Ted Zoldan & Heather Orth on Hillbarn Theatre's "Gutenberg! The Musical!"

Breaking news to your phone. US mobile only. No password required.

Broadway + NYC

Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Off Broadway

Cabaret

Dance

Opera

Classical Music

West End / UK

International

Canada

Australia / New Zealand

Europe

Asia

Latin America

Africa / Middle East

Entertainment

Ctrl + K to open · Esc to close

Bay Area couple tackling a hilariously chaotic musical.

Most Popular

Get all the top news & discounts for San Francisco & beyond. No password required.

Hillbarn Theatre is getting ready to present the delightfully ridiculous show: Gutenberg! The Musical! , a two-person comedy that asks its performers to portray an entire town’s worth of characters—with little more than a collection of labeled hats to help them along the way.

Get all the top news & discounts for San Francisco & beyond.

For Hillbarn’s production, the traditionally male duo of Bud and Doug becomes Bud and Deb, played by real-life married couple Ted and Heather—though they’ve rarely had the opportunity to play directly opposite one another.

I recently had the chance to chat with Heather and Ted by phone about taking on such a demanding two-hander, their favorite characters to slip into, the surprising precision behind all those hats, and which Bay Area icon they’re hoping might make a surprise appearance.

This show asks the two of you to essentially carry an entire musical together. What was the process like building that chemistry and learning to trust each other onstage?

Heather: We’ve been a couple for eight years, married for almost three now, so luckily there was definitely chemistry. I feel like, for me at least, I could come into the process and just fully be myself from the start, as opposed to also thinking about that meta level of, “All right, I have to get to know a new cast and let’s all build trust together.”

We were at a place when we started where we could just try the weirdest stuff right out of the gate without worrying somebody was going to say, “Wow, what a weird choice.” We live together. We’ve seen everything.

Ted: The weird choices were kind of built in. We’ve done shows together before—we met doing theatre—but we’ve never really gotten to play opposite each other, especially in this capacity and especially in a two-hander.

This is my first time ever doing a two-hander. I’ve wanted to do this show for about 20 years, and getting to do it with my actual best friend, my actual daily comedy partner, has taken a lot of the pressure off. It allowed us to be very honest and trusting with each other about what was and wasn’t working.

Heather: Truly, if something’s working, obviously we’re both very excited. And when something’s not working, there doesn’t have to be that very political level of, “Well, maybe something different...” We can just go, “That sucks. That didn’t work. Let’s do something else.”

Ted: I would like to say, for the strength of my marriage, I am still doing the political thing!

Heather: They also told us there was going to be an intimacy coordinator, and it’s someone I’m very familiar with whose work I love. But when they said, “We’ll have an intimacy coordinator,” we both kind of went, “Why? To what end?” Everything’s green. We’re good!

Ted: This is the most elaborate con to get us into couples therapy that I ever thought.

You play Bud and Deb, but then spend the evening portraying an entire town’s worth of characters using those infamous hats. Which character—or hat—has become your personal favorite?

Ted: I get to play a lot of the wacky ones. I play the show’s villain, which is really fun. He’s the town monk, and he’s written to be this crazed Satanist, devil-worshipping, fire-and-brimstone Southern Baptist preacher.

What I can describe it as is doing an accent that belongs in no single Southern state and trying to have as much fun chewing the scenery as possible.

I’ve done a lot of shows where, for whatever reason, I’m getting to zip between a bunch of different characters. It’s always so fun trying to find how to make someone as distinct as possible, even if you only have a couple of lines to do that.

Heather: For me, there really is only one major female character in the show. There are a lot of different townspeople who are men, women, whatever, but there’s really only one major female character—the love interest, Helvetica.

It’s also the only character that we actually split pretty evenly. Most of the main characters we sit in one—like I play Gutenberg through most of the evening and Ted plays Monk—but Helvetica we really do split back and forth.

I’ve really enjoyed playing her because Ted’s Helvetica actually has some lovely depth and is really well-rounded and earnest. Then my Helvetica—even though I am the woman playing the only woman character in the show—has no depth whatsoever! She’s so vapid and disinterested in everything, which has actually been a really fun place to sit.

I feel that so much of the comedy comes from how passionately Bud and Deb believe in this very questionable musical they’ve written. How do you play that sincerity without winking too much at the audience?

Heather: I think what it really comes down to is that we both just have to believe it—and we do.

