But anyway, I've done a podcast on every time we've gone to BroadwayCon. So this time is no different. One of the biggest difference is Rachel now lives in New York City. So it's fun to get, she gets to show me around the city and stuff.

And we always see a Broadway play. So this time we saw Chess, which is a show that I really loved the concept album for, but I'd never seen performed in person before. And the current Chess on Broadway, they completely rewrote the book. So it's... Anyway, very good. Okay, so what I like to do is talk about our... The Broadway con time.

But then I wanted to sort of related to magic. So... One of the things that's really interesting about going to Broadway con is I am the fan. Obviously, Broadway con is about Broadway, if that's not instantly clear. So it's a thing where my daughter and I were fans. So I get a go to convention as a fan. And because I'm very involved in Magic Conns

where I'm not the fan, I'm the person putting it on. It's just an interesting insight. I think I learned a lot from being on the other side. I mean, I've been to conventions where I was the fan before, but it's just fun to sort of watch and see. Okay, so it's a three-day event, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So on Friday, the first event we saw was

Broadway on the road, 10 a.m. Will Burton, Bailey McCall, Jared Dixon, Bryson, Bryson, Bruce, Carly Sackalov, and Jeff Whiting, who was the moderator, I believe. And mostly what they talked about was a lot of shows. So there's shows on Broadway where you can go see them and they're in theaters on Broadway. There's 41 Broadway theaters. But a lot of shows are what they call touring shows,

which is once they finish on Broadway, or they can be from somewhere else. But a lot of them start on Broadway and then they do a touring version where they go around the country and allow people... Because one of the things about Broadway is Broadway's in New York. But we really want other people to see all the cool stuff that's going on. So they do traveling shows that come to different cities.

And so if you live in a big enough city, you have a chance to sort of see a Broadway play but brought to your city. And these were just talking with actors who, you know, they were trying to talk about the difference between living on the road versus being like at a being in a theater as a regular thing. And it was interesting to me like one of the things that I love and makes me think about magic on is I like behind the scene stuff. I like hearing from people who actually do it and all the little tiny things. And a lot of the fun of this one was they were just talking about, well, when you're in a theater and Broadway, how it's different from being traveling on a thing. And I also learned that most the Broadway shows the way they work is the stage is down low,

but most the dressing rooms are up high. And very few of the theaters have elevators. So that for the actors, there's a lot of walking up and downstairs, which is really interesting. But anyway, it was a nice... It really hammers home how the most minute of details from behind the scenes are just really intriguing and interesting.

So that's something that I always keep in mind. Okay, next, back in the day, bringing history to life on stage. Jack Malone, Rod Cyrus, and Melissa Annelli. I think Melissa was the host, was the moderator. So Jack Malone, is an actor in Operation

Mincemeat, which is now on Broadway, and Rod Cyrus is in Ragtime. Operation Mincemeet talks about this operation that happened during World War II. So one of the characters, Jack plays, there's a bunch of characters, but one of the characters he plays, Hester, somebody, blinging no last name. He's the main character

that he plays, and then Rod Severs plays Harry Houdini in Ragtime. And so they were talking about both of them were playing actors of characters that are real people. But one of the big differences between the two was Hester was, at the time, was mostly lost to time. When Jack started the role and he did research,

there wasn't much about Hester out there. Where in the reverse, like, Harry Houdini is one of the most famous people ever. Like, there's a lot, a lot of material on Harry Houdini. In fact, there's even a little bit of tape of him talking, which, you know, he lived long ago. So the fact that there's actual, you can hear him talk. It's kind of cool. But anyway, one of the things they were talking about is research.

that one of the things when you're playing a living person is trying to understand that. And it really tied into me is we do a lot of research, more environmental than people. But a lot of times when we're trying to do something, we go to the source material and we try to understand. Okay, you know, we're trying to capture a certain time period. And this is why we have creative consultants, why we have people that are experts in the source material that we're doing. And it's really interesting. Like a lot of times, just finding real tangible facts allows us to sort of inspires us to make things.

