About This Episode

Get an exclusive look behind the scenes of THE LISTENING, the much-anticipated world premiere immersive audio experience, with leading star JASON VEASEY and creative producer Kate McLeod. In this candid conversation, Jason shares what excites him about stepping into this intimate, sonic storytelling universe and how exploring his speaking voice in an immersive setting challenges and inspires him as an artist.

Learn how THE LISTENING uniquely blends live performance with audio-driven storytelling, what it means to work within the AKS Immersive collaborative, and why this show is “unexplored terrain” for performers and audiences alike.

Whether you love innovative performing arts, want to hear about the creative process from Broadway talent, or are curious about what makes THE LISTENING such a bespoke event, this episode is for you.

Key Highlights:

- Jason reveals what draws him back to the AKS Immersive family and why the collective creative approach is so meaningful

- The thrill and vulnerability of making the human voice the “camera” in sonic storytelling

- How performing live, intimately and with headphones, is an entirely new theatrical challenge: “a double event” for both artist and audience

- The value of venturing into the unknown, and why Jason feels like “an astronaut or a deep-sea diver” leading this production

- What it means to truly listen to yourself, your collaborators, and your audience, in the purest sense

About THE LISTENING

THE LISTENING is a unique live sonic storytelling experience presented by AKS Immersive, written by NYT Best Selling Author Jeffrey James Keyes (Killer Chef with James Patterson), running for one week only: April 7–12, 2026, at the East Village Basement in NYC. Tickets & more info at: the-listening.com

Listen now for inspiration, insight, and a fresh perspective on what the future of hybrid audio fiction can sound and feel like.

Socials:

Follow the journey on Instagram: @the_listening

instagram.com/the_listening

Credits

Episode: DRAMA: AN AURAL EXPERIENCE™ – Behind the Scenes of THE LISTENING

Guest: JASON VEASEY (Broadway’s A Strange Loop, The Lion King, TV’s Best Medicine, Only Murders in the Building)

Guest Host: Kate McLeod (Creative Producer of THE LISTENING, Creator of Authenticated, 6'2 Productions, and ME³)

Producer & Host: Aaron Salazar (Producing Artistic Director, AKS Immersive)

Presented by: AKS Immersive

Thank you. Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Drama An Aural Experience.

In this episode we step behind the scenes for a look into the Listening presented by AKS Immersive. The Listening is a world premiere and is the expansion of our audio fiction universe.

The Listening is an intimate and immersive live sonic storytelling experience that's based on season one anthology which you can listen to right here. The Listening stars Broadway's Jason Veasey.

Some of Jason's prestigious credits include the original Broadway cast of the Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning A Strange Loop and the long running hit the Lion King where Jason made his Broadway debut to millions of television viewers.

Jason is known for playing George Brady on the new comedy series Best Medicine on Fox and Hulu which was just renewed for season two, which is amazing and he has also appeared as the beloved Jonathan Bridgecroft on Only Murders in the Building, also on Hulu where you may have also seen him notably in the only season that was ostensibly a musical opposite of Meryl Streep. He also recently made his A24 film debut in Friendship with Paul Rudd.

It's such an intimate, wonderful space. Jason has been a longtime collaborator of mine and aks.

He will be in season two of Drama and Aural Experience and Antigone playing the role of Tiresias and we have previously collaborated together with him as a writer which he's incredible at. Today's special episode is hosted by our brilliant creative producer Kate McLeod who is the host of her own wonderful podcast called Authenticated.

She is a force of nature and just an incredibly kind, thoughtful, sincere, passionate human being. Kate is a producer, a creative consultant, a writer, an actor.

She is the creator behind Six Foot Two Productions which is an award winning production company and Me3 Creative Space to help people optimize their individual creative thinking and she uses an approach called the Creative Conscience. She has been such a gift to this production and is such a wonderful new friend and I cannot wait for you to hear this conversation.

My name is Aaron Salazar. I am the producing Artistic Director of AKS Immersive and the director of the Listening.

So without further ado, I hope you enjoy this episode with Jason Vesey. Hosted by Kate McLeod,

Jason Veasey leading star of the Listening.

Hi Kate, how are you?

I'm great I'm great. Tell us what keeps you coming back to AKS immersive and what this aural experience means.

