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About Lewberger

Keith Habersberger is a member of internet sensations The Try Guys, boasting millions of subscribers and their own production company. Alex Lewis is an actor and comedian who can be seen on several TV shows and the movies All About Nina as well as the remake of MGM’s Valley Girl. Hughie Stone Fish is an Emmy Award-winning songwriter and a music producer/educator with a nonprofit bringing arts education to his hometown of Syracuse, New York.

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Ex Try Guys Member Ned Fulmer Spotted at Taylor Swift Concert With Wife One Year After Cheating Scandal

Former try guys member ned fulmer was seen with his wife ariel almost a year after news broke of his affair with a coworker, causing his exit from the popular youtube group..

Ned and Ariel Fulmer are shaking it off after a tumultuous year.

The former Try Guys member and his wife of 11 years were spotted at the August 5 Los Angeles stop on  Taylor Swift 's Eras Tour . The pair were seen together in photos Ned's sister  Grace Fulmer  shared to her Instagram Story August 6 as part of a recap from the concert. In the snap, which Grace captioned "afterrrr," Ned and Ariel posed with their hands up behind Grace and a fourth member as the group exited the stadium. 

The concert outing comes nearly a year after Ned swiftly exited the popular YouTube group he helped create after news of his affair with a colleague broke.

His fellow Try Guys cofounders Keith Habersberger ,  Zach Kornfeld  and  Eugene Lee Yang announced in a Sept. 2022 statement that Ned "is no longer working with The Try Guys" after rumors and images of Ned with a fellow employee began circulating on social media. The group cited a "thorough internal review" which did not allow for "a path forward together."

In a video posted shortly after, Eugene, Zach and Keith elaborated on the situation, including a timeline of events , as well as their feelings over the scandal. 

"On Labor Day weekend, multiple fans alerted us that they had seen Ned and an employee engaging in public romantic behavior," Keith began the October 3 video . "We reached out to check on that employee. Ned confirmed the reports."

After a review found Ned to have "engaged in conduct unbecoming of our team," Keith added, "We knew that we could not move forward with him. So on Friday, September 16, the three of us signed written consent of the members of the 2nd Try LLC approving the removal of Ned as a manager and employee."

"We were acutely aware of just how contrary this was to the values of the company we've built and those of everyone who works here," Eugene noted. "This is something we took very seriously. We refused to sweep things under the rug. That is not who we are. It's not what we stand for."

In addition to his immediate removal from the company, Ned was also edited out of all scheduled future content.

For his part, Ned issued a statement regarding the scandal the same day his exit was confirmed.

"Family should have always been my priority, but I lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship," he wrote on Twitter . "I'm sorry for any pain that my action may have caused to the guys and the fans but most of all to Ariel. The only thing that matters right now is my marriage and my children, and that's where I am going to focus my attention."

And though Ariel and Ned have not commented publicly on their relationship status, Ariel shared at the time that her family—namely sons Wes , 5, and Finley , 2—would always be her priority.

"Nothing is more important to me and Ned than our family," she wrote in a statement to Instagram. "And all we request right now is that you respect our privacy for the sake of our kids."

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Show Finder

Lewberger & The Wizard of Friendship: The Musical

Opening Date: Feb 23, 2023

Closing Date: Mar 26, 2023

Running Time: 01:50

Theatre Row - Theatre Two

410 West 42nd Street New York City, NY 10036

Age Guidance:  13

Show Notes:  1 intermission

COVID-19 Safety Information

Masks are optional but encouraged.

Audience Advisory:

Lewberger and the Wizard of Friendship: The Musical is recommended for ages 13+ for strong language, adult themes.

Performance Schedule:

WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY @ 7 PM FRIDAY @ 8 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY @ 2 PM

Keith Habersberger Alex Lewis & Hughie Stone Fish

Keith Habersberger, Alex Lewis & Hughie Stone Fish

TDF Tickets Offers:

TDF member tickets:

Not currently available for this show

Full-price tickets

$ 85 - $ 130

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Off-Broadway

By: RAVEN SNOOK

Accessibility:

The box office is street level and wheelchair accessible.

There are curb ramps on 9th Ave. or Dyer Ave.

