When I was a kid growing up, I went to public school in the Bronx, and it was in the sixth or seventh grade.

I had a math teacher. I'm sure he was a fine to good math teacher. The reason, however, that I remember him most is because I recall him, vividly recall him, taking an inordinate amount of time the year that I had him to have

us read and listen to the lyrics and music for the musical Les Misrable. So instead of teaching

math, he would play what I assume was the cast recording in class, and he would explain to us

what was going on in the story, and then eventually, we went to see a live Broadway performance of Les Mis. You're a lucky boy. Yeah, I think for some people, that would be the ideal math class. I cannot say it wasn't. I cannot say it was. All I remember is, why are we not learning math here? I feel like math will be more useful to me. This is what I was thinking at this age than theater. And buddies, I was wrong. Because theater has proven much more useful to me in life than math. At least today. At least today.

This is the Sunday special.

I'm Gilbert Cruz.

Joining me today is Jesse Green, a culture correspondent here at the Times and a longtime

theater critic for the paper.

Welcome, Jesse.

Thank you, Gilbert.

And Elizabeth Vincent Telly is the former chief theater critic for The New York Post and a regular arts and culture contributor to The Times. Hello, Elizabeth. Hello.

And I just want to start by saying, particularly given what the two of you do, that, of course, seeing theater live is the best possible way to experience it, but I think we all know that it's not

always possible, it's not always accessible, it can be rather expensive sometimes. So today,

we're going to talk about all the ways to experience theater if you cannot actually get there.

Jesse, what was your first encounter with theater before you ever saw a live performance?

Well, aside from my parents fighting in the house, I mean, that's just like Virginia Woolf, right there. That's very dramatic, yes.

Yeah, no, cast albums, I I think like most people of my generation,

and my parents had, among the jazz and classical and opera, they had a lot of the classic

musical theater, guys and dolls, carousel, Oklahoma, things like that, and they were in regular

rotation in our house, and regular rotation, what did that mean? I mean, you didn't exactly have a playlist. You just picked up the LP. Yes, they were LPs. And you put them on the turntable. People are really into vinyl. Again, Jesse. They know exactly what you're talking about. Okay. Well, so my parents would go to Broadway and go see shows,

and they developed an interest in Sondheim, and we didn't know who that was, and they would bring back cassette tape recordings. And I, we had a cassette tape recording of a little night

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