Okay. In typical fashion, I'm going to go backwards because it's the easiest way for me to remember things.

What I'm excited about, about this project for is the transfer of something that we only heard and what that means to when we incorporate the sense of sound with the visual of live performance. It's not like anything I've done. It's not a radio play, it's not performance art. It's. It's this kind of weird love child of a sensory experience.

Yes, it's immersive, but it's not immersive in a way that feels like the audience has to also be at work with me. I have still so many questions about it, actually, and I think that that's what's really intriguing me.

I've held off on asking you and Aaron, what does this mean? What's that mean? What's that mean? And I'm actually kind of feel like I'm going in way more blind than I ever have before. And that's right.

Really thrilling me.

And part of the reason why I feel so safe doing that is because, you know, this is now my umpteenth project working with AKs and I really have always loved the idea and had the dream of being a part of a collective. When I think back about a lot of the artists that I loved growing up, they all seem to kind of run in a circle and work on each other's things.

And that really kind of gets me going. And I've just never not had a great experience working with Aaron, working with you. The creativity is unmatched. The ideas I think are.

Are big and bold and doable and very possible and always exciting. Very Vibey. It's a very. It's AKS stuff is very, very vibey, which we love a vibe.

And there's something to be said about people who continue to put each other on and promote each other and say yes to each other. And in my experience, I have always advanced in my career by continuing to say yes to my homies who also happen to be fantastic artists.

So that is something that I'm very, very excited about. I'm also very to be in a space where my speaking voice is front and center.

As someone who has always had a complicated relationship with my singing voice, but a really great relationship with my speaking voice, it's been a long time since I've been able to utilize it where that is the focus and then my body, face, and physicality are the accompaniment to that. And that's kind of really thrilling that my voice. Voice and our voices get to be the camera, if you will, for the audience.

I'm very interested to see what happens when the voice and the sound is actually what's there to direct the storytelling as opposed to the visual.

The rehearsal process of practicing with your voice, knowing that the space is transferable and you arrive there physically. What is that like when you rehearse with one part of yourself and then offer your whole artist self in a space?

You know, that's a really good question. I think, going back to your first question, I think that that's what's really kind of exciting about it, because I don't.

I can't think of a time songs are training and the way that we use our voices, particularly with the theater. I can't remember one time where

the

entirety of the process and focus will force me to really kind of examine what my voice can do and what my voice sounds like outside of my head. Because I don't know if I've ever said this to you, but what my voice sounds like in this cavity is completely different from what other people like.

My voice sounds three pitches higher. It sounds way less colorful. It almost sounded kind of like a monotonous thing when I'm speaking about it.

So I actually am very excited to see what happens when I'm forced to feel what's happening in here, but then on the outside, really get to understand, like, what it's like to hear me doing something, which is what the audience will be doing. I actually know that much about my voice outside of myself, and that's what I'm very kind of excited to see, what the expansion of my voice does.

And the only way I'm going to be able to do that is by constantly listening and hearing myself and really paying attention to it, because I am always taken aback when I hear myself when I'm kind of like, oh, wow, okay.

Truly, that is fascinating, because especially with this. This is an audio delivery, people are gonna hear it in their ears, so they listen back to it almost as the same way that you do.

Yes.

So that distance holds, like, a new kind of vulnerability for you as an artist.

Maybe very much so. And a vulnerability that I'm not scared of. Almost kind of like a.

It's finally time for me to really study what people have responded to since my voice dropped at 12 years old, you know, and because it's one thing to be in a recording studio, and hear a track.

But it's another thing to be doing it live, knowing that what I feel in this cavity versus what I can probably slightly hear in the space that is going to be transferred into their ears. What that nuance of that experience, what do I have to do to make it the fullest thing possible? Where do I turn the dial up?

Where do I turn the dial down? What colors do I use for it to be the most effective to direct the shot and tell the story and

in the immersive space, when you are literally next to the very exclusive audience that exists here?

Yes.

What is your relationship like to the audience, then, as opposed to the standard, like, fourth wall that exists on Broadway on stage?

Right. I have a theory that that adjustment period will. Will feel like I'm. I have a feeling that it's going to feel like a setback almost.

In my mind, I imagine us rehearsing it and feeling really good about it. And then once they're in the space, another adjustment's gonna have to happen. And I'm kind of really thrilled for that, for that level up.

