Laurence Maslon,Host

Laurence Maslon is an arts professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he also serves as Associate Chair of the Graduate Acting Program. He is the host and producer of the radio series Broadway to Main Street on NPR station WLIW-FM. The program received the 2019 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor Award for Radio Broadcast.

Maslon is an accomplished author, producer, and cultural historian. His most recent book is the updated third edition of the companion volume to the PBS series Broadway: The American Musical, published in 2020. He also authored Broadway to Main Street: How Show Music Enchanted America, published by Oxford University Press in 2018. His additional books include The Sound of Music Companion, The South Pacific Companion, and Superheroes: Capes, Cowls, and the Creation of Comic Book Culture, which accompanied the PBS series he also wrote.

In television and film, Maslon has served as writer and coproducer on several acclaimed documentaries. These include Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me, broadcast on PBS as part of the American Masters series in 2019, and Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest Sounds in 2001. He also cowrote the PBS series Make ’Em Laugh with producer and director Michael Kantor, earning an Emmy nomination for Best Writing for a Documentary. In addition, he contributed to two episodes of the Emmy-winning Broadway: The American Musical and its companion volume.

Maslon served on the Tony Awards nominating committee from 2007 to 2010. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Opera News, Stagebill, and American Theatre. His upcoming book, I’ll Drink to That!: Broadway Cocktails, is scheduled for publication in 2023.