THEATER TALK Celebrates Roundabout Theatre Company's 50th Year This Weekend

An all-new THEATER TALK presents an interview with the artistic leadership of New York's Roundabout Theatre Company - Artistic Director Todd Haimes, Associate Artistic Director Scott Ellis, and the Director of Artistic Development and Casting Jim Carnahan. The trio charts the history and producing philosophy of the institution, now a mind-boggling -- to those who remember its modest beginnings in 1965 -- 50 years old.

With Roundabout now one of the largest and most successful not-for-profit theatres in the U.S., Haimes paints a colorful story of its early years - involving "bankruptcy, tax fraud and embezzlement" -- and how his decision to get an MBA proved to be invaluable after he joined the organization in 1983. Today the Roundabout has five theatres - three of them Broadway houses. Does Haimes ever suffer any trepidation? "I live in a constant state of terror," he reveals.

Always assured of a strong subscription base - some 15,000 in the early years and now up to more than 30,000 - the Roundabout celebrates this season with a revival of a musical it first revived almost 23 years ago - She Loves Me, its first musical ever, and a hit to boot. Today the Roundabout presents notable musical revivals, classic plays and adaptations, and - in its Underground "black box" beneath the Laura Pels Theatre - works by young playwrights like Stephen Karam, who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Sons of the Prophet (2011) and is now seeing a Broadway transfer of his latest Roundabout offering, The Humans.

Hosted by Susan Haskins and her substitute co-host, New York Magazine drama critic Jesse Green, this latest edition of THEATER TALK premieres in the New York metropolitan area today, January 22 (2016) at 1:30 AM (early Saturday morning) and Sunday 1/24 at 11:30 AM on Thirteen/PBS; on CUNY TV* Saturday 1/23 at 8:30 PM, Sunday 1/24 at 12:30 PM, and Monday 1/25 at 7:30 AM, 1:30 PM, and 7:30 PM; and on WLIW/21 on Monday 1/25 at 5:30 PM - a total of 8 showings.

THEATER TALK is jointly produced by the not-for-profits Theater Talk Productions and CUNY TV. The program is taped in the Himan Brown TV and Radio Studios at The City University of New York (CUNY) TV in Manhattan, and is distributed to 100+ participating public television stations nationwide. THEATER TALK is made possible in part by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The CUNY TV Foundation, and The Friends of THEATER TALK.