That a lot of the fun of doing sort of top-down inspirational design is learning what the real things are and then finding our way to put a spin on them. But, you know, being inspired by actual events that actually happen or actual environmental things that really happen. And so we're doing something like Tarkir, which each of the clans of Tarkier comes from an inspiration from a different geographic area.

And anyway, it really reminded me sort of the importance of our research. Then Rachel and I went to the marketplace. There's a thing that sells lots of different goodies and Rachel bought infinite stickers and pins and shirts and stuff with that. Okay, after that, we had our Broadway First Look. So what the Broadway First Look is,

is any show that wants to, any Broadway show, or off-Broadway show, can come and perform for the audience. It's kind of like a preview panel, is the way I think of it. So the shows that we saw, there was a combination. Usually they would sing if they were a musical. Some of them also did a little Q&A and answered questions. Some of them have some videos. But the ones that had some sort of presentation

were two strangers carry a cake across New York, Masquerade, which is a kind of new version of Phantom of the Opera, which it's more interactive. Shmigadoon, which is based on the Apple TV show, is being brought to Broadway, although that was just a video. They weren't there live. Lost Boys, just the movie Lost Boys is being turned into musical, and they sing a song from it.

Operation Mincemeat, all five of them were actually there singing. Six, one of the people from Six, about Henry the Ace Wives. And then Music City, which is a new country western. and musical. But it's really, it's super fun to see the people and see the things ahead of time. I mean, not that preview, obviously we know that previews are pretty impactful.

It's usually the biggest attended, or most attended panels we do are the preview panels. But it's really fun to be on the other side and learn things. And I had heard of, I think I didn't know Music City. I knew all the rest.

I hadn't heard of masquerade and I hadn't heard of Music City. I mean, I knew Phantom of the Opera, but I, so it was fun seeing, Masquerade is really sort of reinterpreting something and it's interesting to see. You know, definitely something we do a lot of is, okay, we're going back, but we're trying to do it differently

and how do we approach it differently. And it's also really interesting seeing how they adapt things. Like, Lost Boys, I know the movie, but I have no idea how do you make that into a musical? So it was very interesting. Next was a panel called Community and Fandom Samantha Feketti, Alex Joseph Grayson, Liam Pierce,

Jack Malone, and Linédi Janow. And they were talking about the interconnectivity between the people doing the job and the fandom. So one of the things that Broadway is slowly getting used to is the power of social media. The idea that a lot of the ways that you market a show these days is through social media. That a lot of the tastemakers, if you will, are sitting in social media platforms. And that trying to sort of adapt to that. and that one of the things that the actors talked a lot about is there's a lot more responsibility to as actors

and members of the show of interconnecting. So it was really interesting talk to them. And like one of the things, obviously I'm very connected with social media between just doing this podcast and my blog and my articles and just interacting online in general. I do a lot of reading and a lot of the people are up to. And so I understand the power the power of the community.

I think Magic's community is one of its strongest elements and I'm always so excited. Like, I just had a chance to be on the Professor's show, if you haven't seen that. I just, I went down and played with him in December, and it went up recently

as far as you guys hearing this. But to learn community college, if you want to see me play on it. But anyway, community, very important. Next, online and on stage. Matt Rodin, Mona Swain, Chris Rice Thompson, Jack Rodin, Emily Christian Morris, Meg Doherty, Justin David Sullivan, and Clay Rice Thompson. So this was another panel really talking about how they, these are all people that have,

that do online, they're both actors in shows on Broadway shows and who have regular content that they do. The previous panel was more about interacting with social media, and this was more about people that produce social media. I don't remember. I read the names, but one of them was she's in the cast of Wicked, and she does regular things sort of explaining how things work, and it's kind of like theater 101, but using Wicked as a case study of, oh, look, we change the lights, and here's what that means, and here's what this is, and here's what that works.

And a lot of other ones were just sort of showing their life, but as how it pertains to being a Broadway actor, you know. But like I said, it's another thing really hammering home, the ever-changing landscape that was Broadway and the ever-changing landscape. Like, one of the things I look at thinking about magic is the community was always an important part, but how we interact with the computer has radically changed over the years.

In the early, early days, there was ways to interact, but it was not as two-way, and it was, not everybody could get online. So, like, you were communicating with a much smaller group than you can today. But anyway, that was very, very cool. Okay. Okay, so now we move to Saturday.

