Billy Porter, Leslie Jones and Phoebe Robinson Launch Comedy Podcast Places, Dahlingz!
Billy Porter, Leslie Jones and Phoebe Robinson are hosting a new comedy podcast about live performance. The first episode of Places, Dahlingz! launches on 5 November, Deadline reported on 22 October.
A podcast is an audio show released in episodes that listeners download or stream. Places, Dahlingz! will run as a 48-part weekly comedy series, so new episodes arrive once a week. Acast Productions is producing the show in audio and video formats.
Each week the hosts interview Broadway stars. The announced guests include Shoshana Bean, Ariana DeBose and Renee Elise Goldsberry. Broadway is the New York theatre district, home to large musicals and plays.
Every interview ends with a twist. Guests contribute a prompt, a line or a musical seed, meaning a short musical idea to build on. The hosts and writers then turn those contributions into an original one-act show, which is a play performed in a single act.
The series builds to two events. It will end with a live finale performance and a recorded table read. A table read is when actors sit and read a script aloud, without staging, so the writing can be heard.
Evan Trevor Thompson, Rachel Borders and Jeff Kasanoff are the co-creators. Jenny Kaplan, Emily Rudder, DJ Gugenheim, and the three hosts are listed as executive producers, the people who oversee the project's business and creative direction. The show is an Acast Originals production, made in collaboration with Tiny Reparations and Incognegro.
An official trailer was set to launch on 22 October, the same day the podcast was announced.
The format asks each guest to do more than talk. Their prompt or line becomes part of a finished piece of theatre, and the series ends on a live stage rather than a studio microphone. The first episode is due in a little over two weeks.
