9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
A Biohistory of American Performance
Paperback, 340 pages | purchase
For more than four decades, the Philadelphia Dance Company, PHILADANCO, has opened its doors to dancers of all races. Ballerina Joan Myers Brown founded the dance studio, in spite of decades of personal struggle against deeply ingrained and often unquestioned racial barriers in the ballet world.
Brown, who is African-American, tried to take classes in the 1950s at white ballet studios in Philadelphia. But "the doors were closed to her," says Brenda Dixon Gottschild, author of Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina.
Gottschild tells NPR's Michel Martin that there were some integrated dance classes in Philadelphia, taught by British choreographer Antony Tudor. He worked with Brown and eventually cast her in Le Sylphides, a classical ballet. But, Gottschild says, one local newspaper reviewed the ballet and referred to Brown and another black ballerina as "the flies in the buttermilk."
Brown went on to perform in nightclubs around the country with the likes of Sammy Davis Jr. and Cab Calloway. In 1960, she returned to Philadelphia, and eventually opened PHILADANCO. "Her community allowed her the strength to go on," Gottschild says. "She, indeed, had to deal with a city that didn't open the doors the way one would have assumed, even in the 1960s."
Joan Myers Brown grew up in a time of rigid segregation, both in life and dance. Brenda Dixon Gottschild, author of Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina, talks with NPR's Michel Martin about how Brown tackled racial barriers in the ballet world.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:280:"Joan Myers Brown grew up in a time of rigid segregation, both in life and dance. Brenda Dixon Gottschild, author of Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina, talks with NPR's Michel Martin about how Brown tackled racial barriers in the ballet world.";s:12:"atom_content";s:569:"Joan Myers Brown grew up in a time of rigid segregation, both in life and dance. Brenda Dixon Gottschild, author of Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina, talks with NPR's Michel Martin about how Brown tackled racial barriers in the ballet world.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1331148000;}i:1;a:22:{s:5:"title";s:48:"The Theatrical Curtain Call: More Than Just Bows";s:11:"description";s:131:"Critic Bob Mondello remembers when there were great, eccentric, revealing, funny and just plain effective theatrical curtain calls.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:32:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:99:"http://www.npr.org/2012/03/06/147973507/the-theatrical-curtain-call-more-than-just-bows?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:99:"http://www.npr.org/2012/03/06/147973507/the-theatrical-curtain-call-more-than-just-bows?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:44:{s:5:"title";s:48:"The Theatrical Curtain Call: More Than Just Bows";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"147973507";s:6:"teaser";s:131:"Critic Bob Mondello remembers when there were great, eccentric, revealing, funny and just plain effective theatrical curtain calls.";s:10:"miniteaser";s:83:"Critic Bob Mondello reflects on the changing nature of the theatrical curtain call.";s:4:"slug";s:7:"Theater";s:9:"thumbnail";s:9:" ";s:16:"thumbnail_medium";s:79:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/03/06/chorus-line_sq.jpg?t=1331072429&s=13";s:15:"thumbnail_large";s:79:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/03/06/chorus-line_sq.jpg?t=1331072429&s=11";s:18:"thumbnail_provider";s:12:"Getty Images";s:9:"storydate";s:31:"Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:00:00 -0500";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:32:00 -0500";s:16:"lastmodifieddate";s:31:"Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:32:22 -0500";s:4:"show";s:9:" ";s:12:"show_program";s:21:"All Things Considered";s:13:"show_showdate";s:31:"Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:00:00 -0500";s:11:"show_segnum";s:2:"20";s:12:"organization";s:9:" ";s:17:"organization_name";s:21:"National Public Radio";s:20:"organization_website";s:19:"http://www.npr.org/";s:10:"transcript";s:9:" ";s:15:"transcript_link";s:87:"http://api.npr.org/transcript?id=147973507&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:6:"parent";s:36:" ";s:12:"parent_title";s:40:"TheaterTheaterPerforming ArtsArts & Life";s:11:"parent_link";s:457:"http://www.npr.org/sections/theater/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1144&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/theater/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1144&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/performing-arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1046&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1008&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:5:"audio";s:9:" ";s:14:"audio_duration";s:3:"376";s:12:"audio_format";s:11:" ";s:16:"audio_format_mp3";s:152:"http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2012/03/20120306_atc_20.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1144http://api.npr.org/m3u/1148085694-8b1388.m3u?orgId=1&topicId=1144";s:15:"audio_format_wm";s:99:"http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg_wmref_em.php?id=148085694&type=1&mtype=WM&orgId=1&topicId=1144";s:24:"audio_format_mediastream";s:82:"rtmp://flash.npr.org/ondemand/mp3:anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2012/03/20120306_atc_20.mp3";s:17:"audio_permissions";s:11:" ";s:6:"byline";s:9:" ";s:11:"byline_name";s:12:"Bob Mondello";s:11:"byline_link";s:126:"http://www.npr.org/people/3813466/bob-mondellohttp://api.npr.org/query?id=3813466&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:5:"image";s:9:" ";s:11:"image_title";s:47:"The cast of the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line. ";s:13:"image_caption";s:56:"The cast of the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line. ";s:14:"image_producer";s:13:"Donald Bowers";s:14:"image_provider";s:12:"Getty Images";s:4:"text";s:9:" ";s:14:"text_paragraph";s:8559:"My first grown-up show: Oliver! Mom and me way up high in the upper balcony, watching all those kids down below.One older character, Nancy, who looked a little like my mom, died in the second act ? a development that I found pretty shocking ? and by the time for the curtain calls, it still hadn't occurred to me yet that the actress hadn't died.So everybody else comes out for applause, reprising the songs they'd sung earlier, which was the custom in musicals back then, including little Oliver, who sang a verse of a song that Nancy had taught him earlier."I'd do anything for you dear anythingfor you mean everything to me...."Then he turned, as the rest of the kids chimed in softly, sounding almost like a church choir, and they all looked up, and sang the song directly to ... Nancy! She appeared in a spotlight, not down on the stage with everybody else, but way high up on a platform near the top of the proscenium arch, right in front of my second-balcony seat.I was a smidge too old to think this was an actual miracle, and a bit too young to appreciate the stagecraft that made it all happen. All I knew was that Nancy was in heaven, and I was in tears.After that, for the longest time I expected something special from curtain calls. I don't any more. They're just bows now, rarely as much fun as I remember them being in my youth, possibly because back then standing ovations were not routine, so directors and stars had to work for them.Sammy Davis Jr. ended one lackluster Broadway musical by sending the cast home and doing a few numbers from his nightclub act. Kept the show running for months. Wouldn't happen today: Audiences love to go crazy with applause. It means the tickets were worth it.Dressed For SuccessI remember a few curtain calls where what triggered pandemonium was as simple as a costume change. At the close of Houston Grand Opera's landmark production of Porgy and Bess in the 1970s, the director decided to let audiences know how Porgy's crazy plan to travel a thousand miles to find Bess had worked out. That red dress he'd bought to surprise her, but hadn't been able to give her in the last act? She wore it for her bows. Audiences went wild.Same thing happened in The Act with Liza Minnelli ? a terrible show, though she'd looked great in one flamboyant Halston creation after another. Silver, white, blue, scarlet, gold.It wasn't until she came out for her final bow that you realized there was one color you hadn't seen all night And there she suddenly was, spotlit in a blinding malachite gown, so emerald-encrusted she could've out-dazzled her mom in Emerald City. This was Liza in her prime, so the crowd would have stood anyway, but with that dress, they stood and screamed.Snaps, Boos And Backtalk From The StageIt's an odd convention, this banging hands together to show approval. In ancient Rome, crowds at the Colosseum had more varied methods ? finger-snapping, toga-flapping, chanting ? each indicating a different degree of excitement. Excitement, mind you, that was often paid for. That's why the French word for clapping ? "claque" ? became a term for people hired to applaud. By the 1800s, you had to pay for claqueurs at your opening in Paris. If you didn't, they'd come and boo.People don't boo much any more, partly because ticket prices have made it an awfully expensive pastime, and partly because people don't care about theater the way they once did. Ibsen's premieres provoked actual riots.Shaw took a few lumps too, though always with his characteristic sense of humor. At the debut of Arms and the Man, when he took his author's bow to general applause, there was one man down front who hissed. Shaw looked down and said, "My dear fellow, I quite agree with you ? but what are we two, against so many?"As that moment suggests, to the folks up on stage, curtain calls are still part of the show. Sometimes that's made explicit, as in the Royal Shakespeare Company's original production of Marat/Sade, a show set in an insane asylum. The inmates, some still drooling, lined up on the lip of the stage for their bows and clapped back rhythmically at the audience, squelching what would have been a standing ovation before it could begin.This, in contrast to the usual, applause-boosting RSC practice of having the ensemble take individual bows, and then on some prearranged signal rush in unison toward the lip of the stage with a roar.Pleased To Bits, Or At Least Pretending To BeIt's useful to remember that while the actors may seem sincerely grateful for your applause ? may even be sincerely grateful ? they're still performing up there. I found it quite moving the first time I saw Mame, just weeks after it opened in 1966: There was Angela Lansbury, tears streaming down her face as the audience stood for her.Two years and 800 performances later, I saw her on tour ? and again with the tears. I wondered if she kept a raw onion backstage.Still, that's showbiz ? as is applause, which you might think of as the audience's chance to be part of the act. I had a theater professor who said that we clap not just to show we like something, but also to let the performers know we understand it.Say an actor delivers a big diatribe and ends it by stomping offstage, slamming a door behind him. When people applaud, they're saying "We get it; the emotion's clear; the moment works."Same thing when there's a big finish to a musical number ? as composer Stephen Schwartz establishes again and again in his monstrous hit Wicked. End on a big high note, with an orchestral flourish, and you all but force an ovation.Extras, Gimmicks And Bodies In The BasementIdeally, at a show's conclusion, you want to extend the applause ? and the involvement of the audience. They'll keep clapping just out of politeness, as long as actors are coming out, but you can give them something more ? say, one last laugh at a comedy.The murder farce Arsenic and Old Lace did that in the 1940s in a way no one could afford to do today, paying 12 actors who hadn't been in the show to emerge for a bow at the end. For more than a thousand performances, they got howls ? as the audience realized they were supposed to be the bodies buried in the cellar.Back then, though, if you wanted the crowd to stand ? and seriously, there was a time when audiences didn't stand for everything ? it helped to have a gimmick.The musical Woman of the Year saved one last bit of one-upsmanship for Harry Guardino, the leading man who'd been sparring with Lauren Bacall all night. (And losing, because she after all was the woman of the year.) At the curtain, Guardino brought a pitcher of water out with him, and as she was acknowledging her ovation, he poured it over her head.Bacall stood there sputtering but beaming, and the audience roared at her being such a good sport. They also talked all the way home and to their friends afterward about her wet hair, which doubtless sold a lot of tickets. Late in the run, Raquel Welch ? whose fan-base was somewhat different ? took over the role. I'm guessing that wet-hair moment turned into more of a wet T-shirt moment.Long runs can take their toll, so it's wise to calibrate a curtain call for maximum effect. I remember Yul Brynner touring in a pretty bedraggled King & I toward the tail end of his career. The production looked tired, and the applause was merely dutiful as the others smiled ingratiatingly down front at their curtsies.But when it came Brynner's turn, he didn't ask for applause ? what king would ask? He planted his feet wide at the very back of the stage, crossed his arms in that kingly stance of his, and just stood there glaring at the audience. For long moments. It was a command. He was the king, and he wasn't coming forward until the audience stood. So the audience stood. Could work only if you're Yul Brynner.So is there a model curtain call? Well, conceptually, the one for A Chorus Line is pretty terrific, though in keeping with its "the-group-is-everything" ethos, it doesn't allow for individual bows.Instead, the dancers who've been desperately auditioning all evening in rehearsal clothes come dancing on at the end, one-by-one, in gold satin-y costumes and top hats.Not just the kids who got selected, but all of them. And not bowing, but doing the big kick-line number they'd been so desperate to be anonymous in: "One singular sensation, every little step she takes ..."Individually singular, together, they are a sensation ? and as the curtain falls, and the audience cheers, they're still kicking. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]";s:12:"textwithhtml";s:9:" ";s:22:"textwithhtml_paragraph";s:9099:"My first grown-up show: Oliver! Mom and me way up high in the upper balcony, watching all those kids down below.One older character, Nancy, who looked a little like my mom, died in the second act ? a development that I found pretty shocking ? and by the time for the curtain calls, it still hadn't occurred to me yet that the actress hadn't died.So everybody else comes out for applause, reprising the songs they'd sung earlier, which was the custom in musicals back then, including little Oliver, who sang a verse of a song that Nancy had taught him earlier."I'd do anything9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
The cast of the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line.
My first grown-up show: Oliver! Mom and me way up high in the upper balcony, watching all those kids down below.
One older character, Nancy, who looked a little like my mom, died in the second act ? a development that I found pretty shocking ? and by the time for the curtain calls, it still hadn't occurred to me yet that the actress hadn't died.
So everybody else comes out for applause, reprising the songs they'd sung earlier, which was the custom in musicals back then, including little Oliver, who sang a verse of a song that Nancy had taught him earlier.
"I'd do anything
for you dear anything
for you mean everything to me...."
Then he turned, as the rest of the kids chimed in softly, sounding almost like a church choir, and they all looked up, and sang the song directly to ... Nancy! She appeared in a spotlight, not down on the stage with everybody else, but way high up on a platform near the top of the proscenium arch, right in front of my second-balcony seat.
I was a smidge too old to think this was an actual miracle, and a bit too young to appreciate the stagecraft that made it all happen. All I knew was that Nancy was in heaven, and I was in tears.
After that, for the longest time I expected something special from curtain calls. I don't any more. They're just bows now, rarely as much fun as I remember them being in my youth, possibly because back then standing ovations were not routine, so directors and stars had to work for them.
Sammy Davis Jr. ended one lackluster Broadway musical by sending the cast home and doing a few numbers from his nightclub act. Kept the show running for months. Wouldn't happen today: Audiences love to go crazy with applause. It means the tickets were worth it.
Dressed For Success
I remember a few curtain calls where what triggered pandemonium was as simple as a costume change. At the close of Houston Grand Opera's landmark production of Porgy and Bess in the 1970s, the director decided to let audiences know how Porgy's crazy plan to travel a thousand miles to find Bess had worked out. That red dress he'd bought to surprise her, but hadn't been able to give her in the last act? She wore it for her bows. Audiences went wild.
Same thing happened in The Act with Liza Minnelli ? a terrible show, though she'd looked great in one flamboyant Halston creation after another. Silver, white, blue, scarlet, gold.
It wasn't until she came out for her final bow that you realized there was one color you hadn't seen all night And there she suddenly was, spotlit in a blinding malachite gown, so emerald-encrusted she could've out-dazzled her mom in Emerald City. This was Liza in her prime, so the crowd would have stood anyway, but with that dress, they stood and screamed.
Snaps, Boos And Backtalk From The Stage
It's an odd convention, this banging hands together to show approval. In ancient Rome, crowds at the Colosseum had more varied methods ? finger-snapping, toga-flapping, chanting ? each indicating a different degree of excitement. Excitement, mind you, that was often paid for. That's why the French word for clapping ? "claque" ? became a term for people hired to applaud. By the 1800s, you had to pay for claqueurs at your opening in Paris. If you didn't, they'd come and boo.
People don't boo much any more, partly because ticket prices have made it an awfully expensive pastime, and partly because people don't care about theater the way they once did. Ibsen's premieres provoked actual riots.
Shaw took a few lumps too, though always with his characteristic sense of humor. At the debut of Arms and the Man, when he took his author's bow to general applause, there was one man down front who hissed. Shaw looked down and said, "My dear fellow, I quite agree with you ? but what are we two, against so many?"
As that moment suggests, to the folks up on stage, curtain calls are still part of the show. Sometimes that's made explicit, as in the Royal Shakespeare Company's original production of Marat/Sade, a show set in an insane asylum. The inmates, some still drooling, lined up on the lip of the stage for their bows and clapped back rhythmically at the audience, squelching what would have been a standing ovation before it could begin.
This, in contrast to the usual, applause-boosting RSC practice of having the ensemble take individual bows, and then on some prearranged signal rush in unison toward the lip of the stage with a roar.
Pleased To Bits, Or At Least Pretending To Be
It's useful to remember that while the actors may seem sincerely grateful for your applause ? may even be sincerely grateful ? they're still performing up there. I found it quite moving the first time I saw Mame, just weeks after it opened in 1966: There was Angela Lansbury, tears streaming down her face as the audience stood for her.
Two years and 800 performances later, I saw her on tour ? and again with the tears. I wondered if she kept a raw onion backstage.
Still, that's showbiz ? as is applause, which you might think of as the audience's chance to be part of the act. I had a theater professor who said that we clap not just to show we like something, but also to let the performers know we understand it.
Say an actor delivers a big diatribe and ends it by stomping offstage, slamming a door behind him. When people applaud, they're saying "We get it; the emotion's clear; the moment works."
Same thing when there's a big finish to a musical number ? as composer Stephen Schwartz establishes again and again in his monstrous hit Wicked. End on a big high note, with an orchestral flourish, and you all but force an ovation.
Extras, Gimmicks And Bodies In The Basement
Ideally, at a show's conclusion, you want to extend the applause ? and the involvement of the audience. They'll keep clapping just out of politeness, as long as actors are coming out, but you can give them something more ? say, one last laugh at a comedy.
The murder farce Arsenic and Old Lace did that in the 1940s in a way no one could afford to do today, paying 12 actors who hadn't been in the show to emerge for a bow at the end. For more than a thousand performances, they got howls ? as the audience realized they were supposed to be the bodies buried in the cellar.
Back then, though, if you wanted the crowd to stand ? and seriously, there was a time when audiences didn't stand for everything ? it helped to have a gimmick.
The musical Woman of the Year saved one last bit of one-upsmanship for Harry Guardino, the leading man who'd been sparring with Lauren Bacall all night. (And losing, because she after all was the woman of the year.) At the curtain, Guardino brought a pitcher of water out with him, and as she was acknowledging her ovation, he poured it over her head.
Bacall stood there sputtering but beaming, and the audience roared at her being such a good sport. They also talked all the way home and to their friends afterward about her wet hair, which doubtless sold a lot of tickets. Late in the run, Raquel Welch ? whose fan-base was somewhat different ? took over the role. I'm guessing that wet-hair moment turned into more of a wet T-shirt moment.
Long runs can take their toll, so it's wise to calibrate a curtain call for maximum effect. I remember Yul Brynner touring in a pretty bedraggled King & I toward the tail end of his career. The production looked tired, and the applause was merely dutiful as the others smiled ingratiatingly down front at their curtsies.
But when it came Brynner's turn, he didn't ask for applause ? what king would ask? He planted his feet wide at the very back of the stage, crossed his arms in that kingly stance of his, and just stood there glaring at the audience. For long moments. It was a command. He was the king, and he wasn't coming forward until the audience stood. So the audience stood. Could work only if you're Yul Brynner.
So is there a model curtain call? Well, conceptually, the one for A Chorus Line is pretty terrific, though in keeping with its "the-group-is-everything" ethos, it doesn't allow for individual bows.
Instead, the dancers who've been desperately auditioning all evening in rehearsal clothes come dancing on at the end, one-by-one, in gold satin-y costumes and top hats.
Not just the kids who got selected, but all of them. And not bowing, but doing the big kick-line number they'd been so desperate to be anonymous in: "One singular sensation, every little step she takes ..."
Individually singular, together, they are a sensation ? and as the curtain falls, and the audience cheers, they're still kicking.
Critic Bob Mondello remembers when there were great, eccentric, revealing, funny and just plain effective theatrical curtain calls.
