Matt Baume

The day this episode comes out (March 26, 2026), is the 115th birthday of renowned playwright Tennessee Williams. And to mark the occasion, we’re heading into the Sewers archives to hear my 2020 interview with writer William V. Madison, whose career was inspired in part by a moving experience in col

The second of the Wicked films comes out later this month, and so for this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris podcast we’re jumping into the archives to hear my 2017 chat with Tony winner Stephen Oremus, who was the music director for Wicked on Broadway and conducted the orchestras for the two Wi

My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is the Reverend Joseph Peters Matthews, the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick Episcopal Church in Lynnwood Washington. Joseph’s path to the clergy took him from the small-town South to New York City, along the way developing a love for musical theater that he p

You may have seen that this week’s bonus video is about a bizarre Broadway-ish show called Let My People Come. It’s a musical so strange I couldn’t believe it was real the first time I heard of it — which happened right here on this podcast several years ago. For this week’s episode of the Sewers of

Picture it: New York, 1974, and you're going out on the town for a night of classy theatrical delights ... at a new off-Broadway show called Let My People Come. This was an absolutely real, actual show that became an unlikely hit, and also touched off a years-long controversy (but not for the reason

You've probably never heard of the Workshop of the Player's Art, but this grungy little 99-seat theater had a colossal impact on American culture -- and helped save Disney animation in the 90s. In this week's bonus video I want to tell you about how a bunch of scrappy theater kids managed to turn a

Hello there! For this week's bonus video, we're heading back in time to a scrappy little off-off Broadway theater where a frustrated lyricist named Howard Ashman has decided he's going to make a musical out of the weirdest material imaginable: A schlocky B-movie about a killer plant from space. It s

Hello there! I just got back from my big trip to New York & Toronto and boy are my arms tired. I got a TON of great research done in some performing arts archives, and I'll share some highlights with you here: The original flyer for Little Shop of Horrors, a picture of Lucille Ball getting eaten by

This week, March 17, marks 54 years since the premiere of the groundbreaking film The Boys in the Band. Set in a New York apartment in the 1960s and based on the play by Mort Crowley, it was one of the first major movies to feature majority-queer characters. And to mark that 54th birthday, for this

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is historian Eric Gonzaba, whose fascinating work includes the Wearing Gay History archive — a collection of vintage queer t-shirts — and Mapping the Gay Guides, an accounting of queer travel guides from the 60s and 70s. Eric’s interest in history was

My guest on The Sewers of Paris podcast this week is actor Ray Stewart, who first came to my attention in the role of Darryl Driscoll on the '70s sitcom Barney Miller. Ray played half of a same-sex couple at a time when such characters were vanishingly rare. But you’ve also seen him on everything fr

Hello there! In this week's bonus video, we're exploring the wild, creative, often-cutthroat party games invented by puzzle-masters Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins. Stephen of course you know from West Side Story, Into the Woods, Company, Sweeney Todd ... and Anthony you know from Psycho and it

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast spent eight years auditioning for Drag Race before he was accepted and his life completely changed. Alexis Michelle, aka Alex Michaels, was a theater performer when he discovered a love of drag, and gradually figured out how to turn his hobby into his

My guest this week is Bret Shuford, one half of the couple that calls themselves the Broadway Husbands. Bret met his husband Steven while they were both working on Broadway, and they started a blog about their lives together before embarking on their latest adventure — raising a kid. I’ll be talking

Hello there! Well this sure has been a weird week. If you haven't heard, I've been dealing with a bout of vertigo that's forced me to push back some projects, including this week's episode of The Sewers of Paris and a Modern Family video that I'd wanted to have out today. Apologies for having to del

My guest this week is David Pevsner, writer, actor, and erotic blogger. His book Damn Shame, a memoir of desire, defiance, and show tunes comes out in January (it’s available for pre-order now) and catalogs his adventures on Broadway and on TV, as an escort, and as a naked Tumblr star. It all starts

