Stephanie Torns Brings Broadway to EPIC Players

·32 min·3 clips

Broadway star Stephanie Torns reveals how performing as Elphaba led her to a deeply personal mission with neurodivergent actors.

Stephanie comes in through Broadway. The episode starts with her work in Wicked and Waitress, using those roles to show the stamina and focus that demanding theater asks for. Then EPIC Players pulls the conversation somewhere more personal. Stephanie talks about her board role with EPIC Players and what it means to support neurodivergent performers without turning that support into a grand speech. She sounds practical. She talks about learning people quickly, paying attention to how feedback lands, and changing the delivery when the first version does not help. AMDA gives her another angle on the same work. Teaching freshman musical theater students means meeting performers who arrive with different training, energy, confidence, and needs. That overlap becomes the point. Whether Stephanie is teaching at AMDA or working with EPIC, she keeps coming back to the person in front of her. Feedback is not one thing. Sometimes it needs to be direct. Sometimes it needs to be redirected. Sometimes the useful move is just noticing how someone actually learns. The host pushes that into roadblocks, and the conversation widens from access to theater's quieter problem: the ways performers get in their own way. Stephanie answers through EPIC's honesty. She likes that performers can name nerves, unreadiness, or uncertainty without making everyone guess. That openness teaches her too. She sees her own habit of putting on a face and pushing through nerves as if help is off limits. The Broadway thread stays in the room. Elphaba and other demanding roles still point to discipline, endurance, and the pressure to look ready. But the stronger part is simpler: theater teaching works best when access, feedback, nerves, and craft all belong in the same conversation. The ending turns toward show suggestions and building a musical theater community around the podcast.

As heard by us

Stephanie Torns connects Broadway craft with EPIC Players' individualized approach to feedback.

Stephanie Torns's work with EPIC Players gives this single-episode review a steady center: theater support shaped around how each neurodivergent performer actually receives guidance.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Want Broadway stamina turned toward an inclusive theater company where performers can name what they need without guessing games?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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