» E-Mail This » Add to Del.icio.us
";}s:7:"summary";s:131:"Critic Bob Mondello remembers when there were great, eccentric, revealing, funny and just plain effective theatrical curtain calls.";s:12:"atom_content";s:420:"Critic Bob Mondello remembers when there were great, eccentric, revealing, funny and just plain effective theatrical curtain calls.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1330968720;}i:2;a:26:{s:5:"title";s:54:"In 'Shatner's World,' Stories About Acting, Loss, Life";s:11:"description";s:206:"In his new one-man show, William Shatner talks about his childhood growing up in Montreal ? and the ups and downs of creating iconic characters, from starship captain James T. Kirk to lawyer Denny Crane.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:08:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:100:"http://www.npr.org/2012/03/06/147735025/in-shatners-world-stories-about-acting-loss-life?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:100:"http://www.npr.org/2012/03/06/147735025/in-shatners-world-stories-about-acting-loss-life?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:46:{s:5:"title";s:54:"In 'Shatner's World,' Stories About Acting, Loss, Life";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"147735025";s:6:"teaser";s:206:"In his new one-man show, William Shatner talks about his childhood growing up in Montreal ? and the ups and downs of creating iconic characters, from starship captain James T. Kirk to lawyer Denny Crane.";s:10:"miniteaser";s:115:"In his new one-man show, the Canadian actor shares stories from life, Star Trek and Boston Legal.";s:4:"slug";s:7:"Theater";s:9:"thumbnail";s:9:" ";s:16:"thumbnail_medium";s:71:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/03/01/917_sq.jpg?t=1331134337&s=13";s:15:"thumbnail_large";s:71:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/03/01/917_sq.jpg?t=1331134337&s=11";s:18:"thumbnail_provider";s:11:"Joan Marcus";s:9:"storydate";s:31:"Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:00:00 -0500";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:08:00 -0500";s:16:"lastmodifieddate";s:31:"Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:32:19 -0500";s:4:"show";s:9:" ";s:12:"show_program";s:19:"Fresh Air from WHYY";s:13:"show_showdate";s:31:"Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:00:00 -0500";s:11:"show_segnum";s:1:"2";s:12:"organization";s:9:" ";s:17:"organization_name";s:21:"National Public Radio";s:20:"organization_website";s:19:"http://www.npr.org/";s:10:"transcript";s:9:" ";s:15:"transcript_link";s:87:"http://api.npr.org/transcript?id=147735025&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:6:"parent";s:72:" ";s:12:"parent_title";s:91:"Fresh Air InterviewsTheaterTheaterTelevisionPop CulturePerforming ArtsInterviewsArts & Life";s:11:"parent_link";s:944:"http://www.npr.org/series/125637934/fresh-air-interviewshttp://api.npr.org/query?id=125637934&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/theater/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1144&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/theater/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1144&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/television/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1138&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/pop-culture/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1048&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/performing-arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1046&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/interviews/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1022&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1008&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:5:"audio";s:9:" ";s:14:"audio_duration";s:4:"1579";s:12:"audio_format";s:11:" ";s:16:"audio_format_mp3";s:150:"http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2012/03/20120306_fa_02.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1144http://api.npr.org/m3u/1148037903-694051.m3u?orgId=1&topicId=1144";s:15:"audio_format_wm";s:99:"http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg_wmref_em.php?id=148037903&type=1&mtype=WM&orgId=1&topicId=1144";s:24:"audio_format_mediastream";s:80:"rtmp://flash.npr.org/ondemand/mp3:anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2012/03/20120306_fa_02.mp3";s:17:"audio_permissions";s:11:" ";s:9:"container";s:9:" ";s:15:"container_title";s:19:"Related NPR Stories";s:5:"image";s:18:" ";s:11:"image_title";s:252:"In his solo show, Shatner shares stories about his childhood, his father, and his lengthy acting career.William Shatner, whose last Broadway appearances were more than 40 years ago, has returned to the stage with an anecdotal, autobiographical evening.";s:13:"image_caption";s:252:"In his solo show, Shatner shares stories about his childhood, his father, and his lengthy acting career.William Shatner, whose last Broadway appearances were more than 40 years ago, has returned to the stage with an anecdotal, autobiographical evening.";s:14:"image_provider";s:26:"Joan MarcusWilliam Shatner";s:17:"image_enlargement";s:11:" ";s:11:"relatedlink";s:36:" ";s:19:"relatedlink_caption";s:177:" It's 'Shatner's World' And He Wants You To See It William Shatner Covers 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' And Yes, It's Very Weird William Shatner's Own Space Oddity Actor William Shatner ";s:16:"relatedlink_link";s:663:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/18/147090053/its-shatners-world-and-he-wants-you-to-see-ithttp://api.npr.org/query?id=147090053&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/10/20/141551283/william-shatner-covers-bohemian-rhapsody-and-yes-its-very-weirdhttp://api.npr.org/query?id=141551283&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/2011/10/16/141358234/william-shatners-own-space-oddityhttp://api.npr.org/query?id=141358234&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3868287http://api.npr.org/query?id=3868287&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:4:"text";s:9:" ";s:14:"text_paragraph";s:5601:"William Shatner has played an attorney, a starship captain, an alien and a Roman tax collector, among many other roles. Over the past half-century, the Canadian actor has performed on television, in commercials, in movies and on Broadway ? and penned several novels.He recently returned to Broadway for the first time in over 40 years with a new solo show, Shatner's World: We Just Live In It. In the 90-minute performance, Shatner talks about his childhood growing up in Montreal and reflects on his many acting roles with an assortment of photos and video clips.Shatner tells Fresh Air's David Bianculli that when he gets on stage each night, he doesn't think about his performance. Instead, he thinks about the show in the same way one would learn to ride a horse or ski or perform any other difficult skill."When you've done the technical part, you're then into the joy, the zen, into being," he says. "Technology no longer exists for you. You're then into the mystery of the thing you're doing."One of the memorable stories Shatner tells onstage is about his father, who was in the clothing business. As Shatner talks about his father's death, he precisely folds a jacket onstage ? just the way his father used to do it."It was like [watching] a sculptor putting the last touches on his sculpture, sanding his last moment, getting the last abrasion out of the thing that he had created," he says. "This garment, to my father, was his creation. And I talk about the hands that went to loom and the material that fitted it, and it became ? in my mind's eye ? a part of my father. So when I told the story of my father's death, it came to me that I would tell it through the act of his jacket."Midway through the act, Shatner takes his jacket off and lays it to rest in a coffin."Then, the most moving moment for me is that I come to the conclusion that life doesn't have to end with death if love is present," he says. "And I put the jacket back on."A sizable chunk of Shatner's performance, of course, is devoted to his iconic role as Capt. James T. Kirk. He speaks candidly about how Star Trek's popularity made him begin to see his own acting career in a negative way, until he heard Patrick Stewart speak about his own role on the show's sequel series, Star Trek: The Next Generation."I have a lot of respect for Patrick Stewart, and [it was seeing] the gravitas that this great Shakespearean actor gave to his role that I suddenly realized that this guy is taking Capt. Picard every bit as seriously as Macbeth," Shatner says. "And I used to. And I stopped. And what the hell's the matter with me? It was a great piece of work. Everybody contributed to it for three years, and it has lasted 50. It's a phenomenon. Why aren't I proud of it? And that's when I had a moment."After Star Trek, Shatner managed to create another iconic TV character, playing the role of Denny Crane on ABC's The Practice and Boston Legal. He says he envisioned the character as a lizard who sticks his tongue out."Why does the lizard stick his tongue out? The lizard sticks its tongue out because that's the way its listening and looking and tasting its environment," he says. "It's its means of appreciating what's in front of it. It sticks its tongue out to be sure that it's not going to be eaten. I thought, 'That's what [Denny Crane's] doing. He used to be a great lawyer. And when he said, 'Denny Crane,' I thought, who's he saying that for? How do you play that? I played it like the lizard saying, 'Denny Crane.' He's trying to say, 'Here I am,' but without being able to say it.'"Shatner says the scenes that series creator David Kelley imagined for his character were both imaginative ? and plausible."I remember one moment he was giving himself Botox injections, and something surprised him so he turned around in his chair and had a Botox needle sticking out of his forehead," he says. "In one moment, he's totally lucid, and in the other, he's totally insane. How extraordinary ? what a character to play! To have had the privilege to have worked with those actors and directors and writers ? I loved every one of them, and it was a sad, sad moment to say goodbye when the show was over."Interview HighlightsOn taking risks"It's very easy to say no to leaving the house. I'm happy with what I got. No, I'm not going there. No, I don't want a new idea ? the old idea is fine. No, I don't want a new thing ? whether it's a president, an idea, a concept. No. And you're safe. You're right in your little hole; you haven't moved. And what you're doing before is what you're doing now. And that's safe. That's comforting, and you're going to die that way. 'No,' and you're put in your hole and that's fine and you're dead. 'Yes' requires you to move out of that hole. 'Yes' is like those little animals that pop their heads out and look around. But some of them don't go."On the popularity of Star Trek"I spent years doing Star Trek bits and things, and a lot of people loved it, a lot of people mocked it. They did their various comic turns on Star Trek, and I went with the joke because, what, you're not going to joke with the joke? At the time, I applied every talent I had to making it valid and working on story and fighting management and doing the best I could," he says. "There were many, many talents who did that. ... I did the best I could. So when I left Star Trek, I left it with pride and went onto other things. Then Star Trek started to become popular about six years afterward, when it went into syndication, and then people started talking about it." [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]";s:12:"textwithhtml";s:9:" ";s:22:"textwithhtml_paragraph";s:6034:"William Shatner has played an attorney, a starship captain, an alien and a Roman tax collector, among many other roles. Over the past half-century, the Canadian actor has performed on television, in commercials, in movies and on Broadway ? and penned several novels.He recently returned to Broadway for the first time in over 40 years with a new solo show, Shatner's World: We Just Live In It. In the 90-minute performance, Shatner talks about his childhood growing up in Montreal and reflects on his many acting roles with an assortment of photos and video clips.Shatner tells Fresh Air's David Bianculli that when he gets on stage each night, he doesn't think about his performance. Instead, he thinks about the show in the same way one would learn to ride a horse or ski or perform any other difficult skill."When you've done the technical part, you're then into the joy, the zen, into being," he says. "Technology no longer exists for you. You're then into the mystery of the thing you're doing."One of the memorable stories Shatner tells onstage is about his father, who was in the clothing business. As Shatner talks about his father's death, he precisely folds a jacket onstage ? just the way his father used to do it."It was like [watching] a sculptor putting the last touches on his sculpture, sanding his last moment, getting the last abrasion out of the thing that he had created," he says. "This garment, to my father, was his creation. And I talk about the hands that went to loom and the material that fitted it, and it became ? in my mind's eye ? a part of my father. So when I told the story of my father's death, it came to me that I would tell it through the act of his jacket."Midway through the act, Shatner takes his jacket off and lays it to rest in a coffin."Then, the most moving moment for me is that I come to the conclusion that life doesn't have to end with death if love is present," he says. "And I put the jacket back on."A sizable chunk of Shatner's performance, of course, is devoted to his iconic role as Capt. James T. Kirk. He speaks candidly about how Star Trek's popularity made him begin to see his own acting career in a negative way, until he heard Patrick Stewart speak about his own role on the show's sequel series, Star Trek: The Next Generation."I have a lot of respect for Patrick Stewart, and [it was seeing] the gravitas that this great Shakespearean actor gave to his role that I suddenly realized that this guy is taking Capt. Picard every bit as seriously as Macbeth," Shatner says. "And I used to. And I stopped. And what the hell's the matter with me? It was a great piece of work. Everybody contributed to it for three years, and it has lasted 50. It's a phenomenon. Why aren't I proud of it? And that's when I had a moment."After Star Trek, Shatner managed to create another iconic TV character, playing the role of Denny Crane on ABC's The Practice and Boston Legal. He says he envisioned the character as a lizard who sticks his tongue out."Why does the lizard stick his tongue out? The lizard sticks its tongue out because that's the way its listening and looking and tasting its environment," he says. "It's its means of appreciating what's in front of it. It sticks its tongue out to be sure that it's not going to be eaten. I thought, 'That's what [Denny Crane's] doing. He used to be a great lawyer. And when he said, 'Denny Crane,' I thought, who's he saying that for? How do you play that? I played it like the lizard saying, 'Denny Crane.' He's trying to say, 'Here I am,' but without being able to say it.'"Shatner says the scenes that series creator David Kelley imagined for his character were both imaginative ? and plausible."I remember one moment he was giving himself Botox injections, and something surprised him so he turned around in his chair and had a Botox needle sticking out of his forehead," he says. "In one moment, he's totally lucid, and in the other, he's totally insane. How extraordinary ? what a character to play! To have had the privilege to have worked with those actors and directors and writers ? I loved every one of them, and it was a sad, sad moment to say goodbye when the show was over."9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
William Shatner, whose last Broadway appearances were more than 40 years ago, has returned to the stage with an anecdotal, autobiographical evening.
William Shatner has played an attorney, a starship captain, an alien and a Roman tax collector, among many other roles. Over the past half-century, the Canadian actor has performed on television, in commercials, in movies and on Broadway ? and penned several novels.
He recently returned to Broadway for the first time in over 40 years with a new solo show, Shatner's World: We Just Live In It. In the 90-minute performance, Shatner talks about his childhood growing up in Montreal and reflects on his many acting roles with an assortment of photos and video clips.
Shatner tells Fresh Air's David Bianculli that when he gets on stage each night, he doesn't think about his performance. Instead, he thinks about the show in the same way one would learn to ride a horse or ski or perform any other difficult skill.
"When you've done the technical part, you're then into the joy, the zen, into being," he says. "Technology no longer exists for you. You're then into the mystery of the thing you're doing."
In his solo show, Shatner shares stories about his childhood, his father, and his lengthy acting career.
One of the memorable stories Shatner tells onstage is about his father, who was in the clothing business. As Shatner talks about his father's death, he precisely folds a jacket onstage ? just the way his father used to do it.
"It was like [watching] a sculptor putting the last touches on his sculpture, sanding his last moment, getting the last abrasion out of the thing that he had created," he says. "This garment, to my father, was his creation. And I talk about the hands that went to loom and the material that fitted it, and it became ? in my mind's eye ? a part of my father. So when I told the story of my father's death, it came to me that I would tell it through the act of his jacket."
Midway through the act, Shatner takes his jacket off and lays it to rest in a coffin.
"Then, the most moving moment for me is that I come to the conclusion that life doesn't have to end with death if love is present," he says. "And I put the jacket back on."
A sizable chunk of Shatner's performance, of course, is devoted to his iconic role as Capt. James T. Kirk. He speaks candidly about how Star Trek's popularity made him begin to see his own acting career in a negative way, until he heard Patrick Stewart speak about his own role on the show's sequel series, Star Trek: The Next Generation.
"I have a lot of respect for Patrick Stewart, and [it was seeing] the gravitas that this great Shakespearean actor gave to his role that I suddenly realized that this guy is taking Capt. Picard every bit as seriously as Macbeth," Shatner says. "And I used to. And I stopped. And what the hell's the matter with me? It was a great piece of work. Everybody contributed to it for three years, and it has lasted 50. It's a phenomenon. Why aren't I proud of it? And that's when I had a moment."
After Star Trek, Shatner managed to create another iconic TV character, playing the role of Denny Crane on ABC's The Practice and Boston Legal. He says he envisioned the character as a lizard who sticks his tongue out.
"Why does the lizard stick his tongue out? The lizard sticks its tongue out because that's the way its listening and looking and tasting its environment," he says. "It's its means of appreciating what's in front of it. It sticks its tongue out to be sure that it's not going to be eaten. I thought, 'That's what [Denny Crane's] doing. He used to be a great lawyer. And when he said, 'Denny Crane,' I thought, who's he saying that for? How do you play that? I played it like the lizard saying, 'Denny Crane.' He's trying to say, 'Here I am,' but without being able to say it.'"
Shatner says the scenes that series creator David Kelley imagined for his character were both imaginative ? and plausible.
"I remember one moment he was giving himself Botox injections, and something surprised him so he turned around in his chair and had a Botox needle sticking out of his forehead," he says. "In one moment, he's totally lucid, and in the other, he's totally insane. How extraordinary ? what a character to play! To have had the privilege to have worked with those actors and directors and writers ? I loved every one of them, and it was a sad, sad moment to say goodbye when the show was over."
On taking risks
"It's very easy to say no to leaving the house. I'm happy with what I got. No, I'm not going there. No, I don't want a new idea ? the old idea is fine. No, I don't want a new thing ? whether it's a president, an idea, a concept. No. And you're safe. You're right in your little hole; you haven't moved. And what you're doing before is what you're doing now. And that's safe. That's comforting, and you're going to die that way. 'No,' and you're put in your hole and that's fine and you're dead. 'Yes' requires you to move out of that hole. 'Yes' is like those little animals that pop their heads out and look around. But some of them don't go."
On the popularity of Star Trek
"I spent years doing Star Trek bits and things, and a lot of people loved it, a lot of people mocked it. They did their various comic turns on Star Trek, and I went with the joke because, what, you're not going to joke with the joke? At the time, I applied every talent I had to making it valid and working on story and fighting management and doing the best I could," he says. "There were many, many talents who did that. ... I did the best I could. So when I left Star Trek, I left it with pride and went onto other things. Then Star Trek started to become popular about six years afterward, when it went into syndication, and then people started talking about it."
In his new one-man show, William Shatner talks about his childhood growing up in Montreal ? and the ups and downs of creating iconic characters, from starship captain James T. Kirk to lawyer Denny Crane.
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In his new one-man show, William Shatner talks about his childhood growing up in Montreal ? and the ups and downs of creating iconic characters, from starship captain James T. Kirk to lawyer Denny Crane.
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9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
The audio of this story, as did a previous Web version, incorrectly says that Zumba has certified more than a quarter-million instructors.
Zumba dance classes are all the rage, but some critics say the fitness craze shouldn't be considered Latin dance.
Zumba isn't just a fitness craze; it's an international business with more than 12 million enthusiasts in its classes. You can buy Zumba CDs, a Zumba video game and Zumba clothes. For many students ? who show up in spandex to body-roll, fist-pump and booty-shake ? it's their first taste of Latin music and dance steps. Now, some Latin dancers are trying to make more of a distinction between their art ? and what happens in a Zumba class.
Zumba enthusiast Damarus Diaz is Puerto Rican, and she likes the way Zumba has brought Latin rhythms and steps to the rest of the world. "I love how all these different cultures are embracing the Latin culture now because of Zumba," Diaz says. "You'll see people mouthing words to the song and afterward they'll come to me and say, 'Damarus, what does that mean?'"
The story of Zumba begins with an accident that seems too good to be true. Back in the '90s in Colombia, dancer and choreographer Alberto Perez was teaching an aerobics class and he forgot his regular music. So he reached into his backpack and pulled out tapes of salsa and merengue. Fast forward to today, and Zumba has certified instructors in more than 125 countries around the world. Each class uses salsa, cumbia, bachata, and other Latin and international rhythms.
Marianne Martino-Giosa straddles both the Zumba and Latin dance worlds ? she's a semi-professional salsa dancer and teaches 19 Zumba classes a week in the Philadelphia area. (She's got the six-pack to prove it.) There's plenty of overlap between Zumba and salsa classes, she says, but there are plenty of differences between the two styles of dance. For example, you never start a step on the right foot in salsa: "It's a no-no ... It's just not proper technique," Martino-Giosa says. But Zumba's an exercise class, and students need to work both legs.
You're taking a salsa step and in the middle of it you jump into a jumping jack. When you're mixing the two, that's just funny.
There's still disagreement over whether Zumba is really Latin dance. "The salseros will tell you that Zumba is not Latin dancing," Martino-Giosa says. "But anybody who takes Zumba does feel that it's part of Latin dancing."
Jose Maldonado is one of the skeptics. He teaches Latin dance at the same studio where Martino-Giosa leads Zumba classes and says that students who think Zumba dance is legitimate Latin dance are "misinformed."
"One of my students said, 'I took Zumba. I think I know how to salsa dance.' I said, 'Fine, strut your stuff. Let's see what you have.' They couldn't salsa," Maldonado says.
Perhaps Latin dance is undergoing the same sort of transition that yoga did when it gained popularity. Joan White has taught the classical style of Iyengar yoga for nearly 40 years. For her, yoga is a spiritual practice, not just a physical fitness. "I find it extremely sad," White says. "It's like, here is this wonderful tradition that comes from India, and now it's being completely overrun by people who have no idea what yoga is."
Authentic or not, Zumba has been good business for Latin dance. At La Luna studio, where Maldonado and Martino-Giosa teach, Zumba brings in as many if not more students per month as the rest of the studio's dance classes.
World-ranked salsa dancer Darlin Garcia hopes to cash in on Zumba's popularity. His studio Art In Motion recently began offering Zumba classes, even though he still makes fun of it.
"You're taking a salsa step and in the middle of it you jump into a jumping jack," he says. "When you're mixing the two, that's just funny."
As it morphs and evolves, Zumba may be moving away from its Latin roots. The company has recently expanded to include more international rhythms from West Coast swing, belly dance and bhangra.