Thanks to everyone who sent me clips & pics & memories of queer Broadway stuff (just in time for the Tonys!) after the last bonus video -- I love it! Keep it coming! Here's some highlights of stuff I missed (and at least one thing I got wrong), along with a never-meant-to-air video of the All in the

Just TRY to shut me up once I start talking about showtunes, I DARE YOU. In this overlong bonus video, we take a look at some of the queer stuff happening on Broadway in the 1970s, from the first openly gay villain (played by Star Trek's Rene Auberjonois! Hear him sing here!) to the fun fancy farce

My guest this week is a writer who’s found a way to blend an unlikely combination of genres — comedy and food writing. You may know Adam Roberts for his blog and his cookbook, The Amateur Gourmet, or from his work as a writer on the show The Real O’Neals. None of this was supposed to happen — Adam’s

My guest on The Sewers of Paris podcast this week is Jeffrey Masters, host of the podcast LGBTQ&A. He moved to LA with a plan to make it big as an actor, which doesn’t always work out for the best — and for a time, it looked like things were going south as he found that his Shakespearean training le

My guest this week is Ravi Roth. You may know him from his travel series Ravi Round the World, or his new show Gaycation, where he visits queer hotspots across the globe. Ravi knew from an early age that he loved performing, and for a time he was laser-focused on making it to Broadway. But once he w

This week’s guest is John Epperson — also known by his stage name, Lypsinka, who you might’ve seen in the documentary Wigstock, in the movie Black Swan, and gracing New York stages from the legendary Pyramid Club to Lincoln Center. John moved from small town Mississippi to New York to chase a dream

Hello and welcome to the Sewers of Paris. This week’s guest, Terry LaBolt, was suggested to me by a Sewers of Paris listener, and I’m so glad that they did. Terry has an absolutely amazing collection of stories from across his career, starting as a young kid transfixed by musical theater, then later

I’m very excited to bring you this week’s guest — the fabulous actor and playwright Charles Busch, who first rose to prominence in the 1980s with the show Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and followed up with such hits as Die Mommy Die, Psycho Beach Party, and The Allergist’s Wife, for which he earned a To

My guest this week has a had a lot of jobs and a lot of adventures, from working on Broadway shows to producing the news alongside Dan Rather, singing to Angela Lansbury, earning a nickname from Fidel Castro, and writing the biography of Madeline Kahn. William Madison knew he had a passion for creat

My guest this week is Devlyn Camp, creator of the wonderful podcast Mattachine, which tells the story of the work that preceded the modern queer liberation movement. Devlyn is surprisingly young for someone with so close a connection to the past. But with their historical storytelling, they’re able

This bonus episode has two guests: Mitch and Greg are the creators of the super popular YouTube series ASAP Science. They met years ago through a Facebook hack, and grew close as they searched for a way to blend their love of science and art. Now they've built a quirky queer science empire together,

Where do you see yourself 200 years in the future? My guest this week is artist Nayland Blake, for whom sci-fi and fantasy were an opportunity to create the future that he was sure he'd never have. Growing up in New York in the 1960s and 70s, it seemed like imaginary worlds were his only opportunity

According to the FBI, my guest this week was involved in one of the largest fraud schemes in history -- the nearly half-billion dollar failure of the National Heritage Life Insurance Company, which had 26,000 elderly policyholders. While Michael Blutrich was involved in the insurance scheme, he was

Is it a problem that there's "sex" in "homosexual"? My guest this week is Eric Marcus, a writer and journalist who often found himself called upon to represent the model gay man on shows like Good Morning America and The O'Reilly Factor. For years, Eric strove to put across an image of respectabilit

My guest this week started his musical career at a neighborhood friend's piano, hanging out and playing showtunes. These days he's doing pretty much the same, but he's accompanying Broadway stars and winning Tonys. Stephen Oremus worked on The Book of Mormon, Avenue Q, Frozen, and 9 to 5, among many