So there are a lot of panels. Mostly what we did is Rachel and I went to a lot of panels. It's just fun hearing people talk, so this is the majority of the time. We did buy some stuff, of course. Criticisms in 2026. This was Catherine Quinn, Mickey Joe Boucher, Kate Reichen, Ben Loboski, and Tyler Nabinger. And this was people who are

who do critical review. These are online people that do online criticism. So these are people that they don't work for like a newspaper or something. They're all doing their own work. But doing criticism and talking about how

criticism used to be something that only sort of the authorities, right? The newspapers or the magazines did. And now like one of the things about the internet and social media is anybody that can have a forum. And they were really talking about what it's like, what it's like to be online and giving criticism

and how that it is just a different animal than it once was. And that, anyway, it's really interesting talking about them. And there's a lot of, some of them do very short, snippy, here's one to three minutes. Some of them do long, I'm going to spend an hour talking about great details. And they were talking a lot about what responsibility they have as critics, meaning they want to support new shows, they want to support new talent,

but also, you know, hey, they want to sort of say what they do and don't like about the shows. And one of the things that they really were voicing is they are very pro-Broadway, obviously. They love Broadway. And their critique is more of trying to explain how to make things better.

And their favorite things is not when something they say, you know, impacts the show negatively. It's more that the show can learn of, here's some real information you're getting about problems. that might be there. And shows, one of the things about Broadway shows is that there's a lot of tweaking that goes on. That if they get a lot of feedback about something, shows will adapt and change.

You know, obviously they change more early on the process during previews and things where they're changing all the time. But even later on, if they find that something is problematic or the audience is being confused by something, they will adapt as it goes on. So it was really interesting to hear from these actual voices of people that are critics. Okay. Next, Inside the Creative Process with five-time Tony winner, Susan Stromen. So Susan Schroman has won five Tony.

She's a director. Shows she has worked on. Oklahoma, the Music Man, Crazy View, Contact, the producers, the frogs, the Scottsboro Boys, Bullets Over Broadway, POTUS, are behind every great dumbass are seven women trying to keep them alive. New York, New York, and Young Frankenstein.

So she, like, produce is probably the one she's most famous for, but she has, I mean, winning a Tony is hard. Winning five Tony. So she was fascinating to listen to. I really, really adore listening to people that, like, that in and out know what they're doing, you know. And that, like, someone from the audience was putting on a production of POTUS, which is this farce comedy, political comedy.

And they asked for advice. And her advice was really technical. She's like, get your doors early so you can practice with the doors. so much of the comedy is the doors. Which is like, that comes from somebody who's done this show, who understands, okay, you might not realize how important this is, but this is super important. They showed some clips of stuff she does

because she mostly works on musicals, and she was just a really big advocate of how everything has to move your story forward. And it really reminded me, like, one of the big things about magic design is every card has to advance your set. Every card has to be doing something, telling something, you know, and that you really, you know, she really talked about in a musical, every moment in the musical

is advancing something. You shouldn't, something shouldn't be there just to be there. And it really, it made me connect to thinking about magic of that you really have to be tight of making sure that the things you're talking about with each card,

that like there is a real economy, like everything wants to move your set forward. And that one of the big lessons that, for me, as, you know, doing magic for a long time, is having a great card that's a cool card in a vacuum but doesn't advance the set. And my answer is, look, we will find a place for the cool card. The cool card should be where the cool card shines,

and the cool card is part of the set, not separate from the set. And that is really hard sometimes. When you have something really cool to go, I know this is really cool, but this is not the best place for it, and that's a harder thing to do. But anyway, I love, love, love, love listening to

just true masters in their art to talk about. it. Okay, next. Fandom starts local. On the road with Broadway. Ashley Elliott and Elizabeth Gentry, I think were the moderators. Mason Bray, Mark Anthony Beltran, and Jacob Melizio were there. Again, this is another panel talking about going on the road and doing things. Oh, sorry, sorry. This was not actors. These were people who market in other markets. People who say, oh, the show is traveling. Actually, some of them were with advertised agencies that advertise regardless of where it is

and some are with the local theaters that are getting the shows in. Because when they travel around, there's local theaters. You know, so the local theater's going to put it on, but the local theaters have, you know, people who are doing their advertising. So it's a combination of working between

the people who are the advertising for the show directly and the people are advertising for the theaters. and that the show is trying to keep a voice and trying to keep a constant so that the show has a certain sound and feel to it. And the local people are trying to connect it to the local market. And, like, one of the people was talking about how he loved to use the zoo. And I think they had shucked, which is a play all about corn. Seriously, it's all about corn. And so there was a porcupine that loved corn at the zoo who had just had babies.