The high-energy dance classes are all the rage, but some critics are taking issue with the fitness craze being labeled as Latin dance. Authentic or not, with 12 million people dancing off the pounds, Zumba business is booming.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:226:"The high-energy dance classes are all the rage, but some critics are taking issue with the fitness craze being labeled as Latin dance. Authentic or not, with 12 million people dancing off the pounds, Zumba business is booming.";s:12:"atom_content";s:515:"The high-energy dance classes are all the rage, but some critics are taking issue with the fitness craze being labeled as Latin dance. Authentic or not, with 12 million people dancing off the pounds, Zumba business is booming.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1330923660;}i:4;a:27:{s:5:"title";s:43:"American Capitalism, A Song And Dance Story";s:11:"description";s:210:"An experimental musical attempts to get at the tension between creation and violence: the love and ambivalence of Americans toward constant expansionism and growth. There's the atom bomb, mystic gods and more.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:18:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:94:"http://www.npr.org/2012/03/04/147807867/american-capitalism-a-song-and-dance-story?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:94:"http://www.npr.org/2012/03/04/147807867/american-capitalism-a-song-and-dance-story?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:49:{s:5:"title";s:43:"American Capitalism, A Song And Dance Story";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"147807867";s:6:"teaser";s:210:"An experimental musical attempts to get at the tension between creation and violence: the love and ambivalence of Americans toward constant expansionism and growth. There's the atom bomb, mystic gods and more.";s:10:"miniteaser";s:99:"An experimental musical plays on Americans' love and ambivalence toward expansionism and growth.";s:4:"slug";s:15:"Performing Arts";s:9:"thumbnail";s:9:" ";s:16:"thumbnail_medium";s:144:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/03/02/photog-rachel-chavkin_the-team_mission-drift_amber-gray-with-ensemble-behind_sq.jpg?t=1330819085&s=13";s:15:"thumbnail_large";s:144:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/03/02/photog-rachel-chavkin_the-team_mission-drift_amber-gray-with-ensemble-behind_sq.jpg?t=1330819085&s=11";s:18:"thumbnail_provider";s:14:"Rachel Chavkin";s:9:"storydate";s:31:"Sun, 04 Mar 2012 08:00:00 -0500";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:18:00 -0500";s:16:"lastmodifieddate";s:31:"Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:00:46 -0500";s:4:"show";s:9:" ";s:12:"show_program";s:22:"Weekend Edition Sunday";s:13:"show_showdate";s:31:"Sun, 04 Mar 2012 08:00:00 -0500";s:11:"show_segnum";s:2:"19";s:12:"organization";s:9:" ";s:17:"organization_name";s:21:"National Public Radio";s:20:"organization_website";s:19:"http://www.npr.org/";s:10:"transcript";s:9:" ";s:15:"transcript_link";s:87:"http://api.npr.org/transcript?id=147807867&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:6:"parent";s:99:" ";s:12:"parent_title";s:128:"Business E-mail Newsletter WeeklyTheaterHistoryAround the NationPerforming ArtsPerforming ArtsEconomyArts & LifeBusinessU.S.News";s:11:"parent_link";s:1297:"http://www.npr.org/series/127088640/business-e-mail-newsletter-weeklyhttp://api.npr.org/query?id=127088640&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/theater/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1144&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/history/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1136&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/around-the-nation/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1091&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/performing-arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1046&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/performing-arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1046&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/economy/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1017&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1008&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/business/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1006&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/us/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1003&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/news/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1001&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:5:"audio";s:9:" ";s:14:"audio_duration";s:3:"334";s:12:"audio_format";s:11:" ";s:16:"audio_format_mp3";s:156:"http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/wesun/2012/03/20120304_wesun_19.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1046http://api.npr.org/m3u/1147906451-2f9dce.m3u?orgId=1&topicId=1046";s:15:"audio_format_wm";s:99:"http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg_wmref_em.php?id=147906451&type=1&mtype=WM&orgId=1&topicId=1046";s:24:"audio_format_mediastream";s:86:"rtmp://flash.npr.org/ondemand/mp3:anon.npr-mp3/npr/wesun/2012/03/20120304_wesun_19.mp3";s:17:"audio_permissions";s:11:" ";s:6:"byline";s:9:" ";s:11:"byline_name";s:12:"Margot Adler";s:11:"byline_link";s:126:"http://www.npr.org/people/2100166/margot-adlerhttp://api.npr.org/query?id=2100166&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:9:"container";s:9:" ";s:15:"container_title";s:19:"Related NPR Stories";s:5:"image";s:27:" ";s:11:"image_title";s:313:"Amber Gray sings in Mission Drift. Amber Gray, Libby King, Heather Christian, Mikaal Sulaiman, and Brian Hastert perform a song from the musical "Mission Drift." Heather Christian performs in the musical Mission Drift, an exploration of American capitalism explained through history and the growth of Las Vegas. ";s:13:"image_caption";s:331:"Amber Gray sings in Mission Drift. Amber Gray, Libby King, Heather Christian, Mikaal Sulaiman, and Brian Hastert perform a song from the musical "Mission Drift." Heather Christian performs in the musical Mission Drift, an exploration of American capitalism explained through history and the growth of Las Vegas. ";s:14:"image_provider";s:42:"Rachel ChavkinRachel ChavkinRachel Chavkin";s:17:"image_enlargement";s:33:" ";s:11:"relatedlink";s:27:" ";s:19:"relatedlink_caption";s:130:" In Soviet Russia, Communism Can't Stop The Beat A 'Rheingold' For The 21st Century Dancers Leap Over U.S.-Cuba Political Barriers";s:16:"relatedlink_link";s:485:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/23/147295117/in-soviet-russia-communism-cant-stop-the-beathttp://api.npr.org/query?id=147295117&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/blogs/nprberlinblog/2011/08/19/139791996/a-rheingold-for-the-21st-centuryhttp://api.npr.org/query?id=139791996&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131161815http://api.npr.org/query?id=131161815&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:4:"text";s:9:" ";s:14:"text_paragraph";s:4822:"It's hard to write a musical about capitalism. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill gave it a shot with The Threepenny Opera. The musical Urinetown took a crack at it. Now comes Mission Drift, a two-hour experimental work created by a group called the Theater of the Emerging American Moment. The musical attempts to probe the love and ambivalence Americans have for endless growth.Mission Drift's director, Rachel Chavkin, wondered what defines American capitalism compared to capitalism in the rest of the world. She went to composer Heather Christian."Rachel approached me and said, 'I think we should write a musical about capitalism,' to which I said, 'That's impossible,'" Christian remembers.The members of the Theater of the Emerging American Moment, or "the TEAM," as they call themselves, began reading about Wall Street and teaching themselves economics. They read Milton Friedman and listened to podcasts of NPR's Planet Money. Chavkin says she got her best answer to the question of what defines American capitalism from an Australian."She said, 'Well, everywhere has capitalism ? it's just you're more religious about it here than anywhere else,'" Chavkin says. "Ultimately, what I think the show is getting at is that there is something both thrilling and unsustainable about capitalism as it is lived and practiced here in America."The idea for Mission Drift began in early 2008 before the economy imploded, with the real story of two teenagers the TEAM found in a history book by Russell Shorto. Joris and Catalina came to New Amsterdam ? what is now called New York City ? in the 17th century. In the musical, they mythically live through the entire history of American westward expansion.The TEAM became obsessed with Las Vegas. The musical's gospel song, Burning Down Las Vegas, functions as a symbol of the city's constant creation and destruction.Chavkin says the TEAM spent a long time in Las Vegas and it really opened them up to the themes they were exploring."Not actually so much because of the gambling metaphor, because that seemed sort of easy, but actually because it was the fastest growing city in America at the turn of the millennium and then had become an epicenter of the housing collapse," Chavkin says. "And so there seemed to be something in there in terms of how we shape our expectations of growth, as Americans, and how our very landscape is altered, built and destroyed by this expectation of growth."Las Vegas also seemed an appropriate symbol because it was historically tied to atomic testing. The explosion of bombs coincides with the implosion of old casinos to make way for the new.Joris, one of the main characters, is almost giddy when he contemplates the bomb. "There is so much we're going to do out here," he says. "The folks up at the proving grounds say that what they dropped on Hiroshima is just the beginning; they're going to be doing tests like this almost every month, and I think we should celebrate each one here."Chavkin says the TEAM was influenced by images they saw at the National Atomic Testing Museum. "People having parties in casinos and drinking their atomic cocktails, and wearing sunglasses and looking through the windows as these mushrooms clouds shoot up in the desert," Chavkin says, describing the photos. "It is the oasis in the desert that Las Vegas was, combined with the Mojave as wasteland, combined with these incredible celebrated displays of both American ingenuity and American violence."By the end of the two hours, other characters have lost their jobs, and their houses are foreclosed upon. A song with a haunting phrase, "This house is empty," expresses sadness and longing.The New York Times said the production could have used an editor, and accused it of suffering from "mission overkill," but its creators say they are trying to deal with large themes. Americans are thinking: Should we tax the rich? Should we punish prosperity? Christian says ambivalence over these questions exists in many of us."[We are] born and descended of these people who came here for growth and for expansion, and it's kind of a holy thing, it's in our DNA," she says."When we were in Las Vegas, actually, we talked with so many people who said 'We love growth, we just grew too fast,'" Chavkin says.By the end of the show, the two teenage immigrants are exhausted. You hear the strains of another song by Christian, with the chorus, "We walk, we walk, we tire.""I think we're at this moment where there really is this sense of exhaustion and this question of how do we find a new narrative that is as satisfying as this narrative of continued growth," Chavkin says.Mission Drift has played in New York and in Europe. It is on tour until 2014 with stops in Australia, London and definite plans to go to Las Vegas. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]";s:12:"textwithhtml";s:9:" ";s:22:"textwithhtml_paragraph";s:5158:"It's hard to write a musical about capitalism. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill gave it a shot with The Threepenny Opera. The musical Urinetown took a crack at it. Now comes Mission Drift, a two-hour experimental work created by a group called the Theater of the Emerging American Moment. The musical attempts to probe the love and ambivalence Americans have for endless growth.Mission Drift's director, Rachel Chavkin, wondered what defines American capitalism compared to capitalism in the rest of the world. She went to composer Heather Christian."Rachel approached me and said, 'I think we should write a musical about capitalism,' to which I said, 'That's impossible,'" Christian remembers.The members of the Theater of the Emerging American Moment, or "the TEAM," as they call themselves, began reading about Wall Street and teaching themselves economics. They read Milton Friedman and listened to podcasts of NPR's Planet Money. Chavkin says she got her best answer to the question of what defines American capitalism from an Australian."She said, 'Well, everywhere has capitalism ? it's just you're more religious about it here than anywhere else,'" Chavkin says. "Ultimately, what I think the show is getting at is that there is something both thrilling and unsustainable about capitalism as it is lived and practiced here in America."The idea for Mission Drift began in early 2008 before the economy imploded, with the real story of two teenagers the TEAM found in a history book by Russell Shorto. Joris and Catalina came to New Amsterdam ? what is now called New York City ? in the 17th century. In the musical, they mythically live through the entire history of American westward expansion.The TEAM became obsessed with Las Vegas. The musical's gospel song, Burning Down Las Vegas, functions as a symbol of the city's constant creation and destruction.Chavkin says the TEAM spent a long time in Las Vegas and it really opened them up to the themes they were exploring."Not actually so much because of the gambling metaphor, because that seemed sort of easy, but actually because it was the fastest growing city in America at the turn of the millennium and then had become an epicenter of the housing collapse," Chavkin says. "And so there seemed to be something in there in terms of how we shape our expectations of growth, as Americans, and how our very landscape is altered, built and destroyed by this expectation of growth."Las Vegas also seemed an appropriate symbol because it was historically tied to atomic testing. The explosion of bombs coincides with the implosion of old casinos to make way for the new.Joris, one of the main characters, is almost giddy when he contemplates the bomb. "There is so much we're going to do out here," he says. "The folks up at the proving grounds say that what they dropped on Hiroshima is just the beginning; they're going to be doing tests like this almost every month, and I think we should celebrate each one here."Chavkin says the TEAM was influenced by images they saw at the National Atomic Testing Museum. "People having parties in casinos and drinking their atomic cocktails, and wearing sunglasses and looking through the windows as these mushrooms clouds shoot up in the desert," Chavkin says, describing the photos. "It is the oasis in the desert that Las Vegas was, combined with the Mojave as wasteland, combined with these incredible celebrated displays of both American ingenuity and American violence."By the end of the two hours, other characters have lost their jobs, and their houses are foreclosed upon. A song with a haunting phrase, "This house is empty," expresses sadness and longing.The New York Times said the production could have used an editor, and accused it of suffering from "mission overkill," but its creators say they are trying to deal with large themes. Americans are thinking: Should we tax the rich? Should we punish prosperity? Christian says ambivalence over these questions exists in many of us."[We are] born and descended of these people who came here for growth and for expansion, and it's kind of a holy thing, it's in our DNA," she says."When we were in Las Vegas, actually, we talked with so many people who said 'We love growth, we just grew too fast,'" Chavkin says.By the end of the show, the two teenage immigrants are exhausted. You hear the strains of another song by Christian, with the chorus, "We walk, we walk, we tire.""I think we're at this moment where there really is this sense of exhaustion and this question of how do we find a new narrative that is as satisfying as this narrative of continued growth," Chavkin says.Mission Drift has played in New York and in Europe. It is on tour until 2014 with stops in Australia, London and definite plans to go to Las Vegas.9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
Heather Christian performs in the musical Mission Drift, an exploration of American capitalism explained through history and the growth of Las Vegas.
It's hard to write a musical about capitalism. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill gave it a shot with The Threepenny Opera. The musical Urinetown took a crack at it. Now comes Mission Drift, a two-hour experimental work created by a group called the Theater of the Emerging American Moment. The musical attempts to probe the love and ambivalence Americans have for endless growth.
Mission Drift's director, Rachel Chavkin, wondered what defines American capitalism compared to capitalism in the rest of the world. She went to composer Heather Christian.
"Rachel approached me and said, 'I think we should write a musical about capitalism,' to which I said, 'That's impossible,'" Christian remembers.
Amber Gray sings in Mission Drift.
The members of the Theater of the Emerging American Moment, or "the TEAM," as they call themselves, began reading about Wall Street and teaching themselves economics. They read Milton Friedman and listened to podcasts of NPR's Planet Money. Chavkin says she got her best answer to the question of what defines American capitalism from an Australian.
"She said, 'Well, everywhere has capitalism ? it's just you're more religious about it here than anywhere else,'" Chavkin says. "Ultimately, what I think the show is getting at is that there is something both thrilling and unsustainable about capitalism as it is lived and practiced here in America."
The idea for Mission Drift began in early 2008 before the economy imploded, with the real story of two teenagers the TEAM found in a history book by Russell Shorto. Joris and Catalina came to New Amsterdam ? what is now called New York City ? in the 17th century. In the musical, they mythically live through the entire history of American westward expansion.
The TEAM became obsessed with Las Vegas. The musical's gospel song, Burning Down Las Vegas, functions as a symbol of the city's constant creation and destruction.
Chavkin says the TEAM spent a long time in Las Vegas and it really opened them up to the themes they were exploring.
"Not actually so much because of the gambling metaphor, because that seemed sort of easy, but actually because it was the fastest growing city in America at the turn of the millennium and then had become an epicenter of the housing collapse," Chavkin says. "And so there seemed to be something in there in terms of how we shape our expectations of growth, as Americans, and how our very landscape is altered, built and destroyed by this expectation of growth."
Las Vegas also seemed an appropriate symbol because it was historically tied to atomic testing. The explosion of bombs coincides with the implosion of old casinos to make way for the new.
Joris, one of the main characters, is almost giddy when he contemplates the bomb. "There is so much we're going to do out here," he says. "The folks up at the proving grounds say that what they dropped on Hiroshima is just the beginning; they're going to be doing tests like this almost every month, and I think we should celebrate each one here."
Chavkin says the TEAM was influenced by images they saw at the National Atomic Testing Museum. "People having parties in casinos and drinking their atomic cocktails, and wearing sunglasses and looking through the windows as these mushrooms clouds shoot up in the desert," Chavkin says, describing the photos. "It is the oasis in the desert that Las Vegas was, combined with the Mojave as wasteland, combined with these incredible celebrated displays of both American ingenuity and American violence."
By the end of the two hours, other characters have lost their jobs, and their houses are foreclosed upon. A song with a haunting phrase, "This house is empty," expresses sadness and longing.
The New York Times said the production could have used an editor, and accused it of suffering from "mission overkill," but its creators say they are trying to deal with large themes. Americans are thinking: Should we tax the rich? Should we punish prosperity? Christian says ambivalence over these questions exists in many of us.
"[We are] born and descended of these people who came here for growth and for expansion, and it's kind of a holy thing, it's in our DNA," she says.
"When we were in Las Vegas, actually, we talked with so many people who said 'We love growth, we just grew too fast,'" Chavkin says.
By the end of the show, the two teenage immigrants are exhausted. You hear the strains of another song by Christian, with the chorus, "We walk, we walk, we tire."
"I think we're at this moment where there really is this sense of exhaustion and this question of how do we find a new narrative that is as satisfying as this narrative of continued growth," Chavkin says.
Mission Drift has played in New York and in Europe. It is on tour until 2014 with stops in Australia, London and definite plans to go to Las Vegas.
An experimental musical attempts to get at the tension between creation and violence: the love and ambivalence of Americans toward constant expansionism and growth. There's the atom bomb, mystic gods and more.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:210:"An experimental musical attempts to get at the tension between creation and violence: the love and ambivalence of Americans toward constant expansionism and growth. There's the atom bomb, mystic gods and more.";s:12:"atom_content";s:499:"An experimental musical attempts to get at the tension between creation and violence: the love and ambivalence of Americans toward constant expansionism and growth. There's the atom bomb, mystic gods and more.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1330712280;}i:5;a:17:{s:5:"title";s:35:"'Galileo' Lives In A New Production";s:11:"description";s:307:"F. Murray Abraham stars in a new off-Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht's classic "Galileo." Brian Kulick, artistic director of the Classic Stage Company and the director of the play, discusses Galileo, (the scientist and the play) and tells why he thinks the themes in the work are still relevant today.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:00:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:85:"http://www.npr.org/2012/03/02/147815864/galileo-lives-in-a-new-production?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:85:"http://www.npr.org/2012/03/02/147815864/galileo-lives-in-a-new-production?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:28:{s:5:"title";s:35:"'Galileo' Lives In A New Production";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"147815864";s:6:"teaser";s:307:"F. Murray Abraham stars in a new off-Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht's classic "Galileo." Brian Kulick, artistic director of the Classic Stage Company and the director of the play, discusses Galileo, (the scientist and the play) and tells why he thinks the themes in the work are still relevant today.";s:10:"miniteaser";s:84:"F. Murray Abraham stars in an off-Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht's 'Galileo.'";s:4:"slug";s:7:"Science";s:9:"storydate";s:31:"Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:00:00 -0500";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:00:00 -0500";s:16:"lastmodifieddate";s:31:"Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:07:17 -0500";s:4:"show";s:9:" ";s:12:"show_program";s:18:"Talk of the Nation";s:13:"show_showdate";s:31:"Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:00:00 -0500";s:11:"show_segnum";s:1:"3";s:12:"organization";s:9:" ";s:17:"organization_name";s:21:"National Public Radio";s:20:"organization_website";s:19:"http://www.npr.org/";s:10:"transcript";s:9:" ";s:15:"transcript_link";s:87:"http://api.npr.org/transcript?id=147815864&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:6:"parent";s:54:" ";s:12:"parent_title";s:49:"TheaterHistoryHumansPerforming ArtsScienceScience";s:11:"parent_link";s:685:"http://www.npr.org/sections/theater/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1144&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/history/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1136&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/humans/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1129&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/performing-arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1046&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/science/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1007&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/science/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1007&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:5:"audio";s:9:" ";s:14:"audio_duration";s:4:"1033";s:12:"audio_format";s:11:" ";s:16:"audio_format_mp3";s:154:"http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/totn/2012/03/20120302_totn_03.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1007http://api.npr.org/m3u/1147815857-ccb0b2.m3u?orgId=1&topicId=1007";s:15:"audio_format_wm";s:99:"http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg_wmref_em.php?id=147815857&type=1&mtype=WM&orgId=1&topicId=1007";s:24:"audio_format_mediastream";s:84:"rtmp://flash.npr.org/ondemand/mp3:anon.npr-mp3/npr/totn/2012/03/20120302_totn_03.mp3";s:17:"audio_permissions";s:11:" ";s:8:"fulltext";s:3032:"F. Murray Abraham stars in a new off-Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht's classic "Galileo." Brian Kulick, artistic director of the Classic Stage Company and the director of the play, discusses Galileo, (the scientist and the play) and tells why he thinks the themes in the work are still relevant today.