Directions Bus

M42, M11, M16

Wheelchair accessible. On second floor lounge and on C level – (lower level)

Directions Subway

1, 2, 3, 7, S, A, C, E, N, R, Q, W to 42nd St/Times Square

Elevator\Escalator

Elevator to all floors

None on premises

Theatre is located on the second floor of the Theater Row complex, and is accessible by elevator. The building entrance is street level.

Visual Assistance

None available

Folding Armrests

Water Fountain

The fountain is wheelchair accessible. Lower level

Assisted Listening System

Available at the bar on the second floor. A photo ID is required to hold as a deposit.

Wheelchair Info

There is a designated area where there are removable seats

Theatre Two uses ParkWhiz - https://www.parkwhiz.com/theatre-row-parking/

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Interview: Viral Comedy Band Lewberger Talks First-Ever Musical THE WIZARD OF FRIENDSHIP

The Wizard of Oz meets Labyrinth meets We Sing in Lewberger's jukebox musical The Wizard of Friendship, featuring special Broadway guests and more!

Three-man comedy band Lewberger , featuring Keith Habersberger, Alex Lewis , and Hughie Stone Fish have been seen and heard by millions thanks to their viral songs, live performances, comedy special 'Lewberger: Live at Lincoln Hall ' on Amazon Prime, podcast 'Celebrity Theme Song' and appearances on America's Got Talent and NBC's Bring The Funny. Now Lewberger is making their Off-Broadway debut with their first-ever musical, THE WIZARD OF FRIENDSHIP running March 1st - March 26th at NYC's Theatre Row!

LATEST NEWS

THE WIZARD OF FRIENDSHIP follows Lewberger, who get into a fight so big it breaks the heart of the Wizard of Friendship. Lewberger is sent on a musical quest in NoFriendia, where they must venture to the Handsome Forest, through the Adults-only Haunted House, and many more wacky and whimsical places all while being guided by a giant sausage man.

The cast of THE WIZARD OF FRIENDSHIP features Brian Wohl, Nya Noemi, Shaq Hester, Emily Martínez, and Aria Renee Curameng.

Being presented in tandem with THE WIZARD OF FRIENDSHIP, you can also catch LEWBERGER IN CONCERT , as the boys perform their classic hits from their days at Buzzfeed to their most popular songs on Youtube and Tik Tok.

BroadwayWorld spoke with Lewberger about what went into the process of creating their first ever full-length musical!

Lewberger is making its Off-Broadway debut in March with https://cloud.broadwayworld.com/rec/ticketclick.cfm?fromlink=2207282&regid=&articlelink=https%3A%2F%2Fbfany.org%2Ftheatre-row%2Fshows%2Flewberger%2F?utm_source=BWW2022&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=article&utm_content=bottombuybutton1 . How are you all feeling about making your Off-Broadway debut?

How did the idea come about for you to create a full-scale musical?

Alex: Originally what had happened was we put out a comedy special about two or three years ago, and it went to Amazon Prime and all sorts of places, and we signed with a company that told us, "It's going to be great, it's going to be really exciting." And then pandemic hit, and we were thinking, "This is the perfect opportunity for us, because everyone is trapped at home with nothing to watch!" And nobody watched it! [laughs]. What ended up happening that same year was a lot of really fantastic comedy specials came out. You had Bo Burnham's 'Inside', our good friend Danny Jolles came out with these comedy specials that were filmed in a few different locations, everybody was being really creative with their comedy specials. And I said to the other guys, "We're not a normal standup act, we should create a musical, and that should be our next comedy special." So, that was sort of the genesis.

What did the creative process look like for this? Did you start with an idea? Did you start with a song and then build from there?

Hughie: So, a lot of these songs that are in the show are actually songs that we've been touring, and workshopping, and playing all across the country and online. We had this collection of songs, and we knew it was time for a new album, and we thought, "Let's not just release a new album, let's make something even bigger and grander with it." So, we wrote a narrative that actually works a lot of these songs in, and we made it make sense. It's such a fantastical musical we can say, "Okay, now we're going to the Handsome Forest where we're going to see the handsome trees, and we're all going to sing a song about four equally handsome boys!" And it allowed us to really make this zany narrative that jumps from place to place, but also makes sense.

