This Week on Broadway for September 1, 2024: Billy Recce

BROADWAYRADIO

09/1/24

Billy Recce,James Marino,Michael Portantiere,Peter Filichia

This Week on Broadway for September 1, 2024: Billy Recce

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Peter Filichia, James Marino, and Michael Portantiere talk with Billy Recce. Michael reviews Cats: The Jellicle Ball. Peter reviews Unentitled @ 59e59, The Bleeding Class @ 59e59, and Pretty Perfect Lies @ The Flea Theater.

“This Week on Broadway” has been coming to you every week since 2009. It is the longest-running running Broadway and theatrical podcast with hundreds of shows giving thousands of reviews and interviews.

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Panel:

Peter Filichia | [email protected] | Facebook
PETER FILICHIA is a playwright, journalist, and historian with a number of books. Peter’s new day-by-day wall calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – will be released on October 15th, but is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Peter also has columns at Masterworks Broadway, Broadway Select, and many other places.

Michael Portantiere | [email protected] | Facebook
MICHAEL PORTANTIERE is a theater reviewer and essayist. He is the founder and editor of CastAlbumReviews.com. He is also a theatrical photographer whose photos have appeared in The New York Times and other major publications. You can see his photography work at FollowSpotPhoto.com.

Michael reports on Marilyn Maye’s show last week in P-town.

James Marino | [email protected] | Facebook
BroadwayStars

Note: This week we had listeners join us while recording. These listeners are Patreon members who support BroadwayRadio. If you would like to join us in the future, become a supporter at Patreon.com/BroadwayRadio.

Pre:

Guest: Billy Recce (website)

Billy Recce is a Billboard charting, Songwriter, Performer and Playwright living in New York City.
One of the most prolific young musical theatre writers of his generation, Billy’s career began with the award winning and international headline making Balloon Boy: The Musical, for which he was the youngest writer ever selected for the New York Musical Theatre Festival at 17. It has since been produced across the country.

By the time he was a senior at Fordham University, he had already penned the music and lyrics to a hit off-broadway musical; the long running “A Musical About Star Wars,” which transferred to St. Luke’s Theatre for a year long run after an initial run at Theatre Row. Its cast album is available on Broadway Records. In 2022, it began an Open Ended run on the Las Vegas Strip at the V Theatre. In the summer of 2023, Billy achieved the rare feat of having three musicals simultaneously running Off-Broadway. In 2024, Billy opened FIVE: The Musical Parody Off-Broadway.

Before he was of legal drinking age, Billy had co-authored songs for Bernadette Peters, Mandy Patinkin, Laura Benanti and Tituss Burgess on “The Birds and the BS with Jordan Roth,” served as the head writer and composer of the Award Winning BroadwayWorld sitcom “Rachel Unraveled” and sold out 54 Below several times with his traveling “Snowflake Jamboree” concerts.

In 2018, Billy won his first MAC Award for Comedy Song, and repeated his win in the same category in 2020. In 2017, Recce was the recipient of the York Theatre Company NEO Award. In October 2018, his debut album “The Perks of Being A Snowflake” was released on all music platforms.

In 2021, Broadway Records released the All-Star Concept Recording of his Theatrical Rock Concert about the life of Heidi Fleiss, “Little Black Book,” featuring Alice Ripley, Lillias White, Jessica Vosk, Orfeh, Mandy Gonzalez and more. The album debuted at #11 on the Billboard Charts and #6 on the Apple Music charts. He has been an artist in residence at the Orchard Project Greenhouse, a recipient of the Sloan Comission/EST grant, a recipient of a Bushwick Starr grant, a semi-finalist for the inaugural Relentless Musical Award, a NAMT finalist, a two time Wallowitch Award finalist, a 2023 O’Neill Semifinalist, and a 2022 Jonathan Larson Grant Finalist.

His work has been performed at 54 Below, The New Amsterdam, Broadway in Bryant Park, Lincoln Center, The Tilles Center, The Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre, Ars Nova, The York Theatre, The Green Room 42 and beyond. His TYA work has recently been singled out in The NY Times. Recently, he has been creating short form musical content on TikTok, amassing over 2 Million views in his first month on the app.

He is a proud member of ASCAP and the Dramatists Guild.

Fowl Play

Reviews:

MP: Cats: The Jellicle Ball @ Perelman Performing Arts Center through September 8, 2024

PF: Unentitled @ 59e59, through September 1, 2024

PF: The Bleeding Class @ 59e59, through September 1, 2024

PF: Pretty Perfect Lies @ The Flea Theater, through September 8, 2024

Discussion:

Sardi’s Restaurant: An oral history of Broadway’s cafeteria by Patrick Pacheco

Next Week:

Peter’s Brainteaser:

What could have been said about Diana Rigg on Sunday, March 27, 1994?