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About Andy Boyd

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

NBN Episodes hosted by Andy:

Performing Arts May 24, 2023

Why Do Actors Train?

Embodiment for Theatre Makers and Thinkers

Brad Krumholz

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Why Do Actors Train?: Embodiment for Theatre Makers and Thinkers (Bloomsbury, 2023) powerfully demystifies the actor-training process by focusing on acting as embodied cognition. In this framework, thought is action …
Performing Arts March 11, 2023

On Set with Theda Bara

Joey Merlo

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Joey Merlo's On Set With Theda Bara is a one-person four-character play about the nearly-forgotten silent film "vamp" Theda Bara, but also about fan culture, contemporary queerness, and the timeless allure …
Performing Arts March 1, 2023

Gemignani

Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond

Margaret Hall

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Margaret Hall's Gemignani: Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond (Applause Books, 2022) is the definitive book on Broadway's greatest music director. From a youth playing in jazz bands to a storied …
Performing Arts January 14, 2023

Dance and Activism

A Century of Radical Dance Across the World

Dana Mills

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Dance and Activism: A Century of Radical Dance Across the World (Bloomsbury, 2022) by Dana Mills looks at the intersection of dance and radical politics from the 1920s to today, taking …
Performing Arts December 25, 2022

Crooked, But Never Common

The Films of Preston Sturges

Stuart Klawans

Hosted by Andy Boyd
In a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Preston Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948--The Great McGinty, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, The …
Performing Arts November 21, 2022

Sounds from the Other Side

Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music

Elliott H. Powell

Hosted by Andy Boyd
From Beyoncé's South Asian music-inspired Super Bowl Halftime performance, to jazz artists like John and Alice Coltrane's use of Indian song structures and spirituality in their work, to Jay-Z and …
Performing Arts September 23, 2022

The Choreography of Everyday Life

Annie-B Parson

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Renowned choreographer Annie-B Parson's new book The Choreography of Everyday Life (Verso, 2022) is many things: a pandemic diary, a discourse of Greek tragedy, and a tribute to Parson's many inspirations …
Performing Arts September 2, 2022

Astrs

Karinne Keithley Syers

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Karinne Keithley Syers is the founding editor of 53rd State Press, and Astrs is the play that inspired that long-running experiment in publishing avant-garde texts for performance. This is a …
Performing Arts August 25, 2022

Nobody Wants to Talk about It

Race, Identity, and the Difficulties in Forging Meaningful Conversations

Michael Sidney Fosberg

Hosted by Andy Boyd
In Nobody Wants to Talk About It: Race, Identity, and the Difficulties in Forging Meaningful Conversations (Incognito, 2020), Michael Sidney Fosberg draws on twenty years of experience leading conversations about race to …
Performing Arts August 10, 2022

The Lost Conversation

Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde

Sara Farrington

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Sara Farrington's The Lost Conversation: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde (53rd State Press, 2021) is a collection of interviews with a host of influential artists in experimental theatre, including Richard Foreman …
Performing Arts July 6, 2022

In a Clear Concise Arabic Tongue

Yussef El Guindi

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Yussef El Guindi's In a Clear Concise Arabic Tongue (Broadway Play Publishing, 2021) collects short plays and monologues from almost twenty years of this exciting playwright's career. Guindi writes mainly about Arab and …
Performing Arts June 30, 2022

Brecht and the Bible

A Study of Religious Nihilism and Human Weakness in Brecht's Drama of Morality and the City

G. Ronald Murphy

Hosted by Andy Boyd
In Brecht and the Bible: A Study of Religious Nihilism and Human Weakness in Brecht's Drama of Morality and the City (UNC Press, 2020), Father G. Ronald Murphy argues that Brecht, atheist …
Performing Arts June 27, 2022

Lovesong (Imperfect)

José Rivera

Hosted by Andy Boyd
José Rivera's Lovesong (Imperfect) (Broadway Play Publishing, 2021) follows a passionate love triangle in an unusual situation: the US government has outlawed death, trees grow lights instead of leaves, and lovers sword …
Performing Arts June 22, 2022

Silences So Deep

Music, Solitude, Alaska

John Luther Adams

Hosted by Andy Boyd
John Luther Adams's Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) is a profound, funny, and enlightening memoir from one of our greatest contemporary composers. Adams describes the process of …
Performing Arts June 20, 2022

The Secret Life of Theater

On the Nature and Function of Theatrical Representation

Brian Kulick

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Unlike many books that examine the how of making theater, Brian Kulick's The Secret Life of Theater: On the Nature and Function of Theatrical Representation (Routledge, 2019) examines the why. Using Jorge …
Performing Arts June 14, 2022

Selected Plays of Stan Lai

Stan Lai

Hosted by Andy Boyd
The Selected Plays of Stan Lai (U Michigan Press, 2022) collects a cross-section from the four-decade career of one of the major dramatists of our time. Lai's works, including Secret Love in …
Performing Arts June 8, 2022

Where the Devil Don't Stay

Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers

Stephen Deusner

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Stephen Deusner's Where the Devil Don't Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers (U Texas Press, 2021) is the book-length study Drive-By Truckers fans have been waiting for. A group biography …
Performing Arts June 3, 2022

Six Plays

Mickle Maher

Hosted by Andy Boyd
6 Plays (Agate Press, 2022) collects six plays written over a twenty year period by playwright Mickle Maher. Maher is a legend of the Chicago theatre. He is a founder of Theater …
Performing Arts April 27, 2022

This Is My Office and Notes on My Mother's Decline

Two Plays

Andy Bragen

Hosted by Andy Boyd
On this episode of New Books in Performing Arts, we talk with Andy Bragen about two plays of his published in a new volume by Northwestern University Press: This is …
Performing Arts April 22, 2022

The Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939

Engagement and Experimentation

Rania Karoula

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Rania Karoula's The Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) offers a readable and engaging summary of an important chapter in American theatre history. Now safe from the 30s-era anti-Communist backlash that …
Performing Arts April 6, 2022

A Revolution in Three Acts

The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, and Julian Eltinge

David Hajdu and John Carey

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Too often, vaudeville is seen from the perspective of its decline: it is the corny, messy art form that predated the book musical, or that gave us Chaplin, Keaton, and …
Performing Arts March 10, 2022

Kraftwerk

Future Music from Germany

Uwe Schütte

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Uwe Schütte's Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany (Penguin, 2021) is not your typical rock star biography. Eschewing gossipy interpersonal details, Schütte instead contextualizes Kraftwerk within contemporaneous debates about German cultural identity in …
Performing Arts March 9, 2022

The Thanksgiving Play / What Would Crazy Horse Do?

Larissa FastHorse

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Larissa FastHorse's new collection of plays includes the wildly successful plays The Thanksgiving Play/What Would Crazy Horse Do? (Theatre Communications Group, 2021). In both plays, FastHorse explores issues facing contemporary Native …
Performing Arts March 4, 2022

Putting It Together

How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George"

James Lapine

Hosted by Andy Boyd
James Lapine's Putting it Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George" (FSG, 2021)  is a fascinating behind the scenes look at the creation of a modern masterpiece. Through …