And then similar to what Keith was saying, there was a lot of dividing and conquering. Alex really took the lead in getting this story together, and getting these pages together. And then Keith and I are pitching jokes, pitching story ideas. Then there's a new draft that we're changing. Now we're working on the album, I'm producing all the tracks and we're bringing it to Jay [Marcovitz], and then Jay is making it better. And then we're all coming to the studio, and then Jay and I are on Zoom for four hours. Then we're all getting back into the studio, then we're all listening to mixes. It's a lot of dividing and conquering, and unifying.

Alex: On top of that, Keith has been not only preparing to direct the whole thing, but he's also become this one-man video editing band, he's creating these amazing backgrounds and things that we're going to perform in front of. Because we're not doing physical sets, we're doing all digital sets, and Keith has created this amazing virtual show that's going to happen behind us. It's amazing.

Keith: Something we realized just the other week is this show encompasses all the skills and talents that we've developed over our lives, and it's all funneled into this one project. So, everything from knowing how to juggle, to knowing how to video edit, to knowing how to produce music, to singing, to dancing, to working with the lighting designer, it's everything.

Can I ask a little bit more about the process of creating the music? Does it start with a joke? Do you all work on one song? Do you each have specialties?

For some songs we're like, "This song is really great, for this show it's probably 40 seconds too long, so what's the most cut-able section?" Then we start removing stuff that's weaker until we whittle down into a unique song. And sometimes it's literally built off one joke. There is one joke we really love and, "How do we make a minute and a half song to get us to this joke, because this joke is so silly and fun." And some of it is like, this character in the musical, The Wizard of Friendship, the Wizard themself needs to be a star, so we need to give them a solo that feels like a pop diva moment in this otherwise sort of overture song that's about the Wizard of Friendship. We need to think about what these characters need, how these characters would sing, and the shape the song around them.

What is your favorite thing about working with one another?

Hughie: I can say, for me, Alex and Keith are both so talented and funny. The way that their brains think about comedy is so unique and awesome.

Keith: I think actually performing, when the three of us are on stage doing shows, is the most fun part of the job because there is lots and lots of work, some of it is not fun, some of it is super fun, but they all lead to this thing. Our jobs when we're on tour, we like to think of the job as everything up until we get on stage and after we get off stage, and on stage is like kind of actually the pay. The pay is always a question mark, I don't know how much we're going to make, but the pay is getting to perform songs that you wrote, and doing stupid dances that you wrote, and jokes that you wrote and you've written together, and getting to perform it for, whether its 100 people, or 300 people, or 800 people, either way, it's really fun and gratifying, and special. And it's rare when you get a really good cast of characters that have great chemistry, that are all as dedicated to the project, especially with something like a band, people don't all lift the same amount of weight, and I think everyone is all working equally as hard on this project because we care about it a lot.

Alex: Plus one to what Keith and Hughie said on both accounts, but these guys are both hilarious, funny people that I get to work with, which is really exciting, and I love getting to perform live with them, and on top of that, one of my favorite things is literally driving in the car for hours with them, and it's us making each other laugh all day. It's the funniest car rides you've ever been a part of, where we're all just not able to stop laughing. And a lot of creativity comes from those moments. When we wrote our classic song 'That Sausage is a Roasted D*ck!' we just were making each other laugh in Hughie's apartment with this dumb song over and over again, and it just lasted for the next few weeks, we would just keep singing it, like, "Well, I guess we should make this stupid line we keep singing into a song!"

And with the creation of The Wizard of Friendship, plot-wise, it's so wacky, and fun, and heartfelt. How did that idea come about? Who was like, "This is what our musical should be," and how did the building process go?

Keith: Well, Alex really loves David Bowie 's Labyrinth, and I grew up watching this really bizarre, straight to VHS folk song movies, they were called 'We Sing'. If you know what those are, they're really bizarre, but they're mostly just jukebox musicals for folk songs. And they are really good for four to seven year-olds to learn the basics of simple songs that you're going to hear for the rest of your life. But they always had this really bizarre production value, it was always kind of cheap, but also they poured a lot of money into the costumes, and they were both cute and kind of horrifying at the same time, and they were always clearly inspired by some sort of psychedelic, they are always traveling to another dimension through a rainbow tunnel. And so, we were like, "Okay, let's take elements of The Wizard of Oz, and Labyrinth, and We Sing, and combine it all together."