9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
F. Murray Abraham stars in a new off-Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht's classic "Galileo." Brian Kulick, artistic director of the Classic Stage Company and the director of the play, discusses Galileo, (the scientist and the play) and tells why he thinks the themes in the work are still relevant today.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:307:"F. Murray Abraham stars in a new off-Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht's classic "Galileo." Brian Kulick, artistic director of the Classic Stage Company and the director of the play, discusses Galileo, (the scientist and the play) and tells why he thinks the themes in the work are still relevant today.";s:12:"atom_content";s:596:"F. Murray Abraham stars in a new off-Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht's classic "Galileo." Brian Kulick, artistic director of the Classic Stage Company and the director of the play, discusses Galileo, (the scientist and the play) and tells why he thinks the themes in the work are still relevant today.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1330711200;}i:6;a:25:{s:5:"title";s:44:"'Carrie' Creators Resurrect A Legendary Flop";s:11:"description";s:185:"The musical adaptation of Stephen King's novel Carrie is one of Broadway's most famous disasters. Now the show's original writers are back ? with a completely reworked version.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:01:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:94:"http://www.npr.org/2012/03/01/147651847/carrie-creators-resurrect-a-legendary-flop?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:94:"http://www.npr.org/2012/03/01/147651847/carrie-creators-resurrect-a-legendary-flop?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:46:{s:5:"title";s:44:"'Carrie' Creators Resurrect A Legendary Flop";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"147651847";s:6:"teaser";s:185:"The musical adaptation of Stephen King's novel Carrie is one of Broadway's most famous disasters. Now the show's original writers are back ? with a completely reworked version.";s:10:"miniteaser";s:93:"The show's original writers are back with a completely reworked version opening off-Broadway.";s:4:"slug";s:7:"Theater";s:9:"thumbnail";s:9:" ";s:16:"thumbnail_medium";s:75:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/02/29/carrie1_sq.jpg?t=1330557672&s=13";s:15:"thumbnail_large";s:75:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/02/29/carrie1_sq.jpg?t=1330557672&s=11";s:18:"thumbnail_provider";s:1:" ";s:9:"storydate";s:31:"Thu, 01 Mar 2012 04:00:00 -0500";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:01:00 -0500";s:16:"lastmodifieddate";s:31:"Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:34:35 -0500";s:4:"show";s:9:" ";s:12:"show_program";s:15:"Morning Edition";s:13:"show_showdate";s:31:"Thu, 01 Mar 2012 04:00:00 -0500";s:11:"show_segnum";s:2:"20";s:12:"organization";s:9:" ";s:17:"organization_name";s:21:"National Public Radio";s:20:"organization_website";s:19:"http://www.npr.org/";s:10:"transcript";s:9:" ";s:15:"transcript_link";s:87:"http://api.npr.org/transcript?id=147651847&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:6:"parent";s:36:" ";s:12:"parent_title";s:40:"TheaterTheaterPerforming ArtsArts & Life";s:11:"parent_link";s:457:"http://www.npr.org/sections/theater/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1144&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/theater/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1144&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/performing-arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1046&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1008&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:5:"audio";s:9:" ";s:14:"audio_duration";s:3:"439";s:12:"audio_format";s:11:" ";s:16:"audio_format_mp3";s:150:"http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2012/03/20120301_me_20.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1144http://api.npr.org/m3u/1147703746-ae53b8.m3u?orgId=1&topicId=1144";s:15:"audio_format_wm";s:99:"http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg_wmref_em.php?id=147703746&type=1&mtype=WM&orgId=1&topicId=1144";s:24:"audio_format_mediastream";s:80:"rtmp://flash.npr.org/ondemand/mp3:anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2012/03/20120301_me_20.mp3";s:17:"audio_permissions";s:11:" ";s:6:"byline";s:9:" ";s:11:"byline_name";s:11:"Jeff Lunden";s:11:"byline_link";s:129:"http://www.npr.org/people/101672137/jeff-lundenhttp://api.npr.org/query?id=101672137&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:9:"container";s:9:" ";s:15:"container_title";s:11:"Watch Clips";s:5:"image";s:27:" ";s:11:"image_title";s:521:"Molly Ranson plays the title role in the off-Broadway reworking of Carrie, directed by Stafford Arima and written by Lawrence D. Cohen, with lyrics by Dean Pitchford and music by Michael Gore.Marin Mazzie plays Carrie's deeply religious mother, Margaret, who fears for her daughter's soul as Carrie encounters boys in school and further develops her telekinetic powers.To get around some of the special effects-heavy aspects of Carrie's supernatural story, the production employs several more theater-specific strategies.";s:13:"image_caption";s:539:"Molly Ranson plays the title role in the off-Broadway reworking of Carrie, directed by Stafford Arima and written by Lawrence D. Cohen, with lyrics by Dean Pitchford and music by Michael Gore.Marin Mazzie plays Carrie's deeply religious mother, Margaret, who fears for her daughter's soul as Carrie encounters boys in school and further develops her telekinetic powers.To get around some of the special effects-heavy aspects of Carrie's supernatural story, the production employs several more theater-specific strategies.";s:14:"image_producer";s:33:"Joan MarcusJoan MarcusJoan Marcus";s:14:"image_provider";s:9:" O&M Co.";s:4:"text";s:9:" ";s:14:"text_paragraph";s:5041:"Broadway history is littered with flop musicals ? but if some shows are bombs, then Carrie, based on Stephen King's best-selling 1974 novel, was kind of a nuclear bomb.The story of a teenager with telekinetic powers who wreaks bloody havoc on her small Maine town had already been successfully adapted as a film starring Sissy Spacek in 1976. But as a musical?Frank Rich was theater critic for The New York Times when the show opened in April 1988. He called it a musical wreck that "expires with fireworks like the Hindenburg.""This thing was just ridiculously over-the-top and vulgar," Rich says. "It was really just a fiasco. ... It's hard to remember much about it. I do remember a pig-slaughtering number that was copious in blood, if not musicality."After just five official performances, Carrie closed, losing its entire $8 million investment. But through the years it has developed a kind of legendary cult status. Dean Pitchford, the show's lyricist, says the creative team always felt Carrie could be salvaged."Steve Sondheim says that 'musicals are never really finished; they're simply abandoned.' We just didn't abandon Carrie," Pitchford says.A few years ago, Pitchford, script writer Lawrence Cohen, and composer Michael Gore returned to the show in earnest. Gore says the three writers always felt the high-gloss Broadway production 24 years ago mishandled the material and shredded much of what they wrote."I think, yes, it took a while to get over it," Gore says. "Had we seen a version of the show that we liked, and perhaps people didn't like it or the critics didn't like it, that's one thing. But, you know, the reason we went back to this was hopefully for us to sit through this show from beginning to end and go, 'This is what we had in mind.'"The writers hooked up with director Stafford Arima and the MCC Theatre, an off-Broadway company, to reinvestigate Carrie. They moved the story to the present ? its themes of bullying are much in the news today ? and, Pitchford says, they were forced to think small. On Broadway, they had a cast of 28; off-Broadway, it's half that number."We had a much-reduced cast, a different point of view, and all these new songs we wanted to try out," Pitchford says. "And so, we basically went through and I think we threw out, like, seven or eight songs. And we wrote six or seven songs ... and every other piece in the show has undergone change."Carrie, of course, is still all about a teenage misfit who has the power to move objects with her mind and the suffocating relationship she has with her mother, a religious fanatic. Arima, who's set the show in a burned-out gymnasium, says the story doesn't need megabucks and mega-effects to work in a small theater."I think that at the core of Carrie is actually a very intimate story," Arima says. "The story about a young girl who is an outsider and how this young girl deals with the outside forces surrounding her."But an off-Broadway budget does present real challenges. Where the Broadway version had Carrie singing a song while the objects on her make-up table levitated around her, the off-Broadway version makes do with just a few magic tricks ? a tiny figurine of Jesus levitates between the girl's hands and a couple of chairs move, says actress Molly Ranson, who plays Carrie."That was one of the questions ? of how to do the telekinesis onstage, without it being campy or without it using a lot of money for crazy special effects," Ranson says. "So, we're doing some old-fashioned magic."And ? spoiler alert ? there's no stage blood spilled in the climactic scene at the prom, when Carrie violently erupts. The carnage is implied with red lights, projections and stylized movement. Director Arima says it's an artistic rather than a financial choice."The theatrical vocabulary becomes part of the storytelling that will keep an audience engaged in the emotional event," Arima says, "versus it purely being a special effect that might have cost, you know, thousands of dollars to rig, you know, a pail or whatever it might be."For Marin Mazzie, the actress who plays Carrie's mother, Margaret, the appeal of the show is a lot more than special effects; it's about fleshing out the relationship between Carrie and her mother."She isn't just a one-note, evil, demonic, crazy religious zealot, you know?" Mazzie says. "She's a woman who has very strong beliefs and passions, and she loves her daughter and believes that she's doing the right thing. Truly, truly ? even if the right thing is the most drastic thing that anyone could ever think of doing to their child."(The most drastic thing being stabbing her child with a kitchen knife.)So, smaller cast, smaller venue, less blood, more humanity. Is this the show composer Michael Gore says the writers had in mind?"You know, we're all perfectionists, so I don't think we will ever go, 'That's it. You know, don't touch it,'" Gore says. "But we're really getting there. " [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]";s:12:"textwithhtml";s:9:" ";s:22:"textwithhtml_paragraph";s:5380:"Broadway history is littered with flop musicals ? but if some shows are bombs, then Carrie, based on Stephen King's best-selling 1974 novel, was kind of a nuclear bomb.The story of a teenager with telekinetic powers who wreaks bloody havoc on her small Maine town had already been successfully adapted as a film starring Sissy Spacek in 1976. But as a musical?Frank Rich was theater critic for The New York Times when the show opened in April 1988. He called it a musical wreck that "expires with fireworks like the Hindenburg.""This thing was just ridiculously over-the-top and vulgar," Rich says. "It was really just a fiasco. ... It's hard to remember much about it. I do remember a pig-slaughtering number that was copious in blood, if not musicality."After just five official performances, Carrie closed, losing its entire $8 million investment. But through the years it has developed a kind of legendary cult status. Dean Pitchford, the show's lyricist, says the creative team always felt Carrie could be salvaged."Steve Sondheim says that 'musicals are never really finished; they're simply abandoned.' We just didn't abandon Carrie," Pitchford says.A few years ago, Pitchford, script writer Lawrence Cohen, and composer Michael Gore returned to the show in earnest. Gore says the three writers always felt the high-gloss Broadway production 24 years ago mishandled the material and shredded much of what they wrote."I think, yes, it took a while to get over it," Gore says. "Had we seen a version of the show that we liked, and perhaps people didn't like it or the critics didn't like it, that's one thing. But, you know, the reason we went back to this was hopefully for us to sit through this show from beginning to end and go, 'This is what we had in mind.'"The writers hooked up with director Stafford Arima and the MCC Theatre, an off-Broadway company, to reinvestigate Carrie. They moved the story to the present ? its themes of bullying are much in the news today ? and, Pitchford says, they were forced to think small. On Broadway, they had a cast of 28; off-Broadway, it's half that number."We had a much-reduced cast, a different point of view, and all these new songs we wanted to try out," Pitchford says. "And so, we basically went through and I think we threw out, like, seven or eight songs. And we wrote six or seven songs ... and every other piece in the show has undergone change."Carrie, of course, is still all about a teenage misfit who has the power to move objects with her mind and the suffocating relationship she has with her mother, a religious fanatic. Arima, who's set the show in a burned-out gymnasium, says the story doesn't need megabucks and mega-effects to work in a small theater."I think that at the core of Carrie is actually a very intimate story," Arima says. "The story about a young girl who is an outsider and how this young girl deals with the outside forces surrounding her."But an off-Broadway budget does present real challenges. Where the Broadway version had Carrie singing a song while the objects on her make-up table levitated around her, the off-Broadway version makes do with just a few magic tricks ? a tiny figurine of Jesus levitates between the girl's hands and a couple of chairs move, says actress Molly Ranson, who plays Carrie."That was one of the questions ? of how to do the telekinesis onstage, without it being campy or without it using a lot of money for crazy special effects," Ranson says. "So, we're doing some old-fashioned magic."And ? spoiler alert ? there's no stage blood spilled in the climactic scene at the prom, when Carrie violently erupts. The carnage is implied with red lights, projections and stylized movement. Director Arima says it's an artistic rather than a financial choice."The theatrical vocabulary becomes part of the storytelling that will keep an audience engaged in the emotional event," Arima says, "versus it purely being a special effect that might have cost, you know, thousands of dollars to rig, you know, a pail or whatever it might be."For Marin Mazzie, the actress who plays Carrie's mother, Margaret, the appeal of the show is a lot more than special effects; it's about fleshing out the relationship between Carrie and her mother."She isn't just a one-note, evil, demonic, crazy religious zealot, you know?" Mazzie says. "She's a woman who has very strong beliefs and passions, and she loves her daughter and believes that she's doing the right thing. Truly, truly ? even if the right thing is the most drastic thing that anyone could ever think of doing to their child."(The most drastic thing being stabbing her child with a kitchen knife.)So, smaller cast, smaller venue, less blood, more humanity. Is this the show composer Michael Gore says the writers had in mind?"You know, we're all perfectionists, so I don't think we will ever go, 'That's it. You know, don't touch it,'" Gore says. "But we're really getting there. "9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
Molly Ranson plays the title role in the off-Broadway reworking of Carrie, directed by Stafford Arima and written by Lawrence D. Cohen, with lyrics by Dean Pitchford and music by Michael Gore.
Broadway history is littered with flop musicals ? but if some shows are bombs, then Carrie, based on Stephen King's best-selling 1974 novel, was kind of a nuclear bomb.
The story of a teenager with telekinetic powers who wreaks bloody havoc on her small Maine town had already been successfully adapted as a film starring Sissy Spacek in 1976. But as a musical?
Frank Rich was theater critic for The New York Times when the show opened in April 1988. He called it a musical wreck that "expires with fireworks like the Hindenburg."
"This thing was just ridiculously over-the-top and vulgar," Rich says. "It was really just a fiasco. ... It's hard to remember much about it. I do remember a pig-slaughtering number that was copious in blood, if not musicality."
After just five official performances, Carrie closed, losing its entire $8 million investment. But through the years it has developed a kind of legendary cult status. Dean Pitchford, the show's lyricist, says the creative team always felt Carrie could be salvaged.
"Steve Sondheim says that 'musicals are never really finished; they're simply abandoned.' We just didn't abandon Carrie," Pitchford says.
A few years ago, Pitchford, script writer Lawrence Cohen, and composer Michael Gore returned to the show in earnest. Gore says the three writers always felt the high-gloss Broadway production 24 years ago mishandled the material and shredded much of what they wrote.
"I think, yes, it took a while to get over it," Gore says. "Had we seen a version of the show that we liked, and perhaps people didn't like it or the critics didn't like it, that's one thing. But, you know, the reason we went back to this was hopefully for us to sit through this show from beginning to end and go, 'This is what we had in mind.'"
Marin Mazzie plays Carrie's deeply religious mother, Margaret, who fears for her daughter's soul as Carrie encounters boys in school and further develops her telekinetic powers.
The writers hooked up with director Stafford Arima and the MCC Theatre, an off-Broadway company, to reinvestigate Carrie. They moved the story to the present ? its themes of bullying are much in the news today ? and, Pitchford says, they were forced to think small. On Broadway, they had a cast of 28; off-Broadway, it's half that number.
"We had a much-reduced cast, a different point of view, and all these new songs we wanted to try out," Pitchford says. "And so, we basically went through and I think we threw out, like, seven or eight songs. And we wrote six or seven songs ... and every other piece in the show has undergone change."
Carrie, of course, is still all about a teenage misfit who has the power to move objects with her mind and the suffocating relationship she has with her mother, a religious fanatic. Arima, who's set the show in a burned-out gymnasium, says the story doesn't need megabucks and mega-effects to work in a small theater.
"I think that at the core of Carrie is actually a very intimate story," Arima says. "The story about a young girl who is an outsider and how this young girl deals with the outside forces surrounding her."
But an off-Broadway budget does present real challenges. Where the Broadway version had Carrie singing a song while the objects on her make-up table levitated around her, the off-Broadway version makes do with just a few magic tricks ? a tiny figurine of Jesus levitates between the girl's hands and a couple of chairs move, says actress Molly Ranson, who plays Carrie.
To get around some of the special effects-heavy aspects of Carrie's supernatural story, the production employs several more theater-specific strategies.
"That was one of the questions ? of how to do the telekinesis onstage, without it being campy or without it using a lot of money for crazy special effects," Ranson says. "So, we're doing some old-fashioned magic."
And ? spoiler alert ? there's no stage blood spilled in the climactic scene at the prom, when Carrie violently erupts. The carnage is implied with red lights, projections and stylized movement. Director Arima says it's an artistic rather than a financial choice.
"The theatrical vocabulary becomes part of the storytelling that will keep an audience engaged in the emotional event," Arima says, "versus it purely being a special effect that might have cost, you know, thousands of dollars to rig, you know, a pail or whatever it might be."
For Marin Mazzie, the actress who plays Carrie's mother, Margaret, the appeal of the show is a lot more than special effects; it's about fleshing out the relationship between Carrie and her mother.
"She isn't just a one-note, evil, demonic, crazy religious zealot, you know?" Mazzie says. "She's a woman who has very strong beliefs and passions, and she loves her daughter and believes that she's doing the right thing. Truly, truly ? even if the right thing is the most drastic thing that anyone could ever think of doing to their child."
(The most drastic thing being stabbing her child with a kitchen knife.)
So, smaller cast, smaller venue, less blood, more humanity. Is this the show composer Michael Gore says the writers had in mind?
"You know, we're all perfectionists, so I don't think we will ever go, 'That's it. You know, don't touch it,'" Gore says. "But we're really getting there. "
The musical adaptation of Stephen King's novel Carrie is one of Broadway's most famous disasters. Now the show's original writers are back ? with a completely reworked version.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:185:"The musical adaptation of Stephen King's novel Carrie is one of Broadway's most famous disasters. Now the show's original writers are back ? with a completely reworked version.";s:12:"atom_content";s:474:"The musical adaptation of Stephen King's novel Carrie is one of Broadway's most famous disasters. Now the show's original writers are back ? with a completely reworked version.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1330578060;}i:7;a:23:{s:5:"title";s:48:"A Homecoming For Alvin Ailey's Artistic Director";s:11:"description";s:247:"Robert Battle started dancing as a ninth-grader at Northwestern Senior High School ? a public school in one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods. "I think I work hard because I feel that I owe that to people who have helped me along the way," he says.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:08:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:99:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/25/147306946/a-homecoming-for-alvin-aileys-artistic-director?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:99:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/25/147306946/a-homecoming-for-alvin-aileys-artistic-director?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:44:{s:5:"title";s:48:"A Homecoming For Alvin Ailey's Artistic Director";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"147306946";s:6:"teaser";s:247:"Robert Battle started dancing as a ninth-grader at Northwestern Senior High School ? a public school in one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods. "I think I work hard because I feel that I owe that to people who have helped me along the way," he says.";s:10:"miniteaser";s:80:"A national tour has brought Robert Battle back to his old neighborhood in Miami.";s:4:"slug";s:5:"Dance";s:9:"thumbnail";s:9:" ";s:16:"thumbnail_medium";s:76:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/02/23/takademe_sq.jpg?t=1330102690&s=13";s:15:"thumbnail_large";s:76:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/02/23/takademe_sq.jpg?t=1330102690&s=11";s:18:"thumbnail_provider";s:34:"Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater";s:9:"storydate";s:31:"Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:00:00 -0500";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:08:00 -0500";s:16:"lastmodifieddate";s:31:"Sat, 25 Feb 2012 18:31:21 -0500";s:4:"show";s:9:" ";s:12:"show_program";s:21:"All Things Considered";s:13:"show_showdate";s:31:"Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:00:00 -0500";s:11:"show_segnum";s:1:"6";s:12:"organization";s:9:" ";s:17:"organization_name";s:21:"National Public Radio";s:20:"organization_website";s:19:"http://www.npr.org/";s:10:"transcript";s:9:" ";s:15:"transcript_link";s:87:"http://api.npr.org/transcript?id=147306946&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:6:"parent";s:36:" ";s:12:"parent_title";s:36:"DanceDancePerforming ArtsArts & Life";s:11:"parent_link";s:453:"http://www.npr.org/sections/dance/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1145&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/dance/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1145&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/performing-arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1046&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1008&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:5:"audio";s:9:" ";s:14:"audio_duration";s:3:"275";s:12:"audio_format";s:11:" ";s:16:"audio_format_mp3";s:152:"http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2012/02/20120225_atc_06.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1145http://api.npr.org/m3u/1147421387-475335.m3u?orgId=1&topicId=1145";s:15:"audio_format_wm";s:99:"http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg_wmref_em.php?id=147421387&type=1&mtype=WM&orgId=1&topicId=1145";s:24:"audio_format_mediastream";s:82:"rtmp://flash.npr.org/ondemand/mp3:anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2012/02/20120225_atc_06.mp3";s:17:"audio_permissions";s:11:" ";s:6:"byline";s:9:" ";s:11:"byline_name";s:12:"Jordan Levin";s:5:"image";s:36:" ";s:11:"image_title";s:697:"Members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform Revelations, a piece set to gospel spirituals that Ailey choreographed when he was 29.Yannick Lebrun performs choreography from Robert Battle's Takademe. "Takademe is near and dear to me as one of my first creations," says Battle, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. "It's a work I made in the tiny living room of my old apartment in Queens." Robert Battle grew up in Miami and began dancing as a ninth-grader. He became artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in July.Students in the Miami Northwestern Senior High School Revelations Residency are taught by Alvin Ailey's Nasha Thomas-Schmitt.";s:13:"image_caption";s:733:"Members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform Revelations, a piece set to gospel spirituals that Ailey choreographed when he was 29.Yannick Lebrun performs choreography from Robert Battle's Takademe. "Takademe is near and dear to me as one of my first creations," says Battle, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. "It's a work I made in the tiny living room of my old apartment in Queens." Robert Battle grew up in Miami and began dancing as a ninth-grader. He became artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in July.Students in the Miami Northwestern Senior High School Revelations Residency are taught by Alvin Ailey's Nasha Thomas-Schmitt.";s:14:"image_producer";s:55:"Andrew EcclesAndrew Eccles Andrew EcclesManny Hernandez";s:14:"image_provider";s:136:"Alvin Ailey American Dance TheaterAlvin Ailey American Dance TheaterAlvin Ailey American Dance TheaterAlvin Ailey American Dance Theater";s:17:"image_enlargement";s:33:" ";s:4:"text";s:9:" ";s:14:"text_paragraph";s:3604:"The renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is currently on a national tour, and the company has brought Robert Battle, its new artistic director, back to where he started ? a public school in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Miami.When Battle attended Northwestern Senior High in the mid-'80s, he'd walk 16 blocks to school through some of Liberty City's roughest neighborhoods. The riot-scarred area was still wracked by drugs, crime and desolation. So the former boy soprano carried some protection under his dance tights and ballet slippers."I went to putting a hammer in my bag," says Battle, "because I was nervous about being picked on. And it gave me a certain confidence that I could be tough when I needed to be."Today, as he walks into Northwestern, the only weight Battle carries is his position as artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Northwestern is mostly known in Miami for its championship football team. But it's had an arts program since the early '70s, and Battle started dancing here in the ninth grade. He went on to top conservatories in Miami and New York, became a choreographer and started his own company. Battle choreographed many works for the Ailey troupe before he was named artistic director in July 2011."You know, this is where I started," Battle tells Northwestern's newest crop of young dancers during his recent homecoming. "And I haven't been back in over 27 years. So this is like a full-circle moment."The students have been studying Revelations, choreographer Alvin Ailey's beloved gospel music masterpiece. Twenty-four of them are waiting for Battle in a small studio, trembling in their black leotards. When he gets there, they show him a yearning dance from Revelations.Afterward, Battle talks about the weight behind the steps. "You're holding that heavy burden," he tells the dancers. "So from that first moment when you lift that arm, there's that heaviness, which is such a tradition in modern dance ? the idea that we all have very weighty issues."Battle had his own issues growing up here. He was a shy kid who loved music and was embarrassed to wear tights. An older cousin raised him, and he only met his birth mother twice. He did dance exercises at night, using the iron security bars on the window for a ballet barre.It was a Northwestern teacher named Ms. Munez who got Battle to believe in himself. Munez would go to Battle's 55th Street home on holidays and summon him to work on his routines. "She would come wake me up, bring me to this school ? she had a key ? and she would give me a private class," says Battle. "I owe a lot to people like that."Desiree Johnson, whose daughter LaShaye currently studies dance at Northwestern, took dance alongside Battle in high school. Johnson says it was a thrill to meet Battle again after all these years. Her daughter was also inspired by Battle's story. "[He] makes me feel like anything is possible because he was an inner-city child just like me," LaShaye says. "I could go further just like he has."But senior Jacquez Hunter sounds like he could use some of the same encouragement Battle received. "I feel like I have to be flawless sometimes, and I know I have a million-and-1,500 flaws," he says. "So I try my best."Battle remembers how it felt to be like Hunter. "I think I work hard because I feel that I owe that to people who have helped me along the way," he says. "Sometimes that's the only thing that gets me up in the morning. But I will get up in the morning because somebody made a way for me and helped me through." [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]";s:12:"textwithhtml";s:9:" ";s:22:"textwithhtml_paragraph";s:3909:"The renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is currently on a national tour, and the company has brought Robert Battle, its new artistic director, back to where he started ? a public school in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Miami.When Battle attended Northwestern Senior High in the mid-'80s, he'd walk 16 blocks to school through some of Liberty City's roughest neighborhoods. The riot-scarred area was still wracked by drugs, crime and desolation. So the former boy soprano carried some protection under his dance tights and ballet slippers."I went to putting a hammer in my bag," says Battle, "because I was nervous about being picked on. And it gave me a certain confidence that I could be tough when I needed to be."Today, as he walks into Northwestern, the only weight Battle carries is his position as artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Northwestern is mostly known in Miami for its championship football team. But it's had an arts program since the early '70s, and Battle started dancing here in the ninth grade. He went on to top conservatories in Miami and New York, became a choreographer and started his own company. Battle choreographed many works for the Ailey troupe before he was named artistic director in July 2011."You know, this is where I started," Battle tells Northwestern's newest crop of young dancers during his recent homecoming. "And I haven't been back in over 27 years. So this is like a full-circle moment." The students have been studying Revelations, choreographer Alvin Ailey's beloved gospel music masterpiece. Twenty-four of them are waiting for Battle in a small studio, trembling in their black leotards. When he gets there, they show him a yearning dance from Revelations.Afterward, Battle talks about the weight behind the steps. "You're holding that heavy burden," he tells the dancers. "So from that first moment when you lift that arm, there's that heaviness, which is such a tradition in modern dance ? the idea that we all have very weighty issues."Battle had his own issues growing up here. He was a shy kid who loved music and was embarrassed to wear tights. An older cousin raised him, and he only met his birth mother twice. He did dance exercises at night, using the iron security bars on the window for a ballet barre.It was a Northwestern teacher named Ms. Munez who got Battle to believe in himself. Munez would go to Battle's 55th Street home on holidays and summon him to work on his routines. "She would come wake me up, bring me to this school ? she had a key ? and she would give me a private class," says Battle. "I owe a lot to people like that."Desiree Johnson, whose daughter LaShaye currently studies dance at Northwestern, took dance alongside Battle in high school. Johnson says it was a thrill to meet Battle again after all these years. Her daughter was also inspired by Battle's story. "[He] makes me feel like anything is possible because he was an inner-city child just like me," LaShaye says. "I could go further just like he has."But senior Jacquez Hunter sounds like he could use some of the same encouragement Battle received. "I feel like I have to be flawless sometimes, and I know I have a million-and-1,500 flaws," he says. "So I try my best."Battle remembers how it felt to be like Hunter. "I think I work hard because I feel that I owe that to people who have helped me along the way," he says. "Sometimes that's the only thing that gets me up in the morning. But I will get up in the morning because somebody made a way for me and helped me through."9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
Yannick Lebrun performs choreography from Robert Battle's Takademe. "Takademe is near and dear to me as one of my first creations," says Battle, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. "It's a work I made in the tiny living room of my old apartment in Queens."
The renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is currently on a national tour, and the company has brought Robert Battle, its new artistic director, back to where he started ? a public school in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Miami.
Robert Battle grew up in Miami and began dancing as a ninth-grader. He became artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in July.
When Battle attended Northwestern Senior High in the mid-'80s, he'd walk 16 blocks to school through some of Liberty City's roughest neighborhoods. The riot-scarred area was still wracked by drugs, crime and desolation. So the former boy soprano carried some protection under his dance tights and ballet slippers.
"I went to putting a hammer in my bag," says Battle, "because I was nervous about being picked on. And it gave me a certain confidence that I could be tough when I needed to be."
Today, as he walks into Northwestern, the only weight Battle carries is his position as artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Northwestern is mostly known in Miami for its championship football team. But it's had an arts program since the early '70s, and Battle started dancing here in the ninth grade. He went on to top conservatories in Miami and New York, became a choreographer and started his own company. Battle choreographed many works for the Ailey troupe before he was named artistic director in July 2011.
"You know, this is where I started," Battle tells Northwestern's newest crop of young dancers during his recent homecoming. "And I haven't been back in over 27 years. So this is like a full-circle moment."
Members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform Revelations, a piece set to gospel spirituals that Ailey choreographed when he was 29.
The students have been studying Revelations, choreographer Alvin Ailey's beloved gospel music masterpiece. Twenty-four of them are waiting for Battle in a small studio, trembling in their black leotards. When he gets there, they show him a yearning dance from Revelations.
Afterward, Battle talks about the weight behind the steps. "You're holding that heavy burden," he tells the dancers. "So from that first moment when you lift that arm, there's that heaviness, which is such a tradition in modern dance ? the idea that we all have very weighty issues."
Battle had his own issues growing up here. He was a shy kid who loved music and was embarrassed to wear tights. An older cousin raised him, and he only met his birth mother twice. He did dance exercises at night, using the iron security bars on the window for a ballet barre.
Students in the Miami Northwestern Senior High School Revelations Residency are taught by Alvin Ailey's Nasha Thomas-Schmitt.
It was a Northwestern teacher named Ms. Munez who got Battle to believe in himself. Munez would go to Battle's 55th Street home on holidays and summon him to work on his routines. "She would come wake me up, bring me to this school ? she had a key ? and she would give me a private class," says Battle. "I owe a lot to people like that."
Desiree Johnson, whose daughter LaShaye currently studies dance at Northwestern, took dance alongside Battle in high school. Johnson says it was a thrill to meet Battle again after all these years. Her daughter was also inspired by Battle's story. "[He] makes me feel like anything is possible because he was an inner-city child just like me," LaShaye says. "I could go further just like he has."
But senior Jacquez Hunter sounds like he could use some of the same encouragement Battle received. "I feel like I have to be flawless sometimes, and I know I have a million-and-1,500 flaws," he says. "So I try my best."
Battle remembers how it felt to be like Hunter. "I think I work hard because I feel that I owe that to people who have helped me along the way," he says. "Sometimes that's the only thing that gets me up in the morning. But I will get up in the morning because somebody made a way for me and helped me through."
Robert Battle started dancing as a ninth-grader at Northwestern Senior High School ? a public school in one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods. "I think I work hard because I feel that I owe that to people who have helped me along the way," he says.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:247:"Robert Battle started dancing as a ninth-grader at Northwestern Senior High School ? a public school in one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods. "I think I work hard because I feel that I owe that to people who have helped me along the way," he says.";s:12:"atom_content";s:536:"Robert Battle started dancing as a ninth-grader at Northwestern Senior High School ? a public school in one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods. "I think I work hard because I feel that I owe that to people who have helped me along the way," he says.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1330038480;}i:8;a:27:{s:5:"title";s:47:"For One Man, The Sword Is Mightier Than The Pen";s:11:"description";s:309:"Tony Gangi, aka The Amazing Human Head, is an aspiring sideshow performer from Massachusetts. He gave up a career in publishing to impale himself in a variety of ways, but couldn't have pursued the sideshow arts ? including sword swallowing ? without support from his loving and still squeamish wife, Suzanne.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:01:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:98:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/23/147256827/for-one-man-the-sword-is-mightier-than-the-pen?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:98:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/23/147256827/for-one-man-the-sword-is-mightier-than-the-pen?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:50:{s:5:"title";s:47:"For One Man, The Sword Is Mightier Than The Pen";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"147256827";s:6:"teaser";s:309:"Tony Gangi, aka The Amazing Human Head, is an aspiring sideshow performer from Massachusetts. He gave up a career in publishing to impale himself in a variety of ways, but couldn't have pursued the sideshow arts ? including sword swallowing ? without support from his loving and still squeamish wife, Suzanne.";s:10:"miniteaser";s:99:"In search of thrills and gasps, a Massachusetts man leaves his publishing career to swallow swords.";s:4:"slug";s:12:"Strange News";s:9:"thumbnail";s:9:" ";s:16:"thumbnail_medium";s:93:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/02/23/0526_sideshow-husband-4_1_sq.jpg?t=1330038316&s=13";s:15:"thumbnail_large";s:93:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/02/23/0526_sideshow-husband-4_1_sq.jpg?t=1330038316&s=11";s:18:"thumbnail_provider";s:4:"WBUR";s:9:"storydate";s:31:"Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:00:00 -0500";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:01:00 -0500";s:16:"lastmodifieddate";s:31:"Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:10:37 -0500";s:4:"show";s:9:" ";s:12:"show_program";s:21:"All Things Considered";s:13:"show_showdate";s:31:"Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:00:00 -0500";s:11:"show_segnum";s:2:"18";s:12:"organization";s:9:" ";s:17:"organization_name";s:4:"WBUR";s:20:"organization_website";s:19:"http://www.wbur.org";s:6:"parent";s:54:" ";s:12:"parent_title";s:64:"Strange NewsStrange NewsAround the NationPerforming ArtsU.S.News";s:11:"parent_link";s:698:"http://www.npr.org/sections/strange-news/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1146&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/strange-news/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1146&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/around-the-nation/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1091&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/performing-arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1046&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/us/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1003&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/news/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1001&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:5:"audio";s:9:" ";s:14:"audio_duration";s:3:"239";s:12:"audio_format";s:11:" ";s:16:"audio_format_mp3";s:156:"http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2012/02/20120223_atc_18.mp3?orgId=329&topicId=1146http://api.npr.org/m3u/1147301013-b813b2.m3u?orgId=329&topicId=1146";s:15:"audio_format_wm";s:101:"http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg_wmref_em.php?id=147301013&type=1&mtype=WM&orgId=329&topicId=1146";s:24:"audio_format_mediastream";s:82:"rtmp://flash.npr.org/ondemand/mp3:anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2012/02/20120223_atc_18.mp3";s:17:"audio_permissions";s:11:" ";s:6:"byline";s:9:" ";s:11:"byline_name";s:11:"Andrea Shea";s:9:"container";s:9:" ";s:15:"container_title";s:19:"Related NPR Stories";s:5:"image";s:36:" ";s:11:"image_title";s:273:"Tony Gangi shows off some of the props featured in his sideshow review.Tony Gangi shows off some of the props featured in his sideshow review.Suzanne Gangi removes a 6-inch nail from her husband Tony's nose. Suzanne Gangi removes a 6-inch nail from her husband Tony's nose.";s:13:"image_caption";s:273:"Tony Gangi shows off some of the props featured in his sideshow review.Tony Gangi shows off some of the props featured in his sideshow review.Suzanne Gangi removes a 6-inch nail from her husband Tony's nose. Suzanne Gangi removes a 6-inch nail from her husband Tony's nose.";s:14:"image_producer";s:44:"Andrea SheaAndrea SheaAndrea SheaAndrea Shea";s:14:"image_provider";s:16:"WBURWBURWBURWBUR";s:17:"image_enlargement";s:44:" ";s:11:"relatedlink";s:27:" ";s:19:"relatedlink_caption";s:135:" How Cirque Du Soleil Reinvented The Big-Top Show Trailblazing Ringmaster Brings Diversity To The Circus Coney Island's Sideshow School";s:16:"relatedlink_link";s:449:"http://www.npr.org/2011/11/17/142466017/cirque-du-soleil-reinvents-the-big-top-showhttp://api.npr.org/query?id=142466017&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125120468http://api.npr.org/query?id=125120468&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1511032http://api.npr.org/query?id=1511032&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:9:"pullquote";s:9:" ";s:14:"pullquote_text";s:20:"I enjoy a good gasp.";s:16:"pullquote_person";s:10:"Tony Gangi";s:4:"text";s:9:" ";s:14:"text_paragraph";s:3084:"Tony Gangi gave up a successful career in publishing in order to impale himself.With his wife Suzanne's permission, he went from having a secure 9-to-5 job to following his dream of wowing audiences by doing shock-worthy things to his own body."Ladies and gentlemen, what I'm about to do is a 4,000-year-old art, and it's known as sword swallowing," Tony, also known as The Amazing Human Head, tells a crowd at a Salem, Mass., performance. "Oh no!" a child in the audience exclaims.From the outside, the Gangis' home in Beverly, Mass., looks pretty typical. Inside, too ? minus the array of deathly devices laid out on their dining room table. They're the reason why the phrase "don't try this at home" exists. Seriously, don't try this at home.Showing off his props, Tony snaps a mousetrap on his tongue, with a slight "ah!" of discomfort. "Ow," he squeals, as he crunches an animal trap onto his hand. "The tough part is always getting it off," he muses.And then he pulls out what looks like a tiny sword. In his stage show, he invites some unsuspecting audience member to insert this 6-inch nail into his nose. In "the biz," this act is known as the "Human Blockhead." To demonstrate, he enlists his squeamish wife, Suzanne. He tips back his head, gingerly slips the implement in, then she removes it. Suzanne gasps, and Tony laughs. "And that is the Human Blockhead," he says."I have never had the privilege of actually being the one to pull it out of his nose," Suzanne says. "I usually avert my eyes and look somewhere else."She has been doing that since 2006. That's when Tony said he wanted to give up a career in book publishing to attend the Coney Island Sideshow School. He was dying to learn how to slip sharp objects safely into his nasal passages, but Tony had to convince his wife to let him leave a stable job to do dangerous things to himself."There were a number of years where he was, you know, working in a career that really wore him down. And as a spouse you can see it, because he wasn't able to do what he wanted, and you know, you don't want them to be that miserable," Suzanne says.So Suzanne agreed to support Tony and their son while her sideshow husband fulfilled his dreams. She has even accepted Tony's growing desire to swallow real swords, but made him promise one thing ? and it's a familiar mantra around the couple's home:"Well, at least I'm not going to be eating glass, and that seems to put her mind at ease," he says.That said, Suzanne often stays home when Tony performs in his own show. He calls it "Lydia's Carnival Sideshow," inspired by the 1939 song "Lydia the Tattooed Lady."There's an escape artist, a spoon-bender and Tony's own Human Blockhead routine ? the kinds of acts audiences would have seen attached to traveling circuses during Victorian times. They have performed in small venues, at conventions, and wherever else he can get a gig. He has also written a book about the sideshow arts. And while plenty of his peers strive to gross out their audiences, his needs are tamer."I enjoy a good gasp," he says. [Copyright 2012 WBUR]";s:12:"textwithhtml";s:9:" ";s:22:"textwithhtml_paragraph";s:3377:"Tony Gangi gave up a successful career in publishing in order to impale himself.With his wife Suzanne's permission, he went from having a secure 9-to-5 job to following his dream of wowing audiences by doing shock-worthy things to his own body."Ladies and gentlemen, what I'm about to do is a 4,000-year-old art, and it's known as sword swallowing," Tony, also known as The Amazing Human Head, tells a crowd at a Salem, Mass., performance. "Oh no!" a child in the audience exclaims.From the outside, the Gangis' home in Beverly, Mass., looks pretty typical. Inside, too ? minus the array of deathly devices laid out on their dining room table. They're the reason why the phrase "don't try this at home" exists. Seriously, don't try this at home.Showing off his props, Tony snaps a mousetrap on his tongue, with a slight "ah!" of discomfort. "Ow," he squeals, as he crunches an animal trap onto his hand. "The tough part is always getting it off," he muses.And then he pulls out what looks like a tiny sword. In his stage show, he invites some unsuspecting audience member to insert this 6-inch nail into his nose. In "the biz," this act is known as the "Human Blockhead." To demonstrate, he enlists his squeamish wife, Suzanne. He tips back his head, gingerly slips the implement in, then she removes it. Suzanne gasps, and Tony laughs. "And that is the Human Blockhead," he says."I have never had the privilege of actually being the one to pull it out of his nose," Suzanne says. "I usually avert my eyes and look somewhere else."She has been doing that since 2006. That's when Tony said he wanted to give up a career in book publishing to attend the Coney Island Sideshow School. He was dying to learn how to slip sharp objects safely into his nasal passages, but Tony had to convince his wife to let him leave a stable job to do dangerous things to himself."There were a number of years where he was, you know, working in a career that really wore him down. And as a spouse you can see it, because he wasn't able to do what he wanted, and you know, you don't want them to be that miserable," Suzanne says.So Suzanne agreed to support Tony and their son while her sideshow husband fulfilled his dreams. She has even accepted Tony's growing desire to swallow real swords, but made him promise one thing ? and it's a familiar mantra around the couple's home:"Well, at least I'm not going to be eating glass, and that seems to put her mind at ease," he says.That said, Suzanne often stays home when Tony performs in his own show. He calls it "Lydia's Carnival Sideshow," inspired by the 1939 song "Lydia the Tattooed Lady."There's an escape artist, a spoon-bender and Tony's own Human Blockhead routine ? the kinds of acts audiences would have seen attached to traveling circuses during Victorian times. They have performed in small venues, at conventions, and wherever else he can get a gig. He has also written a book about the sideshow arts. And while plenty of his peers strive to gross out their audiences, his needs are tamer."I enjoy a good gasp," he says.9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
Suzanne Gangi removes a 6-inch nail from her husband Tony's nose.
Tony Gangi gave up a successful career in publishing in order to impale himself.
With his wife Suzanne's permission, he went from having a secure 9-to-5 job to following his dream of wowing audiences by doing shock-worthy things to his own body.
"Ladies and gentlemen, what I'm about to do is a 4,000-year-old art, and it's known as sword swallowing," Tony, also known as The Amazing Human Head, tells a crowd at a Salem, Mass., performance. "Oh no!" a child in the audience exclaims.
From the outside, the Gangis' home in Beverly, Mass., looks pretty typical. Inside, too ? minus the array of deathly devices laid out on their dining room table. They're the reason why the phrase "don't try this at home" exists. Seriously, don't try this at home.
Showing off his props, Tony snaps a mousetrap on his tongue, with a slight "ah!" of discomfort. "Ow," he squeals, as he crunches an animal trap onto his hand. "The tough part is always getting it off," he muses.
I enjoy a good gasp.
And then he pulls out what looks like a tiny sword. In his stage show, he invites some unsuspecting audience member to insert this 6-inch nail into his nose. In "the biz," this act is known as the "Human Blockhead." To demonstrate, he enlists his squeamish wife, Suzanne. He tips back his head, gingerly slips the implement in, then she removes it. Suzanne gasps, and Tony laughs. "And that is the Human Blockhead," he says.
"I have never had the privilege of actually being the one to pull it out of his nose," Suzanne says. "I usually avert my eyes and look somewhere else."
She has been doing that since 2006. That's when Tony said he wanted to give up a career in book publishing to attend the Coney Island Sideshow School. He was dying to learn how to slip sharp objects safely into his nasal passages, but Tony had to convince his wife to let him leave a stable job to do dangerous things to himself.
"There were a number of years where he was, you know, working in a career that really wore him down. And as a spouse you can see it, because he wasn't able to do what he wanted, and you know, you don't want them to be that miserable," Suzanne says.
Tony Gangi shows off some of the props featured in his sideshow review.
So Suzanne agreed to support Tony and their son while her sideshow husband fulfilled his dreams. She has even accepted Tony's growing desire to swallow real swords, but made him promise one thing ? and it's a familiar mantra around the couple's home:
"Well, at least I'm not going to be eating glass, and that seems to put her mind at ease," he says.
That said, Suzanne often stays home when Tony performs in his own show. He calls it "Lydia's Carnival Sideshow," inspired by the 1939 song "Lydia the Tattooed Lady."
There's an escape artist, a spoon-bender and Tony's own Human Blockhead routine ? the kinds of acts audiences would have seen attached to traveling circuses during Victorian times. They have performed in small venues, at conventions, and wherever else he can get a gig. He has also written a book about the sideshow arts. And while plenty of his peers strive to gross out their audiences, his needs are tamer.
"I enjoy a good gasp," he says.
Tony Gangi, aka The Amazing Human Head, is an aspiring sideshow performer from Massachusetts. He gave up a career in publishing to impale himself in a variety of ways, but couldn't have pursued the sideshow arts ? including sword swallowing ? without support from his loving and still squeamish wife, Suzanne.
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Tony Gangi, aka The Amazing Human Head, is an aspiring sideshow performer from Massachusetts. He gave up a career in publishing to impale himself in a variety of ways, but couldn't have pursued the sideshow arts ? including sword swallowing ? without support from his loving and still squeamish wife, Suzanne.
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9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
This story incorrectly states that Christopher Plummer spoke the line about hearing Shakespeare "in the original Klingon" in the film Star Trek VI. The line was actually spoken by David Warner, playing Chancellor Gorkon.
William Shatner in Shatner's World: We Just Live In It on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. In the 90-minute show, Shatner illustrates some of his stories with photos and video clips.
