Highlighting food and travel with a dramaturgical twist, Second Act Snacks is a web series with a mission to find the foods featured in beloved Broadway musicals.
How did two friends create bite-sized Broadway content for foodies and theatre lovers alike? It started with just that—a second-act snack.
Matthew “Mooch” Mucha and Taylor Okey, both performers and co-hosts of Second Act Snacks, met on the first national tour of Bandstand in 2019. The series originated on their personal Instagram accounts, where Mooch and Taylor tried snacks backstage during a break in the second act of the show. Taylor recalls sharing the idea with Mooch while they were in tech for Bandstand that they should grab a snack at each tour stop and share it on Instagram.
After COVID brought the tour to an abrupt end in 2020, Mooch and Taylor had an idea: to expand their backstage bites into a web series that would highlight theatre and local cuisine and create a bit of content for fans to consume while the world was on pause.
The first season of Second Act Snacks explored musicals in Manhattan, focusing on finding culinary treasures that reflected a selection of musicals set in New York City, like In The Heights, Little Shop of Horrors, and Company. While on the hunt for the most authentic snack selections, Mooch and Taylor dissected the text and lyrics of each selected musical to guide them to real eateries in the city that they felt best reflected both the location and food audiences have seen on stage.
“It really became a lot of, you know, if you had a map of Manhattan and put little pins in it, you could look at every place our episode takes place, and it happens within the realm of the musical itself,” Mooch said. “I think it’s a lot more exciting when you can be on West 181st Street while listening to Lin Manuel [Miranda] rap about getting off the A at 181st Street and you’re like holy crap, I’m actually here.”
Favorite snacks from their first seven-episode season reveal a bit of their sweet tooth: Mooch praising the green goddess dessert from Dirt Candy, as featured in the Little Shop of Horrors episode, and Taylor highlighting the Flour Shop rainbow cake, which was featured in the Company episode.
What began as an outlet in the thick of the COVID pandemic has quickly grown into a larger vision for both Mooch and Taylor. After filming, editing, and producing their first season with the small, but mighty, team of Mooch, Taylor, and Jaime Bartolett, they were able to expand the vision with a partnership with Broadstream, a platform for short-form arts content.
“I’m proud of our team that we found something positive, and even if it never turned into what it has today, it taught us all that we still have something to give,” Mooch said. “There’s always in this business that on-and-off feeling and Second Act Snacks has given me that safe place to land in terms of wanting to be creative and wanting to collaborate.”
“This iteration of the show has allowed just a different opportunity for creativity, a different avenue. I always knew that I thought it would be cool to get into producing, and creating and hosting something like this,” Taylor said. “I’ve always been a huge fan of the Food Network, and I’ve always joked that I would love to host a show in general. So I think this show has just given me the opportunity to scratch an itch that I didn’t even know itched.”
After setting the stage for Second Act Snacks as a web series and exploring the flavors of NYC, they’re ready to hit the road for their second season—and breaking out of Manhattan.
“The one thing that we were really excited about was that we were able to travel outside of New York City this time around,” Taylor said. “I think it really comes across in each of the episodes that we do, you can see the different landscapes of each musical that we’re talking about in this season. So we do stay in New York for two episodes, which I think is cool because we still hold strong and still kind of stay close to our Broadway roots.”
Season two of Second Act Snacks kicks off with its first episode, featuring a bite tied to Dear Evan Hansen on June 24, exclusively on Broadstream, with new episodes to follow each week.
For more content to satisfy your hunger, follow Second Act Snacks on Instagram, Facebook or TikTok to keep up with Mooch and Taylor on their search for their next dramaturgical cuisine.
(Header Image: Taylor Okey and Matthew Mucha (Mooch)/ Courtesy of Second Act Snacks)
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