The story came from all those inspirations, and also figuring out how to make a jukebox musical of our songs. And it's funny to say that because some of these songs no one has ever heard before, so it's weird to be a jukebox musical in that sense. But for us, we've known these songs for a while, so compiling them in a way that makes them make sense. Also, the secret storyline going on in the show is that it's Hanukkah. So there's a lot of little Hanukkah references, and we also have some songs about latkes, and figuring out how to get these to make sense, and make them really bizarre. It's very mystical and goofy.

What would you like to say to audience members who are coming to see this show?

Hughie: I would like the audience members to come in and have a great time. We are going to be having the time of our lives up there, we are so excited to do this, we are all dancing every single day, singing every single day, working on every single aspect of this show, and the reason we are working so hard right now, is so that when we get to New York City, and the first show opens up, we can just get on stage and have a blast. So, our plan is to have the most fun possible there, and that's exactly what we want for the audiences.

Keith: Yeah, this is achieving a dream of ours, so it's great for audiences to come and experience that with us. We do so much stuff online where millions of people get to see it, this is a show where only 2300 people could see, that's the amount of shows we're doing in this theater. We're also doing Lewberger in Concert for 11 shows, which a totally different show, completely different music, so we have it that on the weekends you can come see both shows and get two different sets of songs, so about 35 different songs. So, a lot of music. It's cool, it's special. There's really nothing like live theater, there is nothing like putting up a musical in New York, you get to live our little dream with us and that's really cool.

Alex: Audience members will also probably be excited to know that we've got some really special guests that are planning to be a part of every show. If you've seen our TikTok duets, you'll know that we've got some really cool Broadway friends, and a lot of them are going to make little cameos, every show we're going to have a fun little cameo from a Broadway star.

Keith: Sometimes Broadway, maybe sometimes the world of YouTube, sometimes other characters from our lives, but there will be some special guest in every single show in this one little moment. It will be a fun little surprise every time. A fun little Easter egg.

@lewbergermusic Cell Block Tango from Chicago #fypシ #comedy #musicaltheatre #broadway #chicago #theatrekid ♬ original sound - lewberger

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How Lewberger Harnessed Their Live Performance and Social Media Savvy to Stage ‘The Wizard of Friendship’

Keith Habersberger, Alex Lewis and Hughie Stone Fish talk to The Hollywood Reporter about the (un)conventional ways they delivered a sold-out Off-Broadway musical as New York theater novices.

By Abbey White

Abbey White

Associate Editor & News Writer

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When it comes to creating buzzy online content for their hundreds of thousands of followers, the Lewberger trio — Keith Habersberger, Alex Lewis and Hughie Stone Fish — are mavericks.

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It’s also helped the band wrack up enough social capital to produce their own shows, including a very short L.A. run of what has since become an Off-Broadway musical, Lewberger & The Wizard of Friendship .

“This show is very much catered to the way that we interact together and catered to the way that our actual friendship is,” Lewis says. “The reason it’s about friendship is because friendship plays a big part of our comedy and a big part of our show.”

It’s a new endeavor for the group, who hope it can elevate them in the already familiar musical comedy space. “When people talk about comedy musicians I want Lewberger to be on their list. I want them to say Flight of the Conchords, Weird Al Yankovic, Lonely Island, Lewberger,” Habersberger tells The Hollywood Reporter . “So this is our opportunity, hopefully, to do something impressive and cool and unique enough that it does that.”

But despite being an established presence with a fan-following, moving from TikTok and L.A. club stages to New York’s theater community was not an easy journey for the artists. In terms of the show itself, the group has had to tackle musical expansions headed up by the Emmy-winning Stone Fish, who says he spent “the first two weeks of online rehearsal with our amazing singers figuring out exactly what those parts are that they’re going to sing” along with other instrumental shifts.

Meanwhile, technical elements like projections were expanded after the performers saw shows like Mean Girls , who “do so much with just screens,” Habersberger adds. And perhaps most notably, the show’s titular character has gotten an expanded focus. “The Wizard of Friendship was not actually as big a role as it should have been,” he says. “And we really wanted that role to feel like a starring role, so we added more music and some more scenes for that character.”