And so, like, they went to the zoo and, like, he was the corn-loving porcupine. And the shucks of people visited the corn-loving porcupine. So, like, it sort of played into the theme of the show, but it made it local and fun, and just was something that really added an element to it. And one of the things that really rang true to me listening to talk about is the, I do a lot with, I mean, I'm not, quote, unquote, in marketing, but I do a lot, I do a lot, because of my role, because of all the interconnection I do, my articles, my podcast, my blog, and stuff. I essentially do a lot of marketing, so I'm very conscious of thinking about, hey, what is the new set? What is the most important thing about that set? I want to get you excited. Okay, what am I getting you excited about?

And usually there's layers of messaging. There's kind of the surface message, and then there's the more enfranchised message. Like I, for example, my blog and talk to more in franchise players. So my messaging is a little different from the surface messaging. Like the surface messaging is, here's the theme. You'll like it. Here's the theme. Here's what we're doing.

And I get a little bit deeper on some of my things because my audience is a little more advanced and a little more in franchise. Okay, the final one of Saturday was beyond the stage, non-profits and Broadway. Julius Schemmer, Juliana Henderson, and Taylor Mets. So they were talking about people who work with Broadway and non-profit. There's a thing called, what's it called? Waiting in the Wings, which does documentaries about the history of, Broadway, usually about shows that either failed or like cult hits. And they have a nonprofit wing that's really trying to maintain

what, maintain all the history about Broadway. And there's another group, I don't remember the name, but they have camps for kids and really about education and using theaters and means of education. And the third person was really in on puppetry and trying to sort of connect all the, like there's a lot, for example, Little Shepherd Horrors, Audrey Too, the plant is a puppet. Lion King, mostly animals are. puppets. There are puppets like in Wicked.

There's winged monkeys that are puppets. So a lot of shows actually use some sort of puppetry. And they're really trying to consolidate and make people more aware of it and sort of preserve stuff and really celebrate and let the puppeteers connect with one another so that there's a lot of sharing of knowledge. But it was really interesting talking about the nonprofit side of things. And a lot of what they were about was trying to get across the sense of history. That's one thing I connected most to is I really, really feel super important about

protecting magic history and keeping magic history and make sure people are aware of magic history. And that's why I do so much, especially like on this podcast, of just trying to share history with people so that people learn what magic was. Okay, so we get to Sunday. So Sunday, by the way, in New York was a giant snowstorm shut down the city. Now, a lot of people were already in the hotel where the event took place. So it carried on. So the first event I went to was creating a character on Broadway.

So Jeff Whiting was the moderator and Danny Bernstein and Hannah Cruz. Danny Bernstein has done 41 shows. And he's currently... What's the play he's in? He's in a... I'm blanking the name of him.

Hannah Cruz, I just saw in... She was Svetlana in chess. So I just seen her. And they were really talking about how they approach roles both of them have been in a bunch of Broadway shows so it's a lot of talking about different ways you do things

and how do you do a show when it's a show that's coming back versus how you do a show when it's a brand new show. You know, we talked, Hannah talked about chess because obviously chess has some history to it. But this show is a brand new book that's unlike anything ever before. And so

there was a lot of old and new and Danny Bernstein talked a lot about he had done Tebia. A fiddle on the roof. Anyway, it was just fun listening to act. Again, people who have... Like, one of the reasons I try to do a lot of interviews on this show is I want you to hear

from people who are doing a job that you might not hear from. Here are people doing creative work, or... Here's people doing things that you just might not be aware of, and I like filling that in and letting you get in firsthand in hearing about it from them. And so that's something that I'm

dedicated to keep doing is keep doing interviews. In fact, I'm recording another interview tomorrow, so you guys will get it here soon. Who knows? Maybe you'll hear it with this. This one's less timely than... I'm doing interviews right now from Lower Wind Eclipse. Okay, next, from period to pop.