Oh, that's a new kind of level of life.

Yes. Yes, it really is. I'm trying to think if I've ever been involved with. Well, I know I haven't or experienced anything like that.

And I can't think of one situation where the intimacy was there with the specific space that it's happening in with headphones live, almost kind of like a double event. It kind of makes me think of, like, the Lion King.

You know, you're watching a person, but you're also looking at the puppet, the elephant that's on their forehead, you know, and where. Where do you go? And you realize you don't have to make a choice. It's all kind of happening in one, one fell swoop.

Like this double event, this event on top of an event that creates an even bigger event.

This might be my form of headiness for this, but that feels like you're expanding your perception.

Yes.

Of the people in the room.

Yes, that is a great, great word.

An even better word, that I will be expanding the perception of the people in the room, which just scientifically, with, you know, how sound works, will affect my perception of the sound in the space which happens and will happen to be the sound that I'm making. And how do I perceive the sound of my voice versus what's actually happening? And then how are they perceiving that? Yeah.

I just love a live feedback loop so much. And that's, you know, you're on camera so much now. You just got signed on for a second season of Best Medicine.

Yes, I did. Yes, I did.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

But going to stage and still finding so much space there allows for this expansion to then go so minute. For when you go back to screen, it just feels like it's growing.

Which.

Which.

One thing that I realized, which is why I'm also so excited about this project, one thing that I realized about being on a set for that long, it's the longest I've been on a set.

One of the things that I realized that made me not question, but made me feel like I feel like something's missing, is that I'm so used to being very engaged with my voice on stage and on film. I was kind of just like, am I. Am I doing anything or. And the relationship between Mike and how that sound transfers and feeling kind of like that.

This gift that I have that I'm very familiar with was kind of left up to the devices of other people, which is not true per se. But I didn't feel, like, an actual physical connection with what I'm able to do to help someone in the back of the house.

And the feeling of what happens when I'm just, like, speaking and talking, as opposed to when, like, I'm engaged in the way that I was trained to do. I'm excited to click that back in and then use it in a more elevated way. That's not just stage technique, that same thing. But I'm.

I'm very excited to, like, feel one with. With the voice again and other people's voices and sound. Whereas on set, that hasn't happened for me yet. So it's felt a little.

Something's felt a little missing or off. So I'm excited to, like, have that back.

It is exciting to hear that a show that has been designed to be so transferable to meet so many people is so transferable to you as an artist.

Yes. Yes. I.

It's going to be interesting because I will not experience it the way that audience members are going to be experiencing it, which never really happens when you're doing any form of art. But I have experience with watching a show on tv. I have experience with being an audience member watching a play.

I do not have experience being an audience member in a situ. In a situation like this, which is, again, also really thrilling. It feels very. It feels like a precedent. It feels like a pioneer. It feels. It feels.

It makes me feel like an astronaut or like a deep sea diver going

someplace first unexplored terrain?

Yes, yes, very much. So very much.

What about the unknown is so exciting to you?

I think the unknown, while it can be scary, primarily just represents possibility. To me, if you don't know something, you just don't know. So, yes, there's gonna be fear, but it could also be something really, really awesome.

And when it comes to art or live performance at this stage in the game, given the level that we all are as artists, how can we not be completely excited by the unknown? None of us have gotten here by being scared of it. So, like, that's kind of the jump off point for anything.

And so the fact that there's so much unknown about this, with a group of people that are very known to me, that fear is completely taken out and it's all just excitement and anticipation.

Yeah. Because we're all together.

Yes.

Jason, what does it feel like to be starring in this show? You are leading the listening.

It feels like what I asked for a few years ago. I was asking the world, the industry, the universe to get the opportunity to step out and lead something. I'm very, very proud of my career.

I love my career. When I look at it, I'm thrilled about it. It's a fantastic one to be proud of. And I love supporting, I love playing lots of characters.

I love being utility man. I love doing all of those things. But I do want and been wanting the challenge of a heavier lift.

And it is thrilling when the person that is able to give you that opportunity is someone that, you know, believes in you and respects your talent and thinks that you have the good. So that is a great confidence booster and ego boost.

And also it is exactly the kind of lift because, you know, I do love being ahead of the curve and being a trendsetter.