It’s also now a show that audience members should expect to see famous special guests some nights and, as Lewis tells THR , to “bring someone up at random and choreograph one of our dances.”

But the shifts as the show moved from one coast to another go beyond creative adjustments. The production has also seen the trio evolve and grow their existing artistic capabilities. “We’ve been spending the last year seeing more shows — more Broadway shows to inspire us to think about how we can stage a musical because I’ve never directed a musical before,” Habersberger said.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Habersberger, Lewis and Stone Fish ahead of The Wizard of Frienship ‘s March 1 opening at Theatre Row about adapting their L.A. show into an Off-Broadway musical, their early streaming ambitions and harnessing their fandom and social media expertise to produce a nearly sold-out engagement.

HABERSBERGER The one-line version would be it’s an absurdist fantasy musical about the power and importance of friendship. If I were to go deeper, it’s basically a really bizarre Wizard of Oz -esque, Labyrinth -esque, mystical journey where three people are trying to fix what’s wrong about themselves and what they bring to friendships, and asks how can we be better friends to one another. But there’s also a giant penis man that’s a hot dog and there’s also a wizard and four equally handsome boys and an equally handsome forest where the trees have abs. So it’s ridiculous. It’s like the smartest dumb thing we could make. Or maybe the dumbest, smart thing that we can make. I’m not sure where those words should live in the sentence. But somewhere in there, I think the word smart and dumb are important.

STONE FISH Either way, I’ll tell you what I told my mother-in-law when she saw her first Lewberger show, which is, “Strap in and get ready for a great time.” ( Laughs )

This was first pitched as a streaming special that ultimately didn’t come to pass. How was this different from a traditional comedy special and why did streamers feel like there wasn’t a space for it in this form?

It’s inspired by different things that we loved to watch in our spare time or growing up, whether that be David Bowie’s Labyrinth , or I used to watch this direct-to-VHS series called We Sing . All those things boiled together and we thought we can make something really fun with those inspirations and it would do great on a streaming platform. It would have that look of being on a cheap soundstage, like an old ’90s-produced kids’ hour-long musical program. And we thought the way to do that is to produce it as a stage musical, show it to a lot of people, and then after they’ve seen what we have produced on our own in the live space – which is what we excel at — we can come together and create the perfect version of this being televised or streamed. We didn’t get a lot of interest in it. I think a lot of people had trouble seeing how the stage version could be a streaming version, And perhaps that’s on us. Maybe we didn’t make it clear enough.

LEWIS There’s an element of Rocky Horror Picture Show in there, too, with the almost culty way that we interact with our audience. We would love, obviously, to put this into a streaming special and we hope that that happens someday, especially for the sake of being able to show the project to more people. But I think another thing that comes with the type of group we are, which is a comedy music band, is that basically, to this day, when we try to describe what we are, people will say, “OK, so are you like a band? Are you a comedy group?” It’s been a thing for 100 years now, dating back to Alan Sherman. Crazy, hilarious, weird songs were sung during Prohibition. So comedy music has been around forever. But also one place where people don’t ask, “Wait, comedy music?” is musical theater. If you say it’s a comedy musical, people respond, “Got it. I understand Avenue Q , Book of Mormon . I know what a comedy musical is.”

How do you feel like your previous experiences and skills prepared you for producing an Off-Broadway show and how did it expand or challenge your skills as artists?

LEWIS I have been doing musical comedies since I was a child, basically. I’ve been doing musical theater since I was five, and I began taking musical improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre over a decade ago at this point. Then I’ve been working with Keith and Hughie for almost a decade. I think writing and creating the show almost didn’t take that much of our talents’ efforts because we were just putting together what we’d already been doing. Luckily, we have videos and all sorts of things that we can watch of our choreographer Nico DeJesus, and practice them every single day, as frequently as we try to get better at dancing. It’s been a process. I’m going to the gym to try to get my cardio up, which is what I’ve been doing for the past three or four months now because we all get winded during our show, and we can’t fucking get winded during the show.

You’ve got an online following that you obviously know how to produce for. Creatively is there anything about the online space that’s informed your approach to the physical in-person theatrical stage experience?

