Interview: Dan Fishbach of THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF MUSICAL THEATRE

1950s Landmark Musicals for One Night Only at The Odyssey Theater of West LA

By: Gavin Glynn Aug. 01, 2026

Interview: Dan Fishbach of THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF MUSICAL THEATRE Image

Dan Fishbach has been a theatre director, producer and teacher for 30 years. Recent directing credits include Crazy For You and Noises Off (Oklahoma City,) Side by Side by Sondheim, Jacques Brel…, (Odyssey Theatre) Assassins (Pico Playhouse/Broadway World Award Nom.), the international tour of One Night Stand: An Improvised Musical for producer Marc Platt (Wicked), Steven Dietz’s Private Eyes, Nicky Silver’s The Maiden’s Prayer (The Raven Theatre), the world premier of Anthony Mora’s play Silencing Silas, Bat Boy: The Musical, as well as HAIR (collaboration with original author James Rado,) The 25th Annual Putnam Co. Spelling Bee, Chicago, Company and Spring Awakening (USC’s School of Dramatic Arts.)

Dan has been on the faculty at Oklahoma City University (Theatre & Musical Theatre Faculty,) USC School of Dramatic Arts (Directing & Musical Theatre Faculty,) Cal Poly Pomona, Santa Monica College, The American Musical and Dramatic Academy (where he developed and taught courses in the History of Musical Theatre), and Harvard-Westlake School, where he was Head of Performing Arts for six years. From 2006-2008 Fishbach he was the Executive Director of The Groundlings Theatre and School. Dan (with Mark Kaufmann) is the co-founder of The Los Angeles Musical Theatre Studio, a training ground for professional actors.

Dan is also a graduate of Kenyon College (Gambier, OH) , and is a proud member of SDC (Society of Directors & Choreographers) and AEA (Actors Equity Association.) Dan took ten minutes to answwer ten questions about his journey leading up to this spectacular production of The Complete History of the American Musical series at the famed Odyssey Playhouse in West L.A.

What constellation presided over your birth and in what lucky town?

Aries/Taurus in April, at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, CA.

Can you pull up a sense memory of your earliest reconnaissance of the first live performance and who brought you but who was on stage?

I remember being mesmerized as a kid by Doug Henning in The Magic Show. I also was lucky enough to see Yul Brynner on tour in The King and I. My parents brought me to both. They were transformative experiences. I wanted to be on stage doing what those performers did. Perhaps, less Brynner at the time because he died on stage as The King!

Who was the kind voice who saw you had natural talent for the stage but when did you believe it?

My parents always encouraged me to perform (and got no pushback from me!). I was an amateur magician and loved being onstage. But, my 6th grade science teacher and first mentor, Norman Cagle, directed me in the school production of Little Mary Sunshine. He was probably the first one who saw something in me, and I believed him. It was my second mentor in high school, Ted Walch, who sealed the deal for me, and also made me want to teach.

How were were your parents suportive in the pursuit of your dreams for the live stage?

Incredibly supportive. I’m very lucky to have a family who has supported all of my theatrical endeavors. My parents have never missed a show. Even after I became a director my parents have continue to support everything I do.

Did you train classically in one place or steal from the masters on the road?

I majored in theatre at Kenyon College, studied acting and directing outside of schools as well, but I’m a big believer that an artist in the theatre must have what my friend and teacher Joanna Gleason calls “full pockets.” That is, I think the best training for an artist takes place outside of a traditional classroom and in the world that they live in. I’ve found that the material I draw upon the most in my work are music, visual art, literature, and life experience. If art imitates life, we’ve got to have enough life stuff at our disposal to draw from. Even though I’m a product of, and have taught in plenty of institutions that will gladly take a lot of money from you to teach you very important (!) skills like How to Make a Podcast and Medical Clowning, you can often get as valuable an education for free by opening your eyes. There’s an incredible book that influenced me a lot called “Acting: The First Six Lessons” by Richard Boleslavsky. Lesson One is all about observation and its value to an artist. I’ve never forgotten it.

Which production called you through the doors of fate to join Actors
Equity Association?

I actually joined doing after doing She Loves Me at The Paul Bunyan Playhouse in Bemidji, Minnesota, an incredible summer stock theatre. I think I was 15.

When did you have the eureka moment where you could make a living in live performances?

Wait that’s a thing? I don’t think I’ve had that moment yet.

Live orchestra Vs. augmented tracks and how important is the song list in a one night only revue especially with higher tix and gas prices?

Performing with tracks is like delivering dialogue to a prerecorded actor: you lose the give-and-take that makes a performance alive. A live orchestra is the music breathing with you in the room. It’s essential.

For a one-night-only revue, the song list is equally important. Audiences are paying more for tickets, parking, gas, dinner, and sometimes childcare, so the evening has to feel genuinely special. You want to give them the songs they came hoping to hear, but also surprise them with something they didn’t know they needed. Every song has to earn its place.

Where do you stand professionally on the Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber complaint: Broadway musicals are too cost prohibitive? Pop stars
replacing Broadway trained stars to make box office numbers? ... and Timothy Chalamet's prediction that ballet is dead?

This may be the first thing ALW has put down that I can appreciate. He’s right. All theatre is too cost prohibitive these days, and it makes the sort of experimentation and ground breaking that moves any art form forward impossible. Art in its finest form demands experimentation and risk taking. Groundbreaking theatre rarely begins at Broadway scale. It begins in rooms like New York Theatre Workshop, Ars Nova, Soho Rep or Deaf West, where the stakes are small enough for the artistic risks to be enormous. Broadway may amplify the work, but these smaller theatres often invent it. I don’t object to pop stars appearing on Broadway simply because they are pop stars. Some are extraordinary theatre artists. The problem is when celebrity becomes a substitute for theatrical ability, or when casting decisions are driven almost entirely by the need to guarantee an advance. Broadway-trained performers spend years developing the stamina, vocal technique, and storytelling skills that eight performances a week demand. They shouldn’t become supporting players in their own profession simply because someone else has a larger social media following. And I don’t believe ballet - or any serious art form - is dead. Art forms don’t simply die; they either evolve, retreat into smaller spaces, or wait for someone to rediscover what makes them vital. The danger is not that audiences have suddenly stopped caring about challenging work. It’s that the economics make it increasingly difficult for challenging work to reach them. (Fun Fact: Broadway Musicals of the 1950s had "sing along songs", cohesive organic storylines with suggested sets but with realistic acting.)

You have played a lot of venues in Los Angeles but which ones are on your check list? Walt Disney Concert Hall, Pantages, The Broad of
Santa Monica, El Portal, Ahmanson, The Soraya of Northridge or The Geffen/UCLA?

It turns out that my best audience and venue are my 5-year-old son and my wife, in our living room. I’m happy with this!

The Complete History of American Musical Theater series returns to the Odyssey Theatre with an exploration of landmark shows, songs, artists and innovations from The 1950s that helped define the Golden Age of the American musical. Through engaging narration and live performances, the evening celebrates classics including Guys and Dolls, The King and I, My Fair Lady, West Side Story and The Music Man. Featured performers include Eileen Barnett, Camryn Hamm, Scott Harlan, Hayden Kharrazi, Tony nominee Mary Gordon Murray and Tony nominee Rory O’Malley, with narration by Dan Fishbach and Mark D. Kaufmann. One performance only takes place on Saturday, Aug. 8 at 8 p.m. The Odyssey Theatre is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90025. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to OdysseyTheatre.com.

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