A Norwegian knitting marathon. America's Next Top Model. British crime dramas. Real-time strategy games. Peanut soup. These are some things that help us feel better " maybe they'll work for …
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber hit a milestone this past week. He's the first since Rodgers and Hammerstein to have four musicals running simultaneously on Broadway.
Actress Anika Noni Rose discusses her new show The Quad. The series follows success and scandal on the campus of a fictional historically black university.
The Grey's Anatomy co-star tells NPR's Michel Martin he's seen the effects of his actions in the public consciousness and discourse. He says he's inspired by black women and the black LGBTQ …
Stephen Agyei is a Denver-based comedian who's ready to quit his day job and take his comedy full time. The Daily Show's Roy Wood Jr.'s advice? Move to a coast.
Nancherla is riding high with a new TV special, a tour and a new album, Just Putting It Out There " all while dealing with some difficult personal issues, like depression and anxiety, on sta…
Director, actor and choreographer Debbie Allen's multimedia musical Freeze Frame examines the lives of young people living in cities with the backdrop of violence and police shootings.
The actress, who won a Tony in 1997 for her role in Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida, returns to Broadway after 15 years, to play nightclub singer Shug Avery in a revival of The Color Purple.
Actor Jonathan Pryce is playing the Jewish moneylender in a new touring production of The Merchant of Venice that reimagines Shakespeare's supposedly-comic villain as a tragic and universal …
When the Broadway musical's creator said the life of Alexander Hamilton embodied hip-hop, people laughed. Now, he's written a book about the national phenomenon with former critic Jeremy McC…
Adam Grant, author of Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, tells us what makes an original, how parents can nurture originality in their children, and its potential downside.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the late Justice Antonin Scalia were ideologically at the opposite ends of the Supreme Court bench. Despite their dissenting opinions, they were also great fr…
"It must be lovely to be beautiful, but that's a really difficult thing to lose," says Smith, now 81. Best known in the U.S. for her role in Downton Abbey, she's now starring in The Lady in …
Kliph Nesteroff's book digs into the origins of modern comedy, from the segregated Chitlin' Circuit to the vaudeville refugees who found a new home in the Catskills, to the very first female…
This week on Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam looks at what we find funny and what, well, crosses the line. Comedian Bill Burr joins us to talk about why race, gender and Caitlin Jenner can be…
Since she was in her 20s, the dancer and choreographer has been rewriting the rules for what dance can be. Now she's on her 50th anniversary tour, premiering new works with longtime collabor…
Tony Award winner Lea Salonga has long been a star on stage and screen. But she learned her grit and confidence years earlier " when she overcame allergy (and dog) attacks to win the role of…
"My ability to see what's going on in a room or analyze what's going on inside a person comes from my own doubts about what's going on inside myself," he says. Hare's memoir is The Blue Touc…
Dorrance was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship on Tuesday. For her, tap dance is the ultimate art form; "To be able to be a dancer and a musician at the same time " there's nothing like it," sh…
When comics tell jokes about the news, they're bound to come up with similar punch lines. But comedy writer Larry Getlen says that, while joke theft does happen, it's still rare.
The duo Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller are back on Broadway. They both talk " yes, even Teller " with NPR's Scott Simon about magic, danger and the remarkable endurance of their 40-year pa…
The housewife and superstar " a creation of Australian comedian Barry Humphries " says it's not entirely clear what her retirement will look like. "I'm a restless spirit," she says.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch's hero is once again being played by the man who created every punk and glam-rock inch of her. "I feel like I'm doing this to find out what's next in my life," Mitc…
"I like to interject, and there's no interjections here," says the comedian behind Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's "very unnatural for an interrupter." David makes his Broadway debut in Fish in t…
Now in her late 60s, Martin says she's still "excited and enthusiastic" about her work and doesn't have any intention of retiring. She published a memoir in September called Lady Parts.