Over the past half-century, the wild range of roles played by William Shatner has included a starship captain, a blowhard attorney and the man who can get you a deal on a hotel room.
Now, for the first time since John F. Kennedy was in the White House and James T. Kirk was just a glint in Gene Roddenberry's eye, Shatner has returned to Broadway and the stage.
NPR's Scott Simon spoke to Shatner about his new solo show, Shatner's World: We Just Live In It, which tracks the wild ride that took him from his Montreal boyhood to playing Shakespeare at Canada's Stratford Festival and on to Hollywood and outer space.
NPR: Thanks so much for being with us.
Shatner: Well, thank you. That was put so well I don't have to say anything about myself during this interview.
NPR: Well, let's try it anyway, OK?
Shatner: All right.
NPR: You did a bunch of Broadway shows in the late 1950s and early '60s ...
Shatner: I did.
NPR: ... including The World of Suzie Wong, A Shot in the Dark.
Shatner: Mm-hmm.
NPR: What roles did you play onstage when you were at the Stratford Festival?
Shatner: Golly. I played in the chorus of Oedipus. I played comedies and dramas. My big claim to fame during the three years I was at Stratford was understudying Henry V and going on without any rehearsal ? and I tell that story in the show. ... Tyrone Guthrie, a great English director of that time, said to me ? I was understudying Chris Plummer ? and they said, "Plummer's ill. Can you go on?" And I had never rehearsed the part, never spoken the part out loud. And I went on.
NPR: Mm-hmm. And it was a success.
Shatner: Yes.
NPR: You didn't open your mouth and nothing came out.
Shatner: No. It sometimes felt like that.
NPR: You've ? well, you've just made the point. You go back a long way with Christopher Plummer.
Shatner: I do. In fact, I go further back than that. I go back to early radio at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in Montreal. So we've had our history together. He's a buddy of mine now. But my memory of him during those early years was one of total respect and admiration. Of course, he's become one of our great actors.
NPR: Mm-hmm. So by the time you did Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, was that part of the attraction for you ? getting him onboard?
Shatner: Absolutely. He comes aboard as the leading villain on Star Trek VI, and I went from being his understudy to being his captain.
NPR: And he gets one of the great ? as far as I'm concerned ? movie lines of all time. In Star Trek VI, after Plummer speaks a line in Klingon, Leonard Nimoy, as Spock, identifies it as "Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1." Then David Warner, as General Chang, responds, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon."
Shatner: That actually is a great line, and I worship great lines.
NPR: You, I gather, are pretty open about having tinnitus.
Shatner: Right. I have tinnitus. I got it oh, 10, 15 years ago. It drove me mad. I thought I was going to lose my mind.
NPR: Can I ask you to help us understand what it sounds like, what it feels like?
Shatner: Turn on a television set without the station. A lot of people [with tinnitus] have different kinds of sound. But the most common, and mine, is that hiss static. And that's what it's like. And during the time I was going to the doctor, they attempted to reach the nature of the sound, so they had an instrument that played all kinds of hissing. ... So they tweaked the machine until they reached me. And when they reached the same timbre and tone of my sound, I broke into tears: Somebody had hacked their way through this jungle of sound where I was totally alone in my agony, and somebody had reached me. And it just moved me to tears.
NPR: Well, thank you for talking about that.
Shatner: Well, if it can help somebody else ? and a lot of people have it, a lot of returning veterans have it. It's caused by a number of things, age being one of them, medication, and mostly traumatic sound. A lot of sound engineers have it. The cilia in your inner ear dies ? some of it dies ? and this code of silence that you had when you were born is broken, and so it's the brain's activity. If one person ... listening to this can be helped by [my] saying, 'Don't despair. I promise you, eventually you won't hear it. It won't go away, but you won't hear it ... '"
NPR: Was there ever a moment or ? I don't know, 10 moments ? when you thought you might not make it in show business?
Shatner: Always. I'm thinking here in New York, what happens if I fail? Now, I have every expectation that won't happen. But always the inculcation of the actor is: What happens if I fail? What happens if they don't like me? And that goads every actor. Getting that audience approval is always a question mark, and it's always that flag that flutters in front of you.
NPR: But you see it as a motivational tool?
Shatner: It goads you. It goads you and worries you and pricks you and [there's] never a restful moment until all the elements are put together and the audience is applauding and approving.
NPR: Mr. Shatner, can you say something for us in your fluent Esperanto?
Shatner: Yes. [Foreign language spoken]. It translates: Is this interview at an end?
NPR: You saw that coming, didn't you? Is that truly Esperanto? Forgive me for not knowing.
Shatner: It's nonsense syllables. But I maintain it is Esperanto.
NPR: Well, we should explain. You did ...
Shatner: I did a movie in Esperanto. ... It was designed to be the language, the universal language of Greek, Latin and German words so that it had the roots of many, many of the existing languages. Everybody could learn to speak it. And so you wouldn't need translators, and you could speak Esperanto to each other, there'd be less misunderstanding. It didn't quite work.
NPR: Didn't quite work out. We should explain so people can find it, it's a 1966 film called Incubus.
Shatner: Yes.
NPR: Kind of a horror film. I've seen clips.
Shatner: Yeah. It was kind of a horror film. Or else it was a horrible film, I'm not ...
NPR: You know, it occurs to me just while I'm sitting here and were conversing in Esperanto, can you speak Klingon?
Shatner: Yes.
NPR: Oh, OK. Just thought I'd ask.
Shatner: Oh, yes, I'm fluent. And when I say fluent it means I spit a lot.
NPR: It's a great spitter's language, isn't it?
Shatner: Right, a spitter language.
NPR: William Shatner, in any language, is back on Broadway, for the first time in 50 years. His solo show, Shatner's World: We Just Live In It, runs at the Music Box Theatre until March 4.
he wild range of roles played by William Shatner over the past half-century goes well beyond Captain Kirk. Host Scott Simon speaks with the pop culture icon, who's returning to Broadway for a one-man show, Shatner's World: We Just Live In It.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:251:"he wild range of roles played by William Shatner over the past half-century goes well beyond Captain Kirk. Host Scott Simon speaks with the pop culture icon, who's returning to Broadway for a one-man show, Shatner's World: We Just Live In It.";s:12:"atom_content";s:540:"he wild range of roles played by William Shatner over the past half-century goes well beyond Captain Kirk. Host Scott Simon speaks with the pop culture icon, who's returning to Broadway for a one-man show, Shatner's World: We Just Live In It.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1329570000;}i:10;a:30:{s:5:"title";s:47:"Stephen Sondheim: Examining His Lyrics And Life";s:11:"description";s:258:"In this rebroadcast from 2010, the musical theater legend talks about writing the lyrics and music for several of his productions, including the 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along, which is currently in the middle of a two-week run in New York City.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:48:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:98:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/16/146938826/stephen-sondheim-examining-his-lyrics-and-life?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:98:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/16/146938826/stephen-sondheim-examining-his-lyrics-and-life?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:75:{s:5:"title";s:47:"Stephen Sondheim: Examining His Lyrics And Life";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"146938826";s:6:"teaser";s:258:"In this rebroadcast from 2010, the musical theater legend talks about writing the lyrics and music for several of his productions, including the 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along, 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";s:11:"image_title";s:104:"Stephen SondheimCast of West Side StoryZero MostelStephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins";s:13:"image_caption";s:912:"Sondheim, shown here in 1974, won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Sunday in the Park with George. He has also received eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy awards and a Kennedy Center Honor.Sondheim made his Broadway debut as a lyricist for the 1957 musical, West Side Story. Actor Russ Tamblyn played the leader of the Jets, a teenage street gang in New York City.Zero Mostel starred as Pseudolus in the bawdy farce A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The musical was the first to feature Sondheim's music and lyrics.Sondheim (left) wrote the lyrics for West Side Story; classical-music superstar Leonard Bernstein (center) was the composer, Jerome Robbins the director and choreographer. The story of the show's genesis is told in the special NPR series 50 Years of West Side Story.";s:14:"image_producer";s:75:"Hulton ArchiveAuthenticated News/Staff/Hulton ArchivesStaff/Hulton Archives";s:14:"image_provider";s:36:"Getty ImagesGetty ImagesGetty Images";s:17:"image_enlargement";s:22:" ";s:11:"relatedlink";s:27:" ";s:19:"relatedlink_caption";s:142:" Stephen Colbert: A 'Company' Man On Broadway Danny Burstein On Living Up To Sondheim's 'Follies' Look, He Made A Hat: Sondheim Talks Sondheim";s:16:"relatedlink_link";s:477:"http://www.npr.org/2011/12/30/144083514/stephen-colbert-a-company-man-on-broadwayhttp://api.npr.org/query?id=144083514&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/2011/11/22/142671026/danny-burstein-on-living-up-to-sondheims-follieshttp://api.npr.org/query?id=142671026&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130732712http://api.npr.org/query?id=130732712&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:6:"artist";s:9:" ";s:15:"artist_artistid";s:8:"15871266";s:11:"artist_name";s:16:"Stephen Sondheim";s:4:"song";s:9:" ";s:10:"song_title";s:13:"Opening Doors";s:13:"song_composer";s:8:"Sondheim";s:12:"song_discnum";s:1:"1";s:13:"song_tracknum";s:2:"12";s:14:"song_publisher";s:8:"Sondheim";s:10:"song_album";s:11:" ";s:18:"song_album_albumid";s:9:"126144799";s:21:"song_album_albumtitle";s:56:"Merrily We Roll Along [Original Broadway Cast Recording]";s:22:"song_album_albumartist";s:23:"Original Cast Recording";s:20:"song_album_albumyear";s:4:"1982";s:14:"song_album_upc";s:12:"078635419719";s:16:"song_album_label";s:23:"Sony Music Distribution";s:19:"song_album_labelnum";s:6:"686372";s:20:"song_album_musictype";s:7:"various";s:19:"song_album_coverurl";s:3:"N/A";s:4:"text";s:9:" ";s:14:"text_paragraph";s:6903:"Stephen Sondheim's 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along is in the middle of a two-week run at the New York City Center as part of an Encores! Production. Portions of the interview running today were originally broadcast on April 21, 2010 and Oct. 28, 2010. Stephen Sondheim's credits includes the lyrics for classics like West Side Story and Gypsy, not to mention the music and lyrics for ? among others ? Sweeney Todd, Assassins, Into the Woods, Company and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.He's been honored with eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and an Oscar (for the music in 1990's Dick Tracy). The New York Times calls him the "greatest and perhaps best-known artist in American musical theater."Epiphany Upon graduating from Williams College in 1950, Sondheim received one of his first awards, the Hutchinson Prize for Composition. The award gave Sondheim the opportunity to study with avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt."I wanted to learn compositional technique, and that's what I learned from him," Sondheim says. "We had four-hour sessions once a week and we would spend the first hour analyzing songs by Jerome Kern or by DeSylva, Brown and Henderson ? the classic songs of the American theater and American movies. ... But what we did was ? we did an hour on songs and three hours on Beethoven and Bach, and it was all about essentially compositional analysis. But I only wanted to write songs. I didn't want to write concert music."Though Babbitt influenced Sondheim's compositional techniques, he says it was the film composer Bernard Herrmann ? most famous for his musical work on the Hitchcock films Psycho, North by Northwest and Vertigo ? who heavily influenced the score of Sweeney Todd."When I was 15 years old, I saw a movie called Hangover Square, which featured a piano concerto that Bernard Herrmann had written," Sondheim says. "It's a melodrama about a serial killer who writes this piano concerto. It particularly impressed me ? but all of Bernard Herrmann's music particularly impressed me, so actually the score of Sweeney Todd is an homage to him."One of the most famous compositions in Sweeney Todd is "Epiphany" ? the terrifyingly mad ballad sung by the title character (a homicidal barber) after he learns that the judge who unjustly sent him to prison had later raped his wife and adopted his daughter. Sweeney has decided to take his revenge ? via his razors ? against the judge. The chords at the end of the song are extremely dissonant, particularly when Todd sings the last line, "I'm alive at last / And I'm full of joy!"Sondheim says he wrote the music to mimic the madness that's taking place in Sweeney's head ? and that he originally resisted writing a conclusion that would move an audience to applaud."In fact, I ... had it end on a sort of dissonant chord with kind of violent harmonics ? meaning very high, shrill sounds," he says. "And Hal Prince said, 'Len Cariou has worked so hard while he sings that song. You have to give him a hand.' So I put a big chord on the end, and that big chord still strikes me as wrong. So even in the printed copy ? that is, the piano/vocal score that's published ? I put two endings in. Those who want to give it a big nice consonant chord at the end and get a hand from the audience ? and those who do what I wanted to do, which was to let the thing dribble out into the next scene."Opening DoorsBefore Sondheim wrote the lyrics for West Side Story, he played his music for a lot of producers and directors, trying to break into theater. He got a lot of blank looks."I remember playing once for Cy Feuer, the producer of Guys and Dolls," Sondheim says. "He also was the head of the music department at Universal, and I remember he criticized me for having too many B-flats in a melody. I remember he said that, and I thought 'Gee whiz, what is he talking about?' He wanted to show me that he knew a lot about music, is what it was. And he might have been right, but I don't think he was."After West Side Story, Sondheim was hired to write the lyrics for Gypsy ? which led to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the first show for which Sondheim wrote both the music and lyrics.When he writes, Sondheim says, he doesn't necessarily always write the lyrics first or the music first; the process depends on what pops into his head."I will improvise or think of various melodic ideas and sometimes chord sequences. ... At the same time, I'm also jotting down any lyric," he says. "Then I try to start from the first song, and if I have a lyric line or a phrase, I'll expand a bit. ... I may have a musical idea and expand on it, but I never go far without bringing the other one in, because you can paint yourself into a corner if you write a whole tune or even half a tune with no idea what you're going to say in it ? because you're then going to be hard-pressed to find words that fit inside the music easily and accomplish exactly what you want them to accomplish."During this musical sketching process, Sondheim doesn't record himself ? he just makes notations on what he wants to say and how he wants to say it."The process of putting something down on paper is very important in keeping the stuff alive in your head," he says. "You can improvise and think, 'Wait, that A-flat doesn't sound right,' and you change things as you go along, even though you're just sketching."And when he needs to create a rhyme, Sondheim says, it's crucial to know what he wants to say beforehand."To know what you want to say and then how you want to phrase what you want to say ? and then as the music develops, you'll start to improvise a rhyme scheme or to sense a rhyme scheme. And then you'll say 'All right, I've got this line that ends with "day" and I want to say "She loves him,' " and then you go through the rhyming dictionary. But there's so many rhymes for 'day.' and you want something that will somehow encompass or pinpoint what you want to say ? there's a rhyme right there ? about this situation. ... You make a list of rhymes that are in some way relevant, and then you use them."There are certain rhymes Sondheim says he would never use again ? soul-stirring and bolstering from Follies, for instance ? but other rhymes get used day in and day out from song to song, show to show ? because they're extremely useful."They're words that have many meanings and many connotations so that's what I mean," Sondheim says.And words, he says, are why he's in theater in the first place."I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences," he says. "Otherwise I would be in concert music. I'd be in another kind of profession. I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry ? just making them feel ? is paramount to me." [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]";s:12:"textwithhtml";s:9:" ";s:22:"textwithhtml_paragraph";s:8294:"Stephen Sondheim's 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along is in the middle of a two-week run at the New York City Center as part of an Encores! Production. Portions of the interview running today were originally broadcast on April 21, 2010 and Oct. 28, 2010. Stephen Sondheim's credits includes the lyrics for classics like West Side Story and Gypsy, not to mention the music and lyrics for ? among others ? Sweeney Todd, Assassins, Into the Woods, Company and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.He's been honored with eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and an Oscar (for the music in 1990's Dick Tracy). The New York Times calls him the "greatest and perhaps best-known artist in American musical theater."Epiphany Upon graduating from Williams College in 1950, Sondheim received one of his first awards, the Hutchinson Prize for Composition. The award gave Sondheim the opportunity to study with avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt."I wanted to learn compositional technique, and that's what I learned from him," Sondheim says. "We had four-hour sessions once a week and we would spend the first hour analyzing songs by Jerome Kern or by DeSylva, Brown and Henderson ? the classic songs of the American theater and American movies. ... But what we did was ? we did an hour on songs and three hours on Beethoven and Bach, and it was all about essentially compositional analysis. But I only wanted to write songs. I didn't want to write concert music."Though Babbitt influenced Sondheim's compositional techniques, he says it was the film composer Bernard Herrmann ? most famous for his musical work on the Hitchcock films Psycho, North by Northwest and Vertigo ? who heavily influenced the score of Sweeney Todd."When I was 15 years old, I saw a movie called Hangover Square, which featured a piano concerto that Bernard Herrmann had written," Sondheim says. "It's a melodrama about a serial killer who writes this piano concerto. It particularly impressed me ? but all of Bernard Herrmann's music particularly impressed me, so actually the score of Sweeney Todd is an homage to him."One of the most famous compositions in Sweeney Todd is "Epiphany" ? the terrifyingly mad ballad sung by the title character (a homicidal barber) after he learns that the judge who unjustly sent him to prison had later raped his wife and adopted his daughter. Sweeney has decided to take his revenge ? via his razors ? against the judge. The chords at the end of the song are extremely dissonant, particularly when Todd sings the last line, "I'm alive at last / And I'm full of joy!"Sondheim says he wrote the music to mimic the madness that's taking place in Sweeney's head ? and that he originally resisted writing a conclusion that would move an audience to applaud."In fact, I ... had it end on a sort of dissonant chord with kind of violent harmonics ? meaning very high, shrill sounds," he says. "And Hal Prince said, 'Len Cariou has worked so hard while he sings that song. You have to give him a hand.' So I put a big chord on the end, and that big chord still strikes me as wrong. So even in the printed copy ? that is, the piano/vocal score that's published ? I put two endings in. Those who want to give it a big nice consonant chord at the end and get a hand from the audience ? and those who do what I wanted to do, which was to let the thing dribble out into the next scene."Opening DoorsBefore Sondheim wrote the lyrics for West Side Story, he played his music for a lot of producers and directors, trying to break into theater. He got a lot of blank looks."I remember playing once for Cy Feuer, the producer of Guys and Dolls," Sondheim says. "He also was the head of the music department at Universal, and I remember he criticized me for having too many B-flats in a melody. I remember he said that, and I thought 'Gee whiz, what is he talking about?' He wanted to show me that he knew a lot about music, is what it was. And he might have been right, but I don't think he was."After West Side Story, Sondheim was hired to write the lyrics for Gypsy ? which led to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the first show for which Sondheim wrote both the music and lyrics.When he writes, Sondheim says, he doesn't necessarily always write the lyrics first or the music first; the process depends on what pops into his head."I will improvise or think of various melodic ideas and sometimes chord sequences. ... At the same time, I'm also jotting down any lyric," he says. "Then I try to start from the first song, and if I have a lyric line or a phrase, I'll expand a bit. ... I may have a musical idea and expand on it, but I never go far without bringing the other one in, because you can paint yourself into a corner if you write a whole tune or even half a tune with no idea what you're going to say in it ? because you're then going to be hard-pressed to find words that fit inside the music easily and accomplish exactly what you want them to accomplish."During this musical sketching process, Sondheim doesn't record himself ? he just makes notations on what he wants to say and how he wants to say it."The process of putting something down on paper is very important in keeping the stuff alive in your head," he says. "You can improvise and think, 'Wait, that A-flat doesn't sound right,' and you change things as you go along, even though you're just sketching."And when he needs to create a rhyme, Sondheim says, it's crucial to know what he wants to say beforehand."To know what you want to say and then how you want to phrase what you want to say ? and then as the music develops, you'll start to improvise a rhyme scheme or to sense a rhyme scheme. And then you'll say 'All right, I've got this line that ends with "day" and I want to say "She loves him,' " and then you go through the rhyming dictionary. But there's so many rhymes for 'day.' and you want something that will somehow encompass or pinpoint what you want to say ? there's a rhyme right there ? about this situation. ... You make a list of rhymes that are in some way relevant, and then you use them."There are certain rhymes Sondheim says he would never use again ? soul-stirring and bolstering from Follies, for instance ? but other rhymes get used day in and day out from song to song, show to show ? because they're extremely useful."They're words that have many meanings and many connotations so that's what I mean," Sondheim says.And words, he says, are why he's in theater in the first place."I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences," he says. "Otherwise I would be in concert music. I'd be in another kind of profession. I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry ? just making them feel ? is paramount to me."9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
Sondheim, shown here in 1974, won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Sunday in the Park with George. He has also received eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy awards and a Kennedy Center Honor.
Stephen Sondheim's 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along is in the middle of a two-week run at the New York City Center as part of an Encores! Production. Portions of the interview running today were originally broadcast on April 21, 2010 and Oct. 28, 2010.
Stephen Sondheim's credits includes the lyrics for classics like West Side Story and Gypsy, not to mention the music and lyrics for ? among others ? Sweeney Todd, Assassins, Into the Woods, Company and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
He's been honored with eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and an Oscar (for the music in 1990's Dick Tracy). The New York Times calls him the "greatest and perhaps best-known artist in American musical theater."
Epiphany
Upon graduating from Williams College in 1950, Sondheim received one of his first awards, the Hutchinson Prize for Composition. The award gave Sondheim the opportunity to study with avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt.