I think the reason this show fits us both so well is because we are a little bit Bud and Deb. Anybody who does theatre, or has done high school or middle school theatre, has been Bud and Deb. You’re like, “No, you guys don’t understand. This is truly the greatest production anyone has ever done, and we all deserve Tonys.”

We go out on that stage and, as Deb, I truly believe this is the greatest show that has ever been written. It’s almost rubbed off on me as Heather. I’m like, “This actually is brilliant, you guys. This actually is really spectacular.”

Ted: There’s no wink whatsoever. They believe in this so hard.

What’s been challenging in rehearsal—because obviously we’re trying to make the audience laugh—is walking the line between doing stuff that’s funny and called for by the script, but doing it in a way that an actual actor taking this seriously would make that choice. Not necessarily a good actor, but somebody sane who wants this to be good.

There’s no ability in this show to look at the audience and say, “Isn’t this silly? Aren’t we having a good time? Isn’t this dumb?” This is the most important night of these characters’ lives. They’ve put so much work and effort into it, and they have to be having the time of their lives or the whole thing just doesn’t work.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the movie Waiting for Guffman , where Catherine O’Hara, Fred Willard , Eugene Levy , Parker Posey , and Christopher Guest are putting on this absolutely terrible community theatre production. Every moment they’re onstage, their eyes are shining with this cult-like zeal. They are the patron saints of community theatre, and that’s very much the energy I want to bring to this show.

Heather: And it’s performed with complete sincerity, but it also goes off without a hitch. When you watch Waiting for Guffman and Red, White and Blaine , what you take away is, “This is perhaps the dumbest thing that has ever been put onstage—but they did it perfectly.”

That’s the vibe of Gutenberg! This night goes exactly as they want it to, and it’s fantastic. They just happen to be doing one of the worst musicals that has ever been written.

The show is hilariously chaotic, but I imagine the timing has to be incredibly precise. What’s been the most difficult moment to rehearse that audiences might assume is completely spontaneous?

Ted: What’s interesting about this piece and the way it’s structured is that “spontaneous” is not necessarily the word that comes to mind because the characters themselves have rehearsed everything so meticulously.

We’ve been joking that they’ve been rehearsing these dance moves in Bud’s garage for the past six months. What you see is something that is meticulous, planned, and passionate.

Heather: There are songs where we have, like, a breath to change both hats and physicality. It actually has been one of the hardest things to get right, but hopefully, when the audience watches it, that will look the most casual.

It’s just me spinning around in rehearsal for half an hour trying to swap two hats on my head and be able to do it in half a beat of non-music and then suddenly be a completely different person. Hopefully, it’ll look easy-breezy when everybody comes to see it!

Ted: I think the most hats we ever wear at one time is seven. It’s rare that we’re only wearing one, which feels like a very appropriate metaphor for my life in the theatre. But in this case, it’s very literal.

The Broadway production became known for bringing out surprise celebrity guests at the end of the show. If you could choose absolutely anyone to be your surprise guest for one night at Hillbarn, who would you pick and why?

Ted: I would say the ghost of Stephen Sondheim . Yeah. He would have loved this.

Heather: I’m also going to say the ghost of Stephen Sondheim , but because I think he would have hated it!

But I have another answer. I have a Bay Area answer, and I have genuinely pitched this to the theatre. I’m going to put it in this article so that it goes out into the world: We need to have Anh Phoong come out as our surprise producer. That is a Bay Area icon, and I can think of no one better to be a producer. I can also think of no one more Bay Area to come out and be a producer unless we got the entire cast of Shen Yun .

Ted: I want Anh Phoong to just carve out a side gig of cameos in local theatre.

Nominate your favorite local productions and performers before the deadline on October 31, 2026.

Exclusive: THE SOUND OF MUSIC Tour Star Cayleigh Capaldi Performs the Title Song

Review: NORTH BY NORTHWEST at American Conservatory Theatre

Review: LEGALLY BLONDE at Berkeley Playhouse

Review: KING LEAR at Z Space

Also text me

When are you seeing ?

Get an Alert Each Time AJ Jaffari Writes

BroadwayWorld TV

Breaking Broadway news and show discounts. No password required.

Breaking Broadway news on your phone. US mobile numbers only.

POPULAR

Sign up for announcements and exclusive discounts on tickets to your favorite shows!

© 2026 — Copyright Wisdom Digital Media , all rights reserved. Privacy Policy

Episode

_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/san-francisco/article/Interview-Ted-Zoldan-and-Heather-Orth-of-GUTENBERG-THE-MUSICAL-at-Hillbarn-Theatre-20261003)._