Hi, I'm Stage in Stages, Lynn Manuel Miranda, and you're listening to The Hamelcast.

Boots and cuts.

Boots and cuts.

Hey, everyone.

Welcome back to the Hamelcast.

I'm Jillian, and this is my friend Robbie Roselle's second episode.

Robbie's a renowned and beloved cabaret artists. He's also a director, a collaborator, a prolific producer,

Housewives officionado, and someone who really, truly, genuinely, and unabashedly loves musicals.

Musicals were there for him when he was a gay teenager living through the AIDS crisis at its most terrifying,

and navigating a very dark time personally.

Robbie would watch The Wizard of Oz and Bye Bye Birdie to escape the darkness and just find some joy.

Musical saved him, and that's why Robbie has made it his life's work to preserve and create cast albums.

Even when he was living in upstate New York, working at that old music store, the wall. Remember the wall with the blue stickers? Yeah, he was putting his entire

paycheck back into the store because he was buying cast albums. He had to get a second job at

Arby's to make money for other much less important things. The idea of parallel lives is a

throughline in Robbie's story, and so is his very strong desire to, as he says, be of service.

So it makes sense that while Robbie was the creative director of Playbill,

he was also working with people on their solo cabaret shows.

Robbie always shut down the idea of performing himself

until he heard the immortal words of Jan Maxwell.

She said, you have to make your own work.

Choose yourself and others will choose you.

...