InterAct Theatre Company's world premiere of Mary Tuomanen's MARCUS/EMMA brings together Jewish immigrant and anarchist Emma Goldman and Jamaican immigrant and pan-African movement leader Marcus Garvey. Both were turn-of-the-20th-century activists deported from the United States, and in Tuomanen's drama, they meet in a sort of purgatory for a no-holds-barred, sex-fueled, bloody-minded battle to rekindle the smoldering flames of their legacies.

In this REP Radio interview, Akeem Davis, who plays Garvey, and Susan Riley Stevens, who plays Goldman, discuss what their characters' lives and actions mean today and how much more relevant they've become since the presidential election. You might even say the world has turned into the show's director's notes! The play is also intensely physical, and the actors discuss how they prepared for their roles, the many contrasts between their characters, and the way those contrasts are highlighted by InterAct's design team.

Stevens has been acting professionally in Philadelphia since 2001, won a 2007 Barrymore Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in Act II Playhouse's production of Bad Dates. She also happens to be married to another Philly favorite, actor Greg Wood. Davis arrived in Philadelphia in 2011, has appeared on area stages almost constantly since then, and in 2015 won the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Artist.

On today's podcast, we met with Stephanie Feldman, Philadelphia writer and coordinator of the Philadelphia chapter of Writers Resist. This movement is designed to engage a community of authors, poets, filmmakers and the like to use their talents and shine a light on the fundamentals of democracy. Writers Resist will host a rally this weekend at the National Museum of American Jewish History with a plethora of local writers slated to speak.

The Writers Resist movement rapidly coalesced after poet Erin Belieu posted on Facebook, "We will not give in to despair. We will come together and actively help make the world we want to live in. We are bowed, but we are not broken."

Belieu's call for writers to organize local events in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day has already resulted in more than 50 events throughout the United States and around the world, including a flagship New York City event co-sponsored by PEN America, and additional events in Boston, Los Angeles, Oakland, Austin, Portland, Omaha, Seattle, London, Zürich, and Hong Kong.

Stephanie Feldman is one of the Philadelphia rally's organizers, with Alicia Askenase and Nathaniel Popkin. She is also a novelist, and a professor of fiction writing at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania.

For today’s podcast, I made my way to South Philly to hang out with 11th Hour Theatre Company. We talked about the upcoming production of LIZZIE, with music by Steven Cheslik-Demeyer and Alan Stevens Hewitt, lyrics by Steven Cheslik-Demeyer and Tim Maner, and book by Tim Maner. The show's director, Kate Galvin, and its Lizzie, Alex Keiper, take us back to 11th Hour's Next Steps Concert Series, when they first presented the musical, and we return to the present as they prepare to present the full production with some uniquely 11th Hour touches.

Perhaps you recall the dark rhyme, "Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks/When she saw what she had done she gave her father 41." LIZZIE takes a new look at the multiple controversies surrounding the 1892 murder of Borden's stepmother and father. We also talk about the company's trip to Borden's home in Fall River, Massachusetts, the power (or lack of power) of women past and present, an artistic focus for 2017, and what 11th Hour is looking forward to in the new year.

Stay tuned.

On this podcast, we interview White Pines Productions artistic director Benjamin Lloyd. Lloyd, a B.A. and M.F.A. Yale drama grad, has been a fixture as a Philadelphia actor for decades. He founded White Pines in 2009. The company operated out of the Elkins Park Gilded Age mansion Elkins Estate until 2012.

Since then, the company has moved to a storefront in Elkins Park's bustling business district, where they offer classes to adults, children, and people with special needs; produce original work; host a long- and short-form improv-based dinner theater with a three-course meal; host the Bright Invention improv ensemble; and offer off-site training programs. Here, Lloyd discusses his new model for arts organizations, the role companies like his serve in their neighborhoods, and the guiding philosophy behind White Pines's "community-based performing arts studio."