STONE FISH We do so much stuff online and when we are online, we try so hard to engage with people commenting, people messaging, people tweeting and retweeting. We can’t always respond to every single comment though, but we certainly do our best because we’re so grateful to every single person that watches a video. So one way that that translates is that when we do get onstage, we make sure that every single person in that audience feels like they are having a personal experience with us. I don’t care if it’s an 800-seat theater or 100-seat theater, we’re bringing people on stage; we’re talking to people; we’re handing them stuff; we’re making sure they all get up and dance; we’re running into the audience and acting like giant birds and picking up their food and eating it. ( Laughs ) Whatever the case may be, we’re doing that and I think in some way that is because we spend so much time interacting with people where we can’t touch them or talk to them. When we get on stage, especially even at a show like The Wizard of Friendship , where sometimes we hear, “Theater? Great, I’m just gonna sit there and watch an entire show” — that’s mostly what the audience is doing, but they’re also going to be involved with the show as well.

You released a video ahead of the opening that chronicled how you got this production on its feet as Off-Broadway novices, from rehearsals to getting crew. Can you talk about being so unconventionally transparent about that while also tapping into the existing, conventional theater community to help you?

HABERSBERGER I think, in any profession, but especially one that’s so theatrical, if you want to work with people, you have to be someone people want to work with. And you have to network constantly. The people we’re interviewing, even Rachel [Bauder] — she’s the stage manager of Beetlejuice — who wasn’t super featured in The Try Guys video, we spent a lot of time when we were shooting. She was just so knowledgeable that I just had to keep this contact close. She has the answers to all of my questions but also has the answers to who we need. When you befriend somebody, in this world, and network, you start to befriend all of their friends, and then someone is more likely to want to help you succeed. I think we have something to offer them that they want too, which is a bigger audience online. We are trying to get a bigger audience in a theater. So it’s mutually beneficial.

You also added things to ticketing like lower-cost meet and greets to help raise funding for the show. It feels slightly different from the way theater has historically approached this .

LEWIS It also puts the meet and greet more on the artists’ terms. The only thing separating them from a big crowd of people is just some stanchions like Keith said. They don’t have somebody that’s helping facilitate the actual line go through. And it can oftentimes be a really uncomfortable experience, whereas we’ve got this nice and organized. It’ll be a lot quicker.

STONE FISH Adding that meet-and-greet component is great business, it’s great economics, but — and this, obviously, is very true for Broadway shows as well — we’ve found through all of our touring we’ve been doing over so many years now that because of the nature of what we do, there are a lot of people who turn to our songs and it means something to them. It helps them through something. There’s a lot of people who come to our shows and they’ve been waiting to see us in person, they have something they want to tell us. And it’s important for them to share it with us. In this online versus in-person pros and cons — this meet and greet is really a place where it can be molded together because it’s an opportunity. Especially with how we have ours organized where there is a certain amount of time and you know what’s going to happen.

STONE FISH We all come from believing in ourselves backgrounds and creating our own destinies as artists. I’m a freelance musician. I’m a music producer. I’m a songwriter. I was teaching at Second City Music, directing there, and putting on my own shows. So investing in myself is all I’ve ever known how to do. As it relates to wanting to be on a streaming service, that really is the hope that someone else will invest in you. That’s really the big thing that you get when you get a streaming deal. As we didn’t get that, it’s like, “Well, let’s just continue doing all we’ve ever known which is believing in ourselves.” We’ve been touring, we’ve been saving. We’ve been trying to use our money wisely and make money. So we just invested it back and created something, as Keith says in the video, that is so powerful and so real. So we have to believe in ourselves. We have to create the thing that we want. Part of that is showing people this is how much it actually costs. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of money, and we truly do need the support of our fans.

But there’s other ways that we can help that and help ourselves not lose money. There’s meet-and-greets, doing merchandise. I think we won’t lose money on this. I have to believe that. I really do. I think it’s a show worth that $80 ticket price. That’s no small fee for a technically Off-Off-Broadway show. Which is why as the director, I want to make sure nobody has even the slightest thought of “I didn’t get my money’s worth at this show.” Has that made me allow the budget to go up? Yeah. I’m gonna make less at the end of the day, but I want to make sure that it’s a really amazing experience. Also, as someone who has been underpaid in their life, I don’t want the people we’re hiring to feel that way. I hated feeling undervalued.

