Out Magazine: Bob the Drag Queen's road to Broadway

Inside the Raw and Relatable Relationship Comedy “Art of Leaving” Actress Audrey Heffernan Meyer takes us behind the scenes of this thought-provoking production.

“Asi Wind’s Inner Circle” is one of the most engaging shows I’ve been to in the last several years. Playing at the Judson Theater in downtown Manhattan through January 14th, it’s an intimate and interactive performance starring the magician Asi Wind. His specialty is card tricks, and his acts can’t help but draw audiences in. As Penn & Teller say, “We love him. Go see him.”

I didn’t know it was going to be quite so…wet,” says the playwright Amy Herzog as she arrives at a Brooklyn café, shaking a slushy mix of rain and snow out of her hat. Herzog, 45, has delicate but pointed features and a kind of immediate intensity and focus that she’ll need to draw upon in the weeks ahead. This is the month her adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People opens, directed by her husband, Sam Gold, and starring her old college friend Jeremy Strong. And at nearly the same time, in a quick shift in tone and material, rehearsals begin on a Broadway revival of her play Mary Jane, with Rachel McAdams in the titular role.

For years, scenic designer David Korins and director Alex Timbers thought it would be impossible to bring Here Lies Love to Broadway. The musical, built on a concept by David Byrne that sets the life story of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos to disco beats (engineered by Fatboy Slim), was a hit when it premiered Off Broadway at the Public Theater in 2013 and, later, in London and Seattle. But even so, it didn’t seem fit for midtown. The problem: The show relies on turning a theater into a disco with ticket buyers included in the action. “I’ve heard DJs say there’s an arc to the evening, taking the audience up and down and up again, and I thought, What if you could do that with a story and the audience is dancing at the same time?” Byrne said.

The article, titled "The Making of 'Six': How Tudor Queens Turned Into Pop Stars," detailed the show's origins as a college project by Moss and Marlow at Cambridge University. It highlighted their creative process and the show's journey to becoming a worldwide hit.

Bicycle Diaries: Cruising With the 'American Utopia' Family: Our intrepid reporter and photographer biked through Queens with David Byrne and some of his castmates ahead of their return to Broadway. Then the skies opened up.