So it's one thing for me to be like, I'm playing Othello as opposed to I'm heading off this experience that no one knows what's going on about that is very up my alley, very on brand. I am super excited to be scared of the amount of memorization.

You know, I am no longer 27, so memorization tools that I never needed before are now firmly in play.

But I am mostly excited about not necessarily the memorization of it all, but just the amount that I get to explore the thrill of understanding that even when we're done, I'll have maybe scratched 45 to 55% of the surface.

And I think that that's a good thing to nail, given that this is my first time, if I think about it, I can't remember the last time I led anything, maybe since right out of college.

I'm excited to relish in leading as opposed to being number one on the call sheet, because I think those are the two different things, and that's what I'm very interested in. And I'm very interested in proving to myself that I got the shoulders to stand on. And it feels really great and really exciting and right on time.

And right on time. This opportunity to learn while people are listening.

Yes.

What version of Jason's going to be on the other side?

The version that is catching up to feeling the same way about his gifts that other people have.

That's gorgeous.

Thank you.

Feels like the listening is an opportunity for you to really hear yourself.

Yes. And to. And to engage and take more of an active role in ownership over something that I know is special about me, but.

And has always been told is special about me, but actually actively being like, thank y' all so much. I'm going to make this shiny, sparkly thing that we've talked about shine even more and have some more ownership over it. I'm very excited for that.

I think it's very telling that the first time that I am leading something, the focus will be this thing that I've been told is great, which I do think I do like my speaking voice since I was 12. I think it's very, very fitting that that is, like, the focus or will be my main tool of stepping out

in the front and the entry point, too.

Yes. Yeah. Yes. And not just how I use my voice on stage, but how I use my voice while we're creating this thing in the rehearsals, the conversations.

That's part of it as well, that I take very seriously. So I'm thrilled to rise up to that challenge.

I'm excited for you.

Thank you.

Excited for, like, this is just gonna. It's gonna. I'm just excited for us. I like all this newness and all the talent in the room who are just so ready to jump in.

I have. I have. I. It's like, I feel like I'm about to venture on an experience that, like, feels.

That's going to take me back to, like, being here, like, my first year and, like, seeing things and being like, oh, this is what theater can be. Oh, my God, it feels so New York. It feels so downtown. It feels especially.

I don't think this is just, you know, me being jaded, but I do think a lot of people. We see a lot of theater, but I've been noticing that we're not really inspired by a lot. Things were there and there are great things.

But then it feels like there's a lot of just kind of like, okay, they did that, the money was spent.

But I don't feel like we're getting the vitamins that we were getting that caused us to move here in the first place or that inspired us to get to these places. And I feel like this is something where whether we succeed or fail, we will succeed. It doesn't really matter.

It's the fact that, like, we're committing to doing this thing, that there is nothing like that out there. And I'm very kind of thrilled about that, more so that I'm thrilled for people to just love it and be obsessed with it.

I'm thrilled for people to walk away and be. And still be thinking six months later, like, what was that? Like, where do I put that?

I don't think the individual experience in performing arts, in performance in general, exists in many spaces anymore. And we need to get back to that, because afterwards I want to have a completely different experience than you did.

And I want to have discourse and I want to disagree with you and I want to agree with you and I want to change my thinking. I think what you're saying about vitamins. Yeah, give the people the vitamins.

Yeah, give them, give them the vitamins.

Give them some sort of hope that people, not that people are being creative and creating, but that those things that you don't need a certain type of stage to create really great things.

I mean, this is the kind of stuff that someone does and then all of a sudden it branches out and other people are doing similar things, copycats, versions of it. That's what this feels like to me.

A new device, a new vehicle, a new avenue to explore with how we experience stories as opposed to just listening or watching them.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. So good. I'm.

Yeah, Love it. I can't. I can't. I cannot wait.

To book yours and find out more information, please visit the-listening.com that's the-listening.com Drama and auralExperience behind the scenes is creative, produced and Hosted by Kate McLeod with special guest Jason Vesey, executive produced and edited by Aaron Salazar, presented by AKS Radio Immersive and recorded at nyc. You can also follow our journey on Instagram, Helistening thank you so much for joining us today.

And we hope this got you excited to check out our new expansion of this audio fiction universe, and we hope to see you at the show.