I don’t know how many times we can even do something like this. As someone who works on the internet, the internet is a treadmill. You get on the treadmill, you set a speed, you can’t turn the speed down. So what I’m doing right now is hopping off the treadmill for a month and a half to do something completely different. Then I’m gonna have to hop right back on the treadmill and have to go at that same pace I used to go. But I have to believe that the show will make its money back and we can be OK with the $200,000 cost.

HABERSBERGER I have a lot of experience with online marketing and I think what we sometimes forget about in all entertainment is the story. Even the marketing is a story. The video we put out is our story about how much this means to us, about how hard it is. So now you’re not just seeing our show, you’re finishing that story when you come. It’s sort of like you become a character in the show. I’ve been able to see this. I made a hot sauce, I made a video about the hot sauce and I thought it was going to be a very small thing, but people are really engaged because getting the hot sauce was completing the story. Seeing Wizard of Friendship is completing the story that we’re telling online about all of our work going into it. I think if you’re trying to put up a new show, the biggest social presence you can have will show not only the things that are going well, but things that are not going well.

You can’t pretend that the Internet doesn’t exist, so it’s got to be something we utilize. And if you know how to use it, it’s a gigantic free marketing platform. I mean, look at the amount of YouTubers who now make products. They don’t just make shows. They make products.

There’s a virality in the video space or just a presence in the online world that is not quite there with New York theater in the same way as other mediums beyond the very passionate fandoms.

HABERSBERGER I think that’s something that most older institutions don’t want to do and in some ways legally can’t. But playing with this huge amount of IP — that’s why Disney+ has had so much success with Marvel and the Extended Universe. They’re playing with their IP. They’re like, “Yeah, let’s make the What If … series.”‘” They’re allowing the audience to participate in it more and I think we need to look at older Broadway shows the same way and allow it to be fun and participatory. It doesn’t have to be in the theater. I don’t need people to stand up and scream during Wicked , but maybe if there were viral videos with the cast of Wicked doing stuff that was fun and showing their perspective … and not that Wicked is suffering at all. It’s doing great, but other shows. ( Laughs )

Earlier you spoke about fan and audience engagement and it sounds like something that’s not just happening as a way to get people to the show but that’s also built into the show. How does that play out performance-wise and how important is that interactivity to your musical?

STONE FISH Our fans typically scream and stand up anyway. It’s just what happens. And because we do so much performing at comedy clubs across the country, it’s built into what we do. So as we were creating this show, we were anticipating a similar crowd experience. Even in terms of the music, there are certain moments where we’re building tracks and it’s like, “Well, we might need to add an extra measure here because if the people coming to see our show are anything like the people that usually come to see our show, they’re going to be applauding now.” So as far as the music, that’s how we built it. We’re just anticipating an excited crowd experience.

I think in some of Hughie’s great work in being able to write in multiple genres, if you have a KPOP -type moment, you want to stand up and scream. So we know that when we write this bit in, it’s going to get screams. Now, if I want the audience to be quiet and tearful during the song entitled “I’m a Dick,” that’s a very sweet lament, they’re hopefully going to be moved to tears but at the same time, they’re gonna be like, “This is ridiculous. Why am I even emotionally upset about this at all?” So in those ways, the music is going to inspire people to be participating.

We also have some celebrity cameos appearing playing my dad, so there will always be someone in the audience that everyone is like, “They’re famous, so are they going to be up on stage later?” There’s gonna be that buzz. And even just the silly joke of saying that J5 is an important seat in the audience, that makes that seat important. That makes J6 important. So you’ve already participated in the show by choosing your seat and its proximity to J5.

This is a limited run. Knowing what you know now about getting this thing mounted and ready for a stage, would you consider extending the run? Or even taking it on the road?

LEWIS Piggybacking on what Keith just said, you know, we want everybody that loves us on Tiktok and Instagram to be able to see this show. So whether that means maybe touring it someday — which we’d all love to do — or getting some deal with a streaming service or figuring out a way to distribute it, that is definitely something that’s in the cards and in the hopes for the future.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

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