Speech & Debate

Roundabout Underground's critically acclaimed musical Speech & Debate has been extended from Dec. 16 to Dec. 30, according to Variety. We interviewed star Jason Fuchs this week for the Culture Czar.

“The minute they asked me to do it, I thought, well these people are smart,” said Jason Fuchs, the 21-year-old stage and screen actor. “They recognize Jason Fuchs!” he joked, explaining his interest in starring in the Roundabout Underground’s production of Speech & Debate, currently playing until Dec. 16.

Staged by Jason Moore, the Tony-award winning director of Avenue Q, Speech & Debate focuses on three outsider-y students forced to form a speech and debate team while grappling with their sexual secrets in the doldrums of Salem, Ore.

Diwata (played by the Philly-based actress Sarah Steele) is one of those eccentric theater types who has her own blog and podcast, on which she performs songs about the high school theater teacher being a “crap sandwich” for not casting her in the school’s production of “Once Upon a Mattress.” Howie (played by Gideon Glick, who was Ernst in the Tony-winning original cast of Spring Awakening) is the new kid. Transplanted from Portland, he has been out since elementary school and wants to form a Gay Straight Alliance group. Mr. Fuchs plays Solomon, a nerdy student who wears his shorts a little too high, babbles with a slight lisp and takes competition and school work just a little too seriously (think of a less-rageful version of Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick in 1999’s Election). Solomon is doggedly researching an article for the school newspaper about a town sex scandal and doesn’t know when to stop asking questions.  read more »