Uchenna Agbu wears many hats: director, writer, arts manager, HR consultant, just to name a few. But her most important hat, one that encompasses her fullest passion and career, is educator. 

In 2024, Uchenna made her Broadway debut as a management fellow in the revival of Our Town while freelance directing. Most recently, she created How I Got on Broadway, a podcast that breaks down real careers in the arts, adding founder and producer to her extensive list of achievements.

Agbu started as an assistant, running for coffee, helping with lines, basically sitting through the entire rehearsal process, which for her was all quite familiar. “I moved over to company management once the show opened,” she explained. “That was more of a learning opportunity for me because, quite frankly, I didn’t even know what company management was when I left college.”

“I created the podcast lowkey because I was bored,” she stated. Agbu started her full-time career as an HR consultant back in March and put a pause on her directing career in order to focus on her work. “After some time, I was just like, ‘Okay, I need to get back into a creative space of some kind,’” she added. “I tried to think of something I could do that wouldn’t be an extreme time commitment but still be creatively fulfilling. And then I also had to ask myself the question, ‘What can I contribute that hasn’t already been contributed?’”

Frankly, the inspiration came from her own experiences as a theatre graduate and as a theatre professional. From Agbu’s perspective, the industry lacks transparency and access. “Everyone knows it’s all about relationships, but nobody really understands how these relations work, how they’re acquired, why they’re acquired, who gets to have these relationships with whom,” she explained. “Backstage and the people who are actually making decisions, the people who are signing the paychecks, the people who are recruiting these people a lot of the time, there is not a lot of diversity. And it’s not just racial diversity. It’s age, gender, and so many things to look at,” she added.

Additionally, that lack of transparency is seen through college curricula. “It starts with education,” she said succinctly. “Thinking back on my Rutgers experience, it’s very interesting. I don’t think that I should’ve been able to graduate, not knowing what a general manager was and not knowing what a company manager was. That wasn’t through fault of my own. That was because it was not in the curriculum.” 

Agbu wanted to give people access, provide them with learning opportunities, and offer true transparency about what they could possibly do if they were interested in theater, all while keeping it fun, memorable, and simultaneously being a key educational media form. She understood firsthand that many struggle to get into the professional fields, simply because of a lack of access and educational transparency.

“I’m someone who’s really passionate about theater education, but I’m also a really horrible teacher,” she confessed. “So I knew that if I wanted to continue to contribute to the theater education space, it would have to be through some sort of different avenue.” And she’s been hitting all sorts of different pockets of the industry.

Currently, How I Got on Broadway has four out of its planned six-episode season published. Their debut episode featured South Asian actor Nihar Duvvuri, who left NYU for the S.M.A.S.H. workshop and has since starred in John Proctor and Romeo & Juliet. Episode two focuses on business partners with Agbu’s bosses, Kia Jones and Karen Robinson from K+K Reset. Together, they have worked on 134 shows to date. Episode three has guest John McGinty, who lost his hearing at a young age, discussing navigating the Broadway industry as a deaf actor, pushing through barriers, and being an advocate for his own voice. Their most recent episode, which was released last Monday, Dec. 15, welcomes three recent college graduates, all of whom are in the professional scene today. Agbu has weekly hit multiple potential careers with all types of individuals, breaking them down, explaining them from beginning to end, giving real insight into what the industry has in store. 

This is just the beginning for Agbu and for the impact of young people in the theatre industry. She concluded, “I think there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

How I Got on Broadway is uploaded on Spotify and other streaming platforms, with new episodes dropping every Monday at 12pm EST.

Photos courtesy of Izzy Froedtert (featured image), Daphne Sardis