Taylor McMahon, who's a choreography on 6. Justin Ramos, who's the music director on Here Lies Love. Sarah Michelle Lindsay, who's a swing assistant dance captain on chess. Michael Sylvester, who's a choreography. Tyler Pato, who's a writer-composer. So they were all working on a new musical

on Madam Tussaud, called Wax. believe it's called. And they were talking about how you bring shows that are real show, about real things. Like they talk about Six, which is about Henry V. Wise and Chess, which is talking about the Cold War. Like, a lot of shows are borrowing from real things from the past. But you want to bring a modern sensibility to it. So how do you bring, like, six is a really good example. For those I've never seen Six, it's about the Six Wives of Henry the Eighth. And so each one has a song, but it's done like a rock concert. And each one is done in the style of a different kind of pop song.

So it's really taking something old and teaching you about something, but in using a really modern sensibility to it. And that's what they were talking is that one of the ways to start to educate people is using language that people understand because it's modern language.

So anyway, that was very cool. Next up, New York theater critics in conversation. Mo Roka was the moderator. Linda Arndoneman wasn't there. Helen Shaw from New York Times, Charles Isherwood from the Wall Street Journal, And Adam Feldman, I didn't write down when he was from. I think he used to be New York Times, but he's doing stuff now.

Anyway, so these are people who are actual critics. I did critics that were, like, online critics. These are actual newspaper magazine critics who are doing sort of more proper, you know, kind of old-school criticism. And they were talking a lot about, like, what is it like to do that and what influence do they have and don't they have? And one of the interesting things is the dynamic of how sort of media, old-school media, the newspapers and magazines,

of that a lot of things have changed from how they used to function. There's a period in time where the New York Times theater critic wielded a lot more power than they do now where if they condemned a show, it could close the show.

And anyway, this was another, it was interesting hearing people talk about a similar topic, criticism, but from a different vantage point. Okay, so the next panel. So Rachel, my daughter, ran her own panel. But, so the panel was she collected four different writers that all wrote for Broadway in different ways.

One was a critic. One did online content, was a blogger. One wrote copy for advertising, and one was a playwright. So the person in the blogger, not the blogger, the person that did criticism. So anyway, there's a snowstorm. None of them could make it to the event. none of them were, they all were coming in the day of the event, the city got shut down. And Rachel, one by one, learned that they couldn't show up.

So what we eventually did is Rachel got a Zoom call, got them all the Zoom call, ran it off her computer, and she got three of the four. One of the guests, his internet was out. But so, Sophie McIntosh was the playwright. I know she wrote a play called McBitches, and I'm not sure she's written some other stuff. Liz Wasser was the copywriter who works for AKA, which is an ad agency. And Chris Peterson is a blogger. It was right behind him.

It was on stage. Something on stage. Sorry, sorry, Chris. But anyway, they were talking. The point of the other thing was all the different ways that you can write, how that writing affects Broadway. Whether you're writing the actual scripts

that people are performing, whether you're writing the advertised to encourage people to come, whether you're writing the commentary, so people with the fans and talking about what the plays are about. And I have to say, as a pride pop,

I actually really, really like the panel. I mean, also, I'm a writer, so. And the fact that everything fell apart and Rachel found a way to make it happen, I was super impressed. Because there was a point in time where we had no idea of it was even going to happen. And Rachel found all the component pieces,

and, you know, the audience really enjoyed it, Anyway, it turned out great. So that was, I was really happy about that. Okay, the final thing we saw, which is one of the coolest things, is they had a thing called Time Flies, the 30-year reunion of Rent. So Anthony Rapp, who is one of the original actors from Rent, is one of the creators of Broadwaycon. And so he's usually at Broadway kind.

