BWW Blog: Meet Julie Kotarides-Lubeck and Stephanie Gibson of 'Dates, Mates & Clean Slates!'

Hello BroadwayWorld Readers!

We are the ladies of Dates, Mates & Clean Slates, a comedic web series about two girls (that's us! Julie & Stephanie!) who give well intentioned, but hilariously misguided dating advice to those who call in to their radio show seeking love advice. We are currently in the middle of shooting our next season of episodes, which we are super pumped about! (Last season we had some pretty awesome Broadway guest stars like Santino Fontana, Stephanie Martignetti, Clifton Samuels, Laura Irion & more!) But before we get into all of that, we will give you a little background on how this web series came to be!

It went a little like this: Steph & Julie meet as teens at a B'way summer intensive (neat!), they reconnect again when they attend college together in Cincinnati (cool!), they move to NYC and book a first national tour together, thus finally solidifying them as the best friends they always knew they were destined to be (what, what!). Finally, after years of friendship, a light bulb goes off! Hey! We have the same sense of humor, love to laugh & get a kick out of playing off one another. Let's do a show together! Julie went home, opened her computer and within ten minutes the first episode was written. Thus, Dates, Mates & Clean Slates was born! (Tada!) Julie dabbled in sketch comedy previously (check out her homage to A Chorus Line - Vicky Vickers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8kUYRyZTO0), but since then, had trouble finding a concept that she felt inspired by. It's amazing how once you find an idea that excites you, the writing happens almost effortlessly. From there, we filmed the episodes, improving what was written on the page with improv ideas between the two of us in front of the camera (90% of the time we literally laugh until our stomach hurts). Our friends graciously offered their talents on the other end of the camera, and that's that! An idea that turned into a show. To top it off, BroadwayWorld features our episodes on their site! (Yippeee!)

That catches you up to now! Over the past two months we've been brainstorming ideas, getting the website together and on the daily tweeting funny advice about love on our twitter page. (Follow us! @datesmates) The process goes a little like this: Julie writes the episodes. From there, she shares them with Steph, who helps tweak and improve them and then together we run them by anyone and everyone who will listen, hopefully laugh and give input! (Endless thanks to Evan Lubeck, Stephanie Martignetti, Tyler Marcum, Danica Dora, the list goes on...) We started filming this week! Here are some photo's of us from our shoot on Monday. We've also stepped it up a notch and got the brilliant Gregg Monteith on the team to film and edit. There he is setting up the equipment. (What a guy!) We have some cool events coming up, exciting guest-star callers this season and even more Julie/Steph ridiculousness than you're ready for. Can't wait to share it all with you this month on BroadwayWorld. That's all for now! Check out previous episodes here: http://www.datesmatesandcleanslates.com/. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8kUYRyZTO0)