Performing Arts

Willemjin Verkaik is the latest leading lady to play Elphaba, the misunderstood green girl who grows up to become the Wicked Witch of the West in Broadway's long-running Wicked. She has also played the role in Dutch and German in Europe.

On Broadway, Old Shows And New Tricks

11:08am April 07, 2013

by Jeff Lunden

These days, a hit show can run not just for years but for decades. So how do you keep it fresh for new audiences? Reporter Jeff Lunden talks to people who work on three of Broadway's biggest hits to find out.

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Nora Ephron's final play, Lucky Guy, tells the story of controversial New York columnist Mike McAlary, played by Tom Hanks. (Also pictured: Peter Gerety as John Cotter).

Arts

Nora Ephron's 'Lucky Guy' And Tom Hanks Make Their Broadway Debuts

8:57pm April 01, 2013

by Jeff Lunden

Lucky Guy is one of the spring theater season's most highly anticipated plays. It stars Hanks, in his first Broadway performance, as tabloid journalist Mike McAlary. Director George Wolfe calls Ephron's last play "a love poem to journalism."

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Johanna Day as Margie and Andrew Long as Mike in the recent Arena Stage production of David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People. The childhood friends drift apart as their lives take on very different socioeconomic dimensions.

Arts

Familiar Folks Make Up A Play's 'Good People'

12:38pm March 18, 2013

by Elizabeth Blair

The most frequently produced play in America these days is a semiautobiographical look at class divides in the modern U.S. David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People explores what can happen when two kids from the same neighborhood grow up to become two very different adults.

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Adam Kantor and Betsy Woolfe star in the current off-Broadway revival of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years.

'The Last Five Years' Returns To New York

5:01pm March 10, 2013

by NPR Staff

A cult-favorite musical, The Last Five Years is a semi-autobiographical look at one couple's failed marriage. A revival hits off-Broadway this week, and the show's creator Jason Robert Brown joins host Jacki Lyden to talk about the last 11 years of the little show that could.

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Valisia LeKae, Sydney Morton and Ariana Debose play the Supremes in the show.

For Berry Gordy, Broadway Is Memory Lane

11:50am March 08, 2013

by Allison Keyes

The legendary music that makes up Broadway's upcoming Motown: The Musical offers audible proof that Berry Gordy's Detroit R&B label is the soundtrack of an American generation. But for Gordy, the new project is just the story of that label as he lived through it.

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Branndin Laramore (from left), Brian Weddington, Lia Miller and Ernesto Moreta pose after a recent rehearsal for the Chicago finals of the August Wilson Monologue Competition.

Arts

August Wilson's Words Get New Life In Monologue Contest

7:40pm March 07, 2013

by Cheryl Corley

The legendary American playwright's words and characters are central to a national monologue contest that gives high school students a chance to discover themselves in the stories of his Century Cycle.

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Nellie McKay, David Shiner and Bill Irwin use old-time comedy, newfangled tricks and zany music to score laughs in their new theatrical revue, Old Hats.

Arts

For This Pair Of Clowns, 'Old Hats' Means New Laughs

7:14pm March 05, 2013

by Jeff Lunden

Theatrical clowning duo Bill Irwin and David Shiner haven't shared the spotlight onstage since the late 1990s. Now, with a collaborative theater project running at off-Broadway's Signature Theatre, they bring their zany brand of participatory slapstick to a new generation.

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Ron Nine, Mitch Ebert, Eden Schwartz, Fiia McGann and Gretta Harley perform in These Streets, a new play based on a series of interviews with Seattle musicians.

Women Of Grunge Reclaim Rock History In 'These Streets'

7:05pm February 26, 2013

by Marcie Sillman

Two years ago, the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind sparked a slew of retrospectives about the Seattle grunge scene. But those narratives left something out: the influence of women. A new play by Gretta Harley and Sarah Rudinoff aims to update the historical record.

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Science
Arts

A New View Of Newton In 'Isaac's Eye'

7:14am February 21, 2013

What would Isaac Newton be like if he had been born a few centuries later? A new play "Isaac's Eye" reimagines Newton and his scientific rival Robert Hooke. Playwright Lucas Hnath and actors Haskell King and Michael Louis Serafin-Wells join Ira Flatow to talk about the play.

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Soprano Rebecca Luker made her Broadway debut as an understudy to Sarah Brightman in Phantom of the Opera in 1988.

Arts

Rebecca Luker Has 'Got Love' For Jerome Kern

2:39pm February 05, 2013

The Broadway star has a new album, I Got Love: Songs of Jerome Kern, which features songs by the great Broadway composer. The collection came out of a live show Luker performed at the Manhattan club 54 Below.

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