He's one of the creators of BroadwayCon. So anyway, he and his team, team got a whole bunch of people, a bunch of actors, so I'm going to read off names, Adam Pascal, Edina Menzel, Freddie Walker Brown, Giles Chieson, Tim Weil, who does some music, Toby Parker, Michael Grief, who is the director, or Grife, Jesse Martin, Wilson Herrata, Rodney Hicks. So these were all actors that were in the original version of the show, and some of which Tim did the music and wrote a book about it, and Michael was the director. But anyway, they were just sharing memories about working on rent.

And it was, I mean, if you weren't all remotely a fan of rent, it was the original gas to rent. And like I was saying, some big, Dina Mansell and some big names. You know, Jesse Martin's been on infinite TV shows I've watched. So they were really talking about how, for most of them, this was kind of their Broadway start. And Jonathan Larson, the creator of rent, obviously for those that don't know, He died right before the show premiered. There's another musical called Tick-Tick Boom, which I think it's on Netflix,

that is about him, his life, and his... So, anyway, it was really fascinating. I love hearing, like, first source stuff. Once again, the reason I love getting interviews, if you go back and look at my history, I've done a lot of interviews where I go back and I find somebody who worked on a set, usually with me.

And then we talk about making the set and go about like, you know, so I have a lot of, I've talked about making all the, pick the sets over the time. You know, I talked with Bill Rose about making invasion.

I talked with Richard about the making of Arabian nights and I talked with, anyway, I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of people. There's something super fun, super cool about like going to the source. And I get,

I'm also the source. So a lot of this podcast is going to the source. But it is fun to, The other thing that I love about this kind of thing, Anthony was in the audience. It was there live, but everybody else was calling in. But just to see all of them getting to interact with one another.

And some of them shared stories, the other ones didn't know. Anyway, it was super fun. It was a great way to end Broadway con. So, anyway, I had a blast. So here's my larger takeaway, my sort of for MagicCon. is there's something really powerful of getting lots of fans of the same thing all under one roof.

It was so neat, just meeting and interacting with people that are as much fans of Broadway, in many cases, more fans of Broadway than I am. And just seeing people dress up, there's a, oh, there's a cosplay contest. I know I didn't mention the cosplay contest. There was a cosplay contest that we briefly saw where I think the winner dressed up as Bell,

and there was someone who, from Death Becomes her, had a hole blown through her. And anyway, it was really cool. But I see so much, I can see the MagicCon in Broadway. I mean, there's just some throughlines. The cosplaying, the behind-the-scenes things. The merch, you know, the severely just sort of show off how much you love this thing. And just the fan interaction.

The idea that's sitting around just talking with people and, you know, it was fun to talk about shows that they saw and what they liked and what they recommended. And like I said, this is my, I don't know, I've done a podcast for each one. Fifth Broadway con, something like that, fourth or fifth. And it is so much fun every time. And I will keep doing Broadway cons as long as Broadway con keeps putting them on. And as fans of magic, I recommend you come to a MagicCon. If you've never come to a MagicCon, it's very similar.

It's like you're surrounded by thousands and thousands of Magic fans. You have infinite things you can do. There's play experiences you'll never get anywhere else. There's panels and things, opportunities for you to hear behind the scenes, stuff you wouldn't get. There are, you come meet your favorite influencers. There's just so much there.

No matter what you like about magic, there's amazingly cool, unique merch, whatever it is that you really enjoy about magic. There are other people who share your passion and are there to be excited with you and to interact on all the cool different things going on. One thing about MagicCon, there's more things you can possibly

experience in one weekend. Like, there's constant things going on. And you have to kind of pick pick and choose what you want to do. But if you ever come to MagicCon and I'm there, come see me. I do signings at MagicConn's. I'm normally in some panels and I normally give a talk to all the panels. Come to my talk. I always give a fun talk.

But anyway, that is my trip to BroadwayCon, 2006. I had a great time. Rachel was, as always, a wonderful partner to do it with. And anyway, I love sharing with all of you. So I think it's fun sometimes to sort of share some of my passions that aren't just magic. I mean, obviously, magic is a passion, but I have other passions beyond just magic. So it's fun to share that with you, and I do very much love Broadway musicals. So anyway, guys, I'm now at work.

So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic in Broadway, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys all next time. Bye-bye.