Happy New Year!
I thought I’d do a year in review roundup again. As I said last year, I’m not one for New Year’s as a holiday. In fact, I hate New Year’s and I wrote a song about it. But I do love taking stock of a specific period of time, and the secular new year cycle provides a nice timeline for that.
Over New Year’s week and weekend I was busy finishing up my 2025 books, TV, movies, and theater lists and rankings. Here is each one:
2025 Movies
2025 Theater
2025 Books and Podcasts
2025 TV
Theater!
Composer and bookwriter Hyeyoung Kim and I presented a successful and beautiful reading presentation of our musical A Story No One Knows! I’m so grateful for this reading and for our amazing cast, band, sound crew, stage manager, the awesome space NoFlex, our producer, and our incredible director Joe Barros.
More 2025 writing/theater highlights:
- Put together a cabaret with Julia Meinwald at the Duplex in NYC titled Everybody Says Not to Be This Way: Songs of Julia Meinwald and Shoshana Greenberg. The show featured a set of songs with music by Julia Meinwald and a set of songs with lyrics by me. Highlights included debuting two new songs, as well as some songs that went all the way back to my NYU days, including songs from William Finn’s class in his memory.
- Spoke at a special event at the Drama Book Shop on Thursday, January 30th with author Alvin Eng. As a member of the board of the Thornton Wilder Society, I was in discussion with him on his book Our Laundry, Our Town, a memoir that decodes and processes the fractured urban oracle bones of Alvin Eng’s upbringing in Flushing, Queens, in the 1970s. Finding his way in the downtown theater and performance world of Manhattan, he discovered the under-chronicled Chinese influence on Thornton Wilder’s foundational Americana drama, Our Town. Listen to it on the Broadway Podcast Network or wherever you get your podcasts.
- Presented at the StageStruck! VI: Women and the American Musical conference and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. on the musical Inner City. My presentation gave an overview of this hidden gem in musical theater history and why it should be seen as an important milestone for women writers thanks to the work of writers Helen Miller and Eve Merriam who were fascinating figures in the musical theater canon. Here is a link directly to my session. I am 3rd, so about an hour in. You can also watch all the sessions by going to this list.
Screenwriting!
I graduated from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, & Television Professional Program in Writing for Television (Comedy)! From September 2024 to June 2025 I took three 10-week online classes in which I wrote a spec script and two pilots. I also had lectures and Q&As with different teachers as well.
Podcasts!
I’ll start with my own musical theater podcast, Scene to Song.
I released 13 episodes during Scene to Song season eight with awesome guests talking about a range of topics in musical theater, from Tim Rice, Benny Andersson, and Björn Ulvaeus’s Chess to The Intersections of Musical Theater Writers William Finn and Jonathan Larson. Listen to them all wherever you get podcasts.
I also continued to put out the Scene to Song monthly newsletter, as well as add bonus content to the Scene to Song Patreon. I also started the Scene to Song YouTube channel and started working with someone to enhance the podcast.
I was also a guest on two other podcast episodes this year! I love being a guest.
- Thank you so much to Li Grado for having me on her podcast State of the Arts! We covered so much of my artistic life in this 23 minute interview. Listen to it on Spotify.
- My talk with Alvin Eng at the Drama Bookshop is finally available as a podcast episode! Listen to it on the Broadway Podcast Network or wherever you get your podcasts.
Everything Else!
- Published two articles in American Theatre magazine and The Hat.
- Served on the board on the Thornton Wilder Society, putting out monthly member emails, running the Facebook page and updating the website, and organizing Zoom play and book readings. Interested in becoming a member and/or joining the readings? Learn more here or email thorntonwildersociety@gmail.com.
- Continued to take voice lessons with Innovative Voice Studio and performance classes with Tony-winner Randy Graff.
- Performed my arrangement of a Moonlighting Medley for the Moonlighting 40th Anniversary Party. The virtual event included star Cybill Shepherd and the writers and creator of Moonlighting.
- Traveled internationally to Paris, London, and Montreal. Also traveled to Austin and San Antonio, TX; Philadelphia, PA; Washington, DC; Los Angeles, CA; Milford, CT; and Beacon, NY.
- Ran three races in NYC/Central Park: the 4-mile Run As One race, the 3.5-mile JP Morgan Corporate Challenge, and the 5K Abbott Dash to the Finish.
- Celebrated 25 years in NYC and 13 years at my job.
- Ate a lot of biscuits at Harlem Biscuit Company and sweets from Make My Cake.
