Adam Rudman (Nature Cat)
Sesame St, Donkey Hodie, and more!
Thrill
As I mentioned previously, 2025 is the 20th anniversary of The Thrilling Adventure Hour, the stage show and podcast I created with my writing partner, Ben Acker. To celebrate, we’re hitting a bunch of cities with our amazing cast that includes Paul F. Tompkins, Paget Brewster, Marc Evan Jackson, Busy Philipps, Joshua Malina, and more, as well as special, surprise guests.
TIX FOR LA, CHICAGO, NY, AND LONDON ARE NOW ON SALE HERE.
Our kickoff show was in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, and it was a wonderful warm-up to these shows, with which I have a complicated relationship. But when we get the gang together, and I get to hang out and work with these incredibly talented people whom I can’t believe I’ve known for two decades, all of the complications fall away.
They are a disarmingly warm, hilarious, and idiosyncratic group.
We lost one of our own in December: Andy Paley, our musical director for the decade-long regular run of the show, responsible for every earworm theme song in the show that Acker and I were lucky enough to co-write. Everyone in the cast has Paley stories, and we worked together to add a small tribute to Andy at the end of our SF show.
We hadn’t performed any of Andy’s songs in the ten years since we split with him, for no real reason other than we wanted the new version of the show to be a new version of the show. But, as you’ll see Marc Evan Jackson say in this video shot by Acker, in tribute to Andy, we performed the “WorkJuice Anthem” for the first time in a decade and for probably the last time ever. (“WorkJuice” was the name of the pretend-sponsor we invented for the show, which used to feature “ads” for coffee, Patriot Brand Cigarettes, and more).
Once again, LA, CHICAGO, NY, AND LONDON ARE NOW ON SALE HERE.
Q&A
Don't forget about tomorrow’s live Zoom Q&A with Heretic writers/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods! Details are here.
AND the next Q&A is right on this one’s heels": Sunday, Feb 16, at 11am PT/2pm ET, with Lisa Muse Bryant, a terrific writer who’s worked on shows like A Man on the Inside, Blackish, Primo, The Thundermans, and more. Her 6 Qs will be up next week.
The only way to attend and ask your Q’s (or to listen to the recording later) is to become a paid subscriber!
Can You Tell Me How to Get
On today’s Writers Panel, Emmy Award-winning kids TV showrunner/creator/writer, Adam Rudman (creator of Nature Cat, Donkey Hodie, Jack’s Big Music Show; head writer for Carl the Collector; writer for Sesame Street, and lots more) discusses pitching and selling pre-school series, the throughline in his shows, carrying on the traditions of Buster Keaton and Spongebob, and more.
Get the podcast via Apple or Spotify or Acast or your favorite podcast app.
How are we all holding up? You getting any writing done? Any advice for those who aren’t?