"I wanted to learn compositional technique, and that's what I learned from him," Sondheim says. "We had four-hour sessions once a week and we would spend the first hour analyzing songs by Jerome Kern or by DeSylva, Brown and Henderson ? the classic songs of the American theater and American movies. ... But what we did was ? we did an hour on songs and three hours on Beethoven and Bach, and it was all about essentially compositional analysis. But I only wanted to write songs. I didn't want to write concert music."
Though Babbitt influenced Sondheim's compositional techniques, he says it was the film composer Bernard Herrmann ? most famous for his musical work on the Hitchcock films Psycho, North by Northwest and Vertigo ? who heavily influenced the score of Sweeney Todd.
"When I was 15 years old, I saw a movie called Hangover Square, which featured a piano concerto that Bernard Herrmann had written," Sondheim says. "It's a melodrama about a serial killer who writes this piano concerto. It particularly impressed me ? but all of Bernard Herrmann's music particularly impressed me, so actually the score of Sweeney Todd is an homage to him."
One of the most famous compositions in Sweeney Todd is "Epiphany" ? the terrifyingly mad ballad sung by the title character (a homicidal barber) after he learns that the judge who unjustly sent him to prison had later raped his wife and adopted his daughter. Sweeney has decided to take his revenge ? via his razors ? against the judge. The chords at the end of the song are extremely dissonant, particularly when Todd sings the last line, "I'm alive at last / And I'm full of joy!"
Sondheim says he wrote the music to mimic the madness that's taking place in Sweeney's head ? and that he originally resisted writing a conclusion that would move an audience to applaud.
"In fact, I ... had it end on a sort of dissonant chord with kind of violent harmonics ? meaning very high, shrill sounds," he says. "And Hal Prince said, 'Len Cariou has worked so hard while he sings that song. You have to give him a hand.' So I put a big chord on the end, and that big chord still strikes me as wrong. So even in the printed copy ? that is, the piano/vocal score that's published ? I put two endings in. Those who want to give it a big nice consonant chord at the end and get a hand from the audience ? and those who do what I wanted to do, which was to let the thing dribble out into the next scene."
Opening Doors
Before Sondheim wrote the lyrics for West Side Story, he played his music for a lot of producers and directors, trying to break into theater. He got a lot of blank looks.
"I remember playing once for Cy Feuer, the producer of Guys and Dolls," Sondheim says. "He also was the head of the music department at Universal, and I remember he criticized me for having too many B-flats in a melody. I remember he said that, and I thought 'Gee whiz, what is he talking about?' He wanted to show me that he knew a lot about music, is what it was. And he might have been right, but I don't think he was."
After West Side Story, Sondheim was hired to write the lyrics for Gypsy ? which led to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the first show for which Sondheim wrote both the music and lyrics.
When he writes, Sondheim says, he doesn't necessarily always write the lyrics first or the music first; the process depends on what pops into his head.
"I will improvise or think of various melodic ideas and sometimes chord sequences. ... At the same time, I'm also jotting down any lyric," he says. "Then I try to start from the first song, and if I have a lyric line or a phrase, I'll expand a bit. ... I may have a musical idea and expand on it, but I never go far without bringing the other one in, because you can paint yourself into a corner if you write a whole tune or even half a tune with no idea what you're going to say in it ? because you're then going to be hard-pressed to find words that fit inside the music easily and accomplish exactly what you want them to accomplish."
During this musical sketching process, Sondheim doesn't record himself ? he just makes notations on what he wants to say and how he wants to say it.
Sondheim (left) wrote the lyrics for West Side Story; classical-music superstar Leonard Bernstein (center) was the composer, Jerome Robbins the director and choreographer. The story of the show's genesis is told in the special NPR series 50 Years of West Side Story.
"The process of putting something down on paper is very important in keeping the stuff alive in your head," he says. "You can improvise and think, 'Wait, that A-flat doesn't sound right,' and you change things as you go along, even though you're just sketching."
And when he needs to create a rhyme, Sondheim says, it's crucial to know what he wants to say beforehand.
"To know what you want to say and then how you want to phrase what you want to say ? and then as the music develops, you'll start to improvise a rhyme scheme or to sense a rhyme scheme. And then you'll say 'All right, I've got this line that ends with "day" and I want to say "She loves him,' " and then you go through the rhyming dictionary. But there's so many rhymes for 'day.' and you want something that will somehow encompass or pinpoint what you want to say ? there's a rhyme right there ? about this situation. ... You make a list of rhymes that are in some way relevant, and then you use them."
There are certain rhymes Sondheim says he would never use again ? soul-stirring and bolstering from Follies, for instance ? but other rhymes get used day in and day out from song to song, show to show ? because they're extremely useful.
"They're words that have many meanings and many connotations so that's what I mean," Sondheim says.
And words, he says, are why he's in theater in the first place.
"I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences," he says. "Otherwise I would be in concert music. I'd be in another kind of profession. I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry ? just making them feel ? is paramount to me."
In this rebroadcast from 2010, the musical theater legend talks about writing the lyrics and music for several of his productions, including the 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along, which is currently in the middle of a two-week run in New York City.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:258:"In this rebroadcast from 2010, the musical theater legend talks about writing the lyrics and music for several of his productions, including the 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along, which is currently in the middle of a two-week run in New York City.";s:12:"atom_content";s:547:"In this rebroadcast from 2010, the musical theater legend talks about writing the lyrics and music for several of his productions, including the 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along, which is currently in the middle of a two-week run in New York City.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1329410880;}i:11;a:18:{s:5:"title";s:46:"Asian-Americans: Why Can't We Get Cast In NYC?";s:11:"description";s:269:"A coalition of performers complains that except for a handful of shows, Asian-American actors have had dramatically more trouble landing parts than their white, black and Latino colleagues. At a roundtable Monday, they unveiled the statistics they say prove them right.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:43:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:95:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/14/146890025/asian-americans-why-cant-we-get-cast-in-nyc?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:95:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/14/146890025/asian-americans-why-cant-we-get-cast-in-nyc?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:31:{s:5:"title";s:46:"Asian-Americans: Why Can't We Get Cast In NYC?";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"146890025";s:6:"teaser";s:269:"A coalition of performers complains that except for a handful of shows, Asian-American actors have had dramatically more trouble landing parts than their white, black and Latino colleagues. At a roundtable Monday, they unveiled the statistics they say prove them right.";s:10:"miniteaser";s:99:"Asian-American actors have more trouble getting cast than their white, black and Latino colleagues.";s:4:"slug";s:7:"Theater";s:9:"thumbnail";s:9:" ";s:16:"thumbnail_medium";s:76:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/02/15/57246397_sq.jpg?t=1329329396&s=13";s:15:"thumbnail_large";s:76:"http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/02/15/57246397_sq.jpg?t=1329329396&s=11";s:18:"thumbnail_provider";s:12:"Getty Images";s:9:"storydate";s:31:"Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:43:00 -0500";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:43:00 -0500";s:16:"lastmodifieddate";s:31:"Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:39:01 -0500";s:12:"organization";s:9:" ";s:17:"organization_name";s:21:"National Public Radio";s:20:"organization_website";s:19:"http://www.npr.org/";s:6:"parent";s:36:" ";s:12:"parent_title";s:40:"TheaterTheaterPerforming ArtsArts & Life";s:11:"parent_link";s:457:"http://www.npr.org/sections/theater/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1144&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/theater/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1144&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/performing-arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1046&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1008&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:6:"byline";s:9:" ";s:11:"byline_name";s:11:"Randy Gener";s:5:"image";s:27:" ";s:11:"image_title";s:244:"Playwright David Henry Hwang, seen here at a 2006 gala at The Cherry Lane Theater, moderated the RepresentAsian roundtable Monday in New York.Chart: Casting By Ethnicity, Non-Profit Theaters OnlyChart: Roles Cast Nontraditionally, By Ethnicity";s:13:"image_caption";s:278:"Playwright David Henry Hwang, seen here at a 2006 gala at The Cherry Lane Theater, moderated the RepresentAsian roundtable Monday in New York.Chart: Casting By Ethnicity, Non-Profit Theaters OnlyChart: Roles Cast Nontraditionally, By Ethnicity";s:14:"image_producer";s:11:"Amy Sussman";s:14:"image_provider";s:96:"Getty ImagesAsian American Performers Action CoalitionAsian American Performers Action Coalition";s:17:"image_enlargement";s:33:" ";s:4:"text";s:9:" ";s:14:"text_paragraph";s:8149:"Once upon a time, Asian-American artists would have taken their anger to the streets.That's what happened in 1990, when Asian-American actors, outraged over a Caucasian actor's yellowface performance in Miss Saigon, staged public protests over the casting choice. It was one of the most divisive debates over racial representation in the history of the American theater. Twenty-two years later, the battle is still being waged ? though now it's via social media and a PowerPoint presentation.At the RepresentAsian conference, a three-hour wrangle at Fordham University on Monday, it wasn't about slogans, signs or sit-ins. Cold numbers, pie charts and bar graphs told what Asian-American advocates say is a sad fact about casting. Based on data the group compiled from the past five theater seasons, Asian-Americans are the only minority group whose share of New York acting roles declined, and they were also the least likely to be selected for roles that would traditionally be played by white actors.More than 400 people ? nearly three-fourths of them performers ? converged for a roundtable with 17 theater-makers: Broadway director Bartlett Sher, Vineyard Theatre head honcho Doug Aibel, playwright Douglas Carter Beane, plus producers Nelle Nugent and Stephen Byrd, Actors' Equity boss Mary McColl and more.The moderator? David Henry Hwang, the same Tony Award-winning playwright (Chinglish, M. Butterfly) who emerged as a spokesman when the Miss Saigon clash erupted.Calling themselves the Asian American Performers Action Coalition, the assembled advocates were variously upset, fed-up, frustrated, irritated, indignant and disillusioned at what they say is a lack of true diversity on stage ? and specifically a lack of Asian-American representation.And the numbers? With 6,639 total roles cast in the past five theater seasons, 54 Broadway parts went to Asian-American actors. Another 100 Asian-American actors landed gigs at nonprofit companies.Where roles were not racially specific ? think Shakespeare and other period plays, chorus or ensemble members in a musical, or just stories where race isn't overtly addressed ? African-American actors were more frequently cast than other performers of color."African-Americans were cast in 13 percent of all available roles, Latinos in 4 percent and Asian-Americans in 2 percent," the report states.That's despite the fact that Asian-Americans make up 12.9 percent of the population of New York City ? and are considered the city's fastest growing minority group. (Latino performers, who've considered the issue from their own demographic angle, have voiced their own frustrations over what they've called a "brownout.")Beane, who wrote the books to the two Broadway musicals with the most diverse casts this season ? Sister Act the Musical and Lysistrata Jones -- said the numbers are shocking."The stats baffle me," he says. "Casting directors of every show I've worked on have always asked at some point, 'Can we open this up? Can this character be black, Latin or Asian?' ... You want the stage to look like the street, not some fantasy world that doesn't exist."'Taking The Emotion Out Of The Equation'After AAPAC began to coalesce ? initially through conversations on Facebook ? it became clear that organizers wanted to reshape the status quo without rocking the boat too hard. The question, says actor Christine Toy Johnson, became, "How do we engage in dialogues with the New York theater community without placing blame?""It was important to take the emotion out of the equation," adds actor Pun Bandhu, who's currently on Broadway in the Manhattan Theatre Club revival of Wit. "This movement isn't just about advocating diversity. Who could possibly be against that? Our movement is about Asian issues. It's important that this movement have an Asian face, because Asians have remained silent for too long. "The report assigns grades to Broadway shows, as well as to 16 nonprofit theater companies, on the basis of how frequently they have cast nontraditionally ? meaning choosing women or ethnic minorities for roles where race, sex or ethnicity are not germane.One problem, the actors argue, centers on how nontraditional casting has been defined and employed in New York theaters."Whether or not there are new plays with roles for Asians, this should not deter Asians from working in the theater," Bandhu says. "There are Asians who are older, who are younger, who are fat, who are skinny, who are leading men, who are character actors. Yet we are all vying for the same role ? just because that role is written as an Asian role."Adds actor Anitha Gandhi: "When contemporary plays are produced, we're not looked upon for roles of the girlfriend, best friend, mom or father. I feel the color angle really does us a disservice. There is this patting-the-back mentality among producers and casting persons who will say, 'There is a black actor in my production.' ... They don't look at us as being part of the fabric of the American story."Again and again, speakers at the Fordham gathering agreed that part of the issue is "a crisis of imagination" ? and a fear among playwrights and directors that if too many people of color are cast in the same show, a production might be seen as somehow "conceptual.""When money is on the line," says actor Peter Kim, "people tend to go with the safest choice. Usually that results in casting 'names' of some sort, whether it is a television, film or theater 'name.' Since there aren't many Asian-American 'names,' they aren't being considered for roles."Moderator Hwang scored points with the crowd with one particularly timely analogy. Describing "the insidiousness and banality of the glass ceiling" for actors, he invoked the name of Jeremy Lin, the Chinese-American who overcame a lack of interest among basketball recruiters to become a breakout sensation as a guard for the New York Knicks."Institutions were making assumptions about Lin," Hwang says. "When you have a glass ceiling, it hurts not only the people being discriminated against. It hurts the institutions doing the discriminating."'The Servant Of Many Masters'Scoring lowest on the report's grade scale was Off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company, founded by writer David Mamet and actor William H. Macy in a Chelsea church more than a quarter-century ago. Its current chief, Neil Pepe, seems to echo Kim's analysis, at least indirectly."As artistic director of an ensemble-based theater, I find that I am the servant of many masters in programming and in staffing our seasons with artists," says Pepe, who couldn't attend the RepresentAsian roundtable. "The statistical results of the survey are a welcome reminder to us that there are many groups of artists in New York who are underrepresented on our stages."Still, Pepe continued, "we are happy to report that 33 percent of the actors in our current season are non-white, and that none of our six productions had or will have an all-Caucasian cast. ... We certainly believe that racial and ethnic diversity among our artists only [adds] depth and complexity to the work."Oskar Eustis, the famed artistic director of the Public Theater ? another institution once targeted publicly for hiring white actors to play Asian characters ? did attend the roundtable. He acknowledged the collective diagnosis as "both true and regrettable," and promised that an evening spent "with people who are thinking about this issue seriously, and who are impacted by this problem," would force him to "make it a higher priority. That is what pressure is supposed to do to institutions."That might be of some comfort to actor Julienne Hanzelka Kim."Personally I'd rather be in an empty room, looking at a script and trying to figure out the psyche of a given character, than culling statistics on diversity and trying to get industry leaders to pay attention," she says. "But this is perhaps what we need to do in order to get into that rehearsal room much more often."Randy Gener is a New York-based writer and editor, and the 2007-2008 winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for drama criticism. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]";s:12:"textwithhtml";s:9:" ";s:22:"textwithhtml_paragraph";s:8526:"Once upon a time, Asian-American artists would have taken their anger to the streets.That's what happened in 1990, when Asian-American actors, outraged over a Caucasian actor's yellowface performance in Miss Saigon, staged public protests over the casting choice. It was one of the most divisive debates over racial representation in the history of the American theater. Twenty-two years later, the battle is still being waged ? though now it's via social media and a PowerPoint presentation.At the RepresentAsian conference, a three-hour wrangle at Fordham University on Monday, it wasn't about slogans, signs or sit-ins. Cold numbers, pie charts and bar graphs told what Asian-American advocates say is a sad fact about casting. Based on data the group compiled from the past five theater seasons, Asian-Americans are the only minority group whose share of New York acting roles declined, and they were also the least likely to be selected for roles that would traditionally be played by white actors.More than 400 people ? nearly three-fourths of them performers ? converged for a roundtable with 17 theater-makers: Broadway director Bartlett Sher, Vineyard Theatre head honcho Doug Aibel, playwright Douglas Carter Beane, plus producers Nelle Nugent and Stephen Byrd, Actors' Equity boss Mary McColl and more.The moderator? David Henry Hwang, the same Tony Award-winning playwright (Chinglish, M. Butterfly) who emerged as a spokesman when the Miss Saigon clash erupted.Calling themselves the Asian American Performers Action Coalition, the assembled advocates were variously upset, fed-up, frustrated, irritated, indignant and disillusioned at what they say is a lack of true diversity on stage ? and specifically a lack of Asian-American representation.And the numbers? With 6,639 total roles cast in the past five theater seasons, 54 Broadway parts went to Asian-American actors. Another 100 Asian-American actors landed gigs at nonprofit companies.Where roles were not racially specific ? think Shakespeare and other period plays, chorus or ensemble members in a musical, or just stories where race isn't overtly addressed ? African-American actors were more frequently cast than other performers of color."African-Americans were cast in 13 percent of all available roles, Latinos in 4 percent and Asian-Americans in 2 percent," the report states.That's despite the fact that Asian-Americans make up 12.9 percent of the population of New York City ? and are considered the city's fastest growing minority group. (Latino performers, who've considered the issue from their own demographic angle, have voiced their own frustrations over what they've called a "brownout.")Beane, who wrote the books to the two Broadway musicals with the most diverse casts this season ? Sister Act the Musical and Lysistrata Jones -- said the numbers are shocking."The stats baffle me," he says. "Casting directors of every show I've worked on have always asked at some point, 'Can we open this up? Can this character be black, Latin or Asian?' ... You want the stage to look like the street, not some fantasy world that doesn't exist."'Taking The Emotion Out Of The Equation'After AAPAC began to coalesce ? initially through conversations on Facebook ? it became clear that organizers wanted to reshape the status quo without rocking the boat too hard. The question, says actor Christine Toy Johnson, became, "How do we engage in dialogues with the New York theater community without placing blame?""It was important to take the emotion out of the equation," adds actor Pun Bandhu, who's currently on Broadway in the Manhattan Theatre Club revival of Wit. "This movement isn't just about advocating diversity. Who could possibly be against that? Our movement is about Asian issues. It's important that this movement have an Asian face, because Asians have remained silent for too long. "The report assigns grades to Broadway shows, as well as to 16 nonprofit theater companies, on the basis of how frequently they have cast nontraditionally ? meaning choosing women or ethnic minorities for roles where race, sex or ethnicity are not germane.One problem, the actors argue, centers on how nontraditional casting has been defined and employed in New York theaters."Whether or not there are new plays with roles for Asians, this should not deter Asians from working in the theater," Bandhu says. "There are Asians who are older, who are younger, who are fat, who are skinny, who are leading men, who are character actors. Yet we are all vying for the same role ? just because that role is written as an Asian role."Adds actor Anitha Gandhi: "When contemporary plays are produced, we're not looked upon for roles of the girlfriend, best friend, mom or father. I feel the color angle really does us a disservice. There is this patting-the-back mentality among producers and casting persons who will say, 'There is a black actor in my production.' ... They don't look at us as being part of the fabric of the American story."Again and again, speakers at the Fordham gathering agreed that part of the issue is "a crisis of imagination" ? and a fear among playwrights and directors that if too many people of color are cast in the same show, a production might be seen as somehow "conceptual.""When money is on the line," says actor Peter Kim, "people tend to go with the safest choice. Usually that results in casting 'names' of some sort, whether it is a television, film or theater 'name.' Since there aren't many Asian-American 'names,' they aren't being considered for roles."Moderator Hwang scored points with the crowd with one particularly timely analogy. Describing "the insidiousness and banality of the glass ceiling" for actors, he invoked the name of Jeremy Lin, the Chinese-American who overcame a lack of interest among basketball recruiters to become a breakout sensation as a guard for the New York Knicks."Institutions were making assumptions about Lin," Hwang says. "When you have a glass ceiling, it hurts not only the people being discriminated against. It hurts the institutions doing the discriminating."'The Servant Of Many Masters'Scoring lowest on the report's grade scale was Off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company, founded by writer David Mamet and actor William H. Macy in a Chelsea church more than a quarter-century ago. Its current chief, Neil Pepe, seems to echo Kim's analysis, at least indirectly."As artistic director of an ensemble-based theater, I find that I am the servant of many masters in programming and in staffing our seasons with artists," says Pepe, who couldn't attend the RepresentAsian roundtable. "The statistical results of the survey are a welcome reminder to us that there are many groups of artists in New York who are underrepresented on our stages."Still, Pepe continued, "we are happy to report that 33 percent of the actors in our current season are non-white, and that none of our six productions had or will have an all-Caucasian cast. ... We certainly believe that racial and ethnic diversity among our artists only [adds] depth and complexity to the work."Oskar Eustis, the famed artistic director of the Public Theater ? another institution once targeted publicly for hiring white actors to play Asian characters ? did attend the roundtable. He acknowledged the collective diagnosis as "both true and regrettable," and promised that an evening spent "with people who are thinking about this issue seriously, and who are impacted by this problem," would force him to "make it a higher priority. That is what pressure is supposed to do to institutions."That might be of some comfort to actor Julienne Hanzelka Kim."Personally I'd rather be in an empty room, looking at a script and trying to figure out the psyche of a given character, than culling statistics on diversity and trying to get industry leaders to pay attention," she says. "But this is perhaps what we need to do in order to get into that rehearsal room much more often."Randy Gener is a New York-based writer and editor, and the 2007-2008 winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for drama criticism.9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
Playwright David Henry Hwang, seen here at a 2006 gala at The Cherry Lane Theater, moderated the RepresentAsian roundtable Monday in New York.
Once upon a time, Asian-American artists would have taken their anger to the streets.
That's what happened in 1990, when Asian-American actors, outraged over a Caucasian actor's yellowface performance in Miss Saigon, staged public protests over the casting choice. It was one of the most divisive debates over racial representation in the history of the American theater. Twenty-two years later, the battle is still being waged ? though now it's via social media and a PowerPoint presentation.
At the RepresentAsian conference, a three-hour wrangle at Fordham University on Monday, it wasn't about slogans, signs or sit-ins. Cold numbers, pie charts and bar graphs told what Asian-American advocates say is a sad fact about casting. Based on data the group compiled from the past five theater seasons, Asian-Americans are the only minority group whose share of New York acting roles declined, and they were also the least likely to be selected for roles that would traditionally be played by white actors.
More than 400 people ? nearly three-fourths of them performers ? converged for a roundtable with 17 theater-makers: Broadway director Bartlett Sher, Vineyard Theatre head honcho Doug Aibel, playwright Douglas Carter Beane, plus producers Nelle Nugent and Stephen Byrd, Actors' Equity boss Mary McColl and more.
The moderator? David Henry Hwang, the same Tony Award-winning playwright (Chinglish, M. Butterfly) who emerged as a spokesman when the Miss Saigon clash erupted.
Calling themselves the Asian American Performers Action Coalition, the assembled advocates were variously upset, fed-up, frustrated, irritated, indignant and disillusioned at what they say is a lack of true diversity on stage ? and specifically a lack of Asian-American representation.
Chart: Casting By Ethnicity, All Shows
And the numbers? With 6,639 total roles cast in the past five theater seasons, 54 Broadway parts went to Asian-American actors. Another 100 Asian-American actors landed gigs at nonprofit companies.
Where roles were not racially specific ? think Shakespeare and other period plays, chorus or ensemble members in a musical, or just stories where race isn't overtly addressed ? African-American actors were more frequently cast than other performers of color.
"African-Americans were cast in 13 percent of all available roles, Latinos in 4 percent and Asian-Americans in 2 percent," the report states.
That's despite the fact that Asian-Americans make up 12.9 percent of the population of New York City ? and are considered the city's fastest growing minority group. (Latino performers, who've considered the issue from their own demographic angle, have voiced their own frustrations over what they've called a "brownout.")
Beane, who wrote the books to the two Broadway musicals with the most diverse casts this season ? Sister Act the Musical and Lysistrata Jones — said the numbers are shocking.
"The stats baffle me," he says. "Casting directors of every show I've worked on have always asked at some point, 'Can we open this up? Can this character be black, Latin or Asian?' ... You want the stage to look like the street, not some fantasy world that doesn't exist."
Chart: Casting By Ethnicity, Non-Profit Theaters Only
'Taking The Emotion Out Of The Equation'
After AAPAC began to coalesce ? initially through conversations on Facebook ? it became clear that organizers wanted to reshape the status quo without rocking the boat too hard. The question, says actor Christine Toy Johnson, became, "How do we engage in dialogues with the New York theater community without placing blame?"
"It was important to take the emotion out of the equation," adds actor Pun Bandhu, who's currently on Broadway in the Manhattan Theatre Club revival of Wit. "This movement isn't just about advocating diversity. Who could possibly be against that? Our movement is about Asian issues. It's important that this movement have an Asian face, because Asians have remained silent for too long. "
The report assigns grades to Broadway shows, as well as to 16 nonprofit theater companies, on the basis of how frequently they have cast nontraditionally ? meaning choosing women or ethnic minorities for roles where race, sex or ethnicity are not germane.
One problem, the actors argue, centers on how nontraditional casting has been defined and employed in New York theaters.
"Whether or not there are new plays with roles for Asians, this should not deter Asians from working in the theater," Bandhu says. "There are Asians who are older, who are younger, who are fat, who are skinny, who are leading men, who are character actors. Yet we are all vying for the same role ? just because that role is written as an Asian role."
Adds actor Anitha Gandhi: "When contemporary plays are produced, we're not looked upon for roles of the girlfriend, best friend, mom or father. I feel the color angle really does us a disservice. There is this patting-the-back mentality among producers and casting persons who will say, 'There is a black actor in my production.' ... They don't look at us as being part of the fabric of the American story."
Chart: Roles Cast Nontraditionally, By Ethnicity
Again and again, speakers at the Fordham gathering agreed that part of the issue is "a crisis of imagination" ? and a fear among playwrights and directors that if too many people of color are cast in the same show, a production might be seen as somehow "conceptual."
"When money is on the line," says actor Peter Kim, "people tend to go with the safest choice. Usually that results in casting 'names' of some sort, whether it is a television, film or theater 'name.' Since there aren't many Asian-American 'names,' they aren't being considered for roles."
Moderator Hwang scored points with the crowd with one particularly timely analogy. Describing "the insidiousness and banality of the glass ceiling" for actors, he invoked the name of Jeremy Lin, the Chinese-American who overcame a lack of interest among basketball recruiters to become a breakout sensation as a guard for the New York Knicks.
"Institutions were making assumptions about Lin," Hwang says. "When you have a glass ceiling, it hurts not only the people being discriminated against. It hurts the institutions doing the discriminating."
'The Servant Of Many Masters'
Scoring lowest on the report's grade scale was Off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company, founded by writer David Mamet and actor William H. Macy in a Chelsea church more than a quarter-century ago. Its current chief, Neil Pepe, seems to echo Kim's analysis, at least indirectly.
"As artistic director of an ensemble-based theater, I find that I am the servant of many masters in programming and in staffing our seasons with artists," says Pepe, who couldn't attend the RepresentAsian roundtable. "The statistical results of the survey are a welcome reminder to us that there are many groups of artists in New York who are underrepresented on our stages."
Still, Pepe continued, "we are happy to report that 33 percent of the actors in our current season are non-white, and that none of our six productions had or will have an all-Caucasian cast. ... We certainly believe that racial and ethnic diversity among our artists only [adds] depth and complexity to the work."
Oskar Eustis, the famed artistic director of the Public Theater ? another institution once targeted publicly for hiring white actors to play Asian characters ? did attend the roundtable. He acknowledged the collective diagnosis as "both true and regrettable," and promised that an evening spent "with people who are thinking about this issue seriously, and who are impacted by this problem," would force him to "make it a higher priority. That is what pressure is supposed to do to institutions."
That might be of some comfort to actor Julienne Hanzelka Kim.
"Personally I'd rather be in an empty room, looking at a script and trying to figure out the psyche of a given character, than culling statistics on diversity and trying to get industry leaders to pay attention," she says. "But this is perhaps what we need to do in order to get into that rehearsal room much more often."
Randy Gener is a New York-based writer and editor, and the 2007-2008 winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for drama criticism.
A coalition of performers complains that except for a handful of shows, Asian-American actors have had dramatically more trouble landing parts than their white, black and Latino colleagues. At a roundtable Monday, they unveiled the statistics they say prove them right.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:269:"A coalition of performers complains that except for a handful of shows, Asian-American actors have had dramatically more trouble landing parts than their white, black and Latino colleagues. At a roundtable Monday, they unveiled the statistics they say prove them right.";s:12:"atom_content";s:558:"A coalition of performers complains that except for a handful of shows, Asian-American actors have had dramatically more trouble landing parts than their white, black and Latino colleagues. At a roundtable Monday, they unveiled the statistics they say prove them right.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1329334980;}i:12;a:26:{s:5:"title";s:51:"Colonial History, Through The Eyes Of The Colonized";s:11:"description";s:245:"Danai Gurira's play The Convert interrogates the experiences of the indigenous population in 1890s Rhodesia. Jeff Lunden talks with Gurira about her and her family's experiences in Zimbabwe, and the play's relation to the country today.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:01:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:102:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/10/146650163/colonial-history-through-the-eyes-of-the-colonized?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:102:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/10/146650163/colonial-history-through-the-eyes-of-the-colonized?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:49:{s:5:"title";s:51:"Colonial History, Through The Eyes Of The Colonized";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"146650163";s:6:"teaser";s:245:"Danai Gurira's play The Convert interrogates the experiences of the indigenous population in 1890s Rhodesia. 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Charles EricksonT. Carter EricksonT. Charles EricksonMatt Carr";s:14:"image_provider";s:60:"McCarter TheatreMcCarter TheatreMcCarter TheatreGetty Images";s:11:"relatedlink";s:27:" ";s:19:"relatedlink_caption";s:109:" 'Eclipsed' Brings Story Of Liberian Civil War To Stage 'The Visitor' Two Women, One Story 'In the Continuum'";s:16:"relatedlink_link";s:426:"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112636506http://api.npr.org/query?id=112636506&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89501748http://api.npr.org/query?id=89501748&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5202209http://api.npr.org/query?id=5202209&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:4:"text";s:9:" ";s:14:"text_paragraph";s:5087:"Actor and writer Danai Gurira sometimes refers to herself as a "Zimerican": She was born in Iowa, but spent most of her childhood in Harare, Zimbabwe ? where her new play, The Convert, is set."I grew up there from age 5 to 19," Gurira says. "I'm back there every year, but I feel like there are things that I had to dig out through this process of creating this play."Gurira says The Convert started out as a kind of melding of what she calls her "neo-colonial education" with colonial history ? George Bernard Shaw meeting her great-grandparents' generation."I was thinking one day, and I was like, I want to make a play that's sort of ... an adaptation of Pygmalion, about Zimbabwe, because I just feel like there are so many parallel themes," Gurira says. "That's really where it was born from, and then it just took its own route."In Pygmalion, Henry Higgins takes a poor flower girl named Eliza Doolittle and teaches her to speak the king's English. In The Convert, Jekesai, a young woman from the Shona people, runs away from an arranged marriage and is taken under the wing of a black Catholic missionary named Chilford.Gurira uses her own family history in the play ? her great-great aunt became a nun, fleeing a forced betrothal. Director Emily Mann says this was a common occurrence in Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was once called) in the late 19th century, when the play is set."There were many, many women who ran to the church ? some of them became nuns, some of them became teachers ? basically so that they could be free," Mann says. "Women were often fleeing being sold off ... or being given away, without their own permission, to be ... as in this play, the 10th wife of an old man."Jekesai ? or Ester, as she's christened by her protectors ? adapts quickly to her new situation."She's learned a whole new language," says Pascale Armand, who plays Jekesai. "She's learned about a whole new religion, which she has put complete and utter faith in ... [put] her life into this new way of thinking and new way of believing."Leading her in this transformation is Chilford, who has renounced his own family and traditions. While his deepest desire is to become a priest, few black Africans were ordained in those days.Gurira says that while Chilford is a decent and well-meaning man, "he's a casualty, one could say, of the issue of colonization, in the sense that he really drinks all the Kool-Aid ? like every last drop of it ? and really [embraces], hook, line and sinker, the idea that a Christian God is very intertwined with the white man."That gap between doctrine and reality, black and white, twists the characters like pretzels. For instance, Chilford reacts furiously when Ester corrects a white priest in church, but Armand says the village girl, who's encountering colonial prejudice for the first time, doesn't understand why she has to defer."I have no understanding of racism," says Armand, speaking for her character. "This is my first introduction to that term, to that ideology that I now have to deal with and be subservient to."While white characters are discussed onstage, The Convert is told entirely from the black viewpoint. In an early draft of the play, Gurira says, she attempted to write a scene with Chilford's white mentor."I actually tried, I tried, I tried to put him on the stage, and I was like, 'No! It's gonna be an absolute caricature, I'm not gonna be able!' And it didn't make sense. It just didn't make sense," Gurira says.As The Convert unfolds over three highly intense hours, tensions in the society erupt. In the second act, the audience learns that Chilford's mentor has been killed. Soon it becomes clear that, unlike Shaw's Pygmalion, this is a tragedy. Blood will be spilled, lives will be ruined."You begin to understand, from the colonized, what colonialism really is," says Emily Mann. "Because Danai's too smart to make it 'one person's right and one person's wrong,' or black and white in any way ? she's so interested in gray areas. She's so interested in how messy human beings really are."Even though The Convert is set in the late 19th century, Gurira thinks it has relevance to the problems of contemporary Zimbabwe."What dynamics of our traditions do we retain? And what are we retaining only because we got colonized?" Gurira asks. "There was this huge gap that happened, in terms of how we were taken over, and we were not able to evolve in our way, in our own time."Gurira says The Convert is the first in a series of plays she hopes to write about Zimbabwe. She wants to look at life during colonial times throughout the 20th century, and she's been interviewing people ? including her parents, who grew up during the 1950s ? whenever she returns home."It's kind of frightening to think of how much there is to write about," Gurira says. "It'll take my whole lifetime and probably a couple more to really get into all of these stories and all of the experiences of what is now Zimbabwe. It's such a fascinating navigation and fusion of cultures and experiences and voices." [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]";s:12:"textwithhtml";s:9:" ";s:22:"textwithhtml_paragraph";s:5440:"Actor and writer Danai Gurira sometimes refers to herself as a "Zimerican": She was born in Iowa, but spent most of her childhood in Harare, Zimbabwe ? where her new play, The Convert, is set."I grew up there from age 5 to 19," Gurira says. "I'm back there every year, but I feel like there are things that I had to dig out through this process of creating this play."Gurira says The Convert started out as a kind of melding of what she calls her "neo-colonial education" with colonial history ? George Bernard Shaw meeting her great-grandparents' generation."I was thinking one day, and I was like, I want to make a play that's sort of ... an adaptation of Pygmalion, about Zimbabwe, because I just feel like there are so many parallel themes," Gurira says. "That's really where it was born from, and then it just took its own route."In Pygmalion, Henry Higgins takes a poor flower girl named Eliza Doolittle and teaches her to speak the king's English. In The Convert, Jekesai, a young woman from the Shona people, runs away from an arranged marriage and is taken under the wing of a black Catholic missionary named Chilford.Gurira uses her own family history in the play ? her great-great aunt became a nun, fleeing a forced betrothal. Director Emily Mann says this was a common occurrence in Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was once called) in the late 19th century, when the play is set."There were many, many women who ran to the church ? some of them became nuns, some of them became teachers ? basically so that they could be free," Mann says. "Women were often fleeing being sold off ... or being given away, without their own permission, to be ... as in this play, the 10th wife of an old man."Jekesai ? or Ester, as she's christened by her protectors ? adapts quickly to her new situation."She's learned a whole new language," says Pascale Armand, who plays Jekesai. "She's learned about a whole new religion, which she has put complete and utter faith in ... [put] her life into this new way of thinking and new way of believing."Leading her in this transformation is Chilford, who has renounced his own family and traditions. While his deepest desire is to become a priest, few black Africans were ordained in those days.Gurira says that while Chilford is a decent and well-meaning man, "he's a casualty, one could say, of the issue of colonization, in the sense that he really drinks all the Kool-Aid ? like every last drop of it ? and really [embraces], hook, line and sinker, the idea that a Christian God is very intertwined with the white man."That gap between doctrine and reality, black and white, twists the characters like pretzels. For instance, Chilford reacts furiously when Ester corrects a white priest in church, but Armand says the village girl, who's encountering colonial prejudice for the first time, doesn't understand why she has to defer."I have no understanding of racism," says Armand, speaking for her character. "This is my first introduction to that term, to that ideology that I now have to deal with and be subservient to."While white characters are discussed onstage, The Convert is told entirely from the black viewpoint. In an early draft of the play, Gurira says, she attempted to write a scene with Chilford's white mentor."I actually tried, I tried, I tried to put him on the stage, and I was like, 'No! It's gonna be an absolute caricature, I'm not gonna be able!' And it didn't make sense. It just didn't make sense," Gurira says.As The Convert unfolds over three highly intense hours, tensions in the society erupt. In the second act, the audience learns that Chilford's mentor has been killed. Soon it becomes clear that, unlike Shaw's Pygmalion, this is a tragedy. Blood will be spilled, lives will be ruined."You begin to understand, from the colonized, what colonialism really is," says Emily Mann. "Because Danai's too smart to make it 'one person's right and one person's wrong,' or black and white in any way ? she's so interested in gray areas. She's so interested in how messy human beings really are."Even though The Convert is set in the late 19th century, Gurira thinks it has relevance to the problems of contemporary Zimbabwe."What dynamics of our traditions do we retain? And what are we retaining only because we got colonized?" Gurira asks. "There was this huge gap that happened, in terms of how we were taken over, and we were not able to evolve in our way, in our own time."Gurira says The Convert is the first in a series of plays she hopes to write about Zimbabwe. She wants to look at life during colonial times throughout the 20th century, and she's been interviewing people ? including her parents, who grew up during the 1950s ? whenever she returns home."It's kind of frightening to think of how much there is to write about," Gurira says. "It'll take my whole lifetime and probably a couple more to really get into all of these stories and all of the experiences of what is now Zimbabwe. It's such a fascinating navigation and fusion of cultures and experiences and voices."9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
Pascale Armand plays Jekesai, later christened as Ester, who's taken in by a black Catholic missionary when she flees an arranged marriage in 1890s Rhodesia.
Actor and writer Danai Gurira sometimes refers to herself as a "Zimerican": She was born in Iowa, but spent most of her childhood in Harare, Zimbabwe ? where her new play, The Convert, is set.
"I grew up there from age 5 to 19," Gurira says. "I'm back there every year, but I feel like there are things that I had to dig out through this process of creating this play."
Gurira says The Convert started out as a kind of melding of what she calls her "neo-colonial education" with colonial history ? George Bernard Shaw meeting her great-grandparents' generation.
"I was thinking one day, and I was like, I want to make a play that's sort of ... an adaptation of Pygmalion, about Zimbabwe, because I just feel like there are so many parallel themes," Gurira says. "That's really where it was born from, and then it just took its own route."
In Pygmalion, Henry Higgins takes a poor flower girl named Eliza Doolittle and teaches her to speak the king's English. In The Convert, Jekesai, a young woman from the Shona people, runs away from an arranged marriage and is taken under the wing of a black Catholic missionary named Chilford.
Playwright and actress Danai Gurira has won several awards for her plays Eclipsed and In the Continuum, and has appeared in several stage and film productions, including 2007's The Visitor.
Gurira uses her own family history in the play ? her great-great aunt became a nun, fleeing a forced betrothal. Director Emily Mann says this was a common occurrence in Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was once called) in the late 19th century, when the play is set.
"There were many, many women who ran to the church ? some of them became nuns, some of them became teachers ? basically so that they could be free," Mann says. "Women were often fleeing being sold off ... or being given away, without their own permission, to be ... as in this play, the 10th wife of an old man."
Jekesai ? or Ester, as she's christened by her protectors ? adapts quickly to her new situation.
"She's learned a whole new language," says Pascale Armand, who plays Jekesai. "She's learned about a whole new religion, which she has put complete and utter faith in ... [put] her life into this new way of thinking and new way of believing."
Leading her in this transformation is Chilford, who has renounced his own family and traditions. While his deepest desire is to become a priest, few black Africans were ordained in those days.
Gurira says that while Chilford is a decent and well-meaning man, "he's a casualty, one could say, of the issue of colonization, in the sense that he really drinks all the Kool-Aid ? like every last drop of it ? and really [embraces], hook, line and sinker, the idea that a Christian God is very intertwined with the white man."
That gap between doctrine and reality, black and white, twists the characters like pretzels. For instance, Chilford reacts furiously when Ester corrects a white priest in church, but Armand says the village girl, who's encountering colonial prejudice for the first time, doesn't understand why she has to defer.
"I have no understanding of racism," says Armand, speaking for her character. "This is my first introduction to that term, to that ideology that I now have to deal with and be subservient to."
While white characters are discussed onstage, The Convert is told entirely from the black viewpoint. In an early draft of the play, Gurira says, she attempted to write a scene with Chilford's white mentor.
"I actually tried, I tried, I tried to put him on the stage, and I was like, 'No! It's gonna be an absolute caricature, I'm not gonna be able!' And it didn't make sense. It just didn't make sense," Gurira says.
As The Convert unfolds over three highly intense hours, tensions in the society erupt. In the second act, the audience learns that Chilford's mentor has been killed. Soon it becomes clear that, unlike Shaw's Pygmalion, this is a tragedy. Blood will be spilled, lives will be ruined.
Director Emily Mann says Gurira's three-dimensional characters illustrate the tension for those caught between Western civilization and traditional African culture.
"You begin to understand, from the colonized, what colonialism really is," says Emily Mann. "Because Danai's too smart to make it 'one person's right and one person's wrong,' or black and white in any way ? she's so interested in gray areas. She's so interested in how messy human beings really are."
Even though The Convert is set in the late 19th century, Gurira thinks it has relevance to the problems of contemporary Zimbabwe.
"What dynamics of our traditions do we retain? And what are we retaining only because we got colonized?" Gurira asks. "There was this huge gap that happened, in terms of how we were taken over, and we were not able to evolve in our way, in our own time."
Gurira says The Convert is the first in a series of plays she hopes to write about Zimbabwe. She wants to look at life during colonial times throughout the 20th century, and she's been interviewing people ? including her parents, who grew up during the 1950s ? whenever she returns home.
"It's kind of frightening to think of how much there is to write about," Gurira says. "It'll take my whole lifetime and probably a couple more to really get into all of these stories and all of the experiences of what is now Zimbabwe. It's such a fascinating navigation and fusion of cultures and experiences and voices."
Danai Gurira's play The Convert interrogates the experiences of the indigenous population in 1890s Rhodesia. Jeff Lunden talks with Gurira about her and her family's experiences in Zimbabwe, and the play's relation to the country today.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:245:"Danai Gurira's play The Convert interrogates the experiences of the indigenous population in 1890s Rhodesia. Jeff Lunden talks with Gurira about her and her family's experiences in Zimbabwe, and the play's relation to the country today.";s:12:"atom_content";s:534:"Danai Gurira's play The Convert interrogates the experiences of the indigenous population in 1890s Rhodesia. Jeff Lunden talks with Gurira about her and her family's experiences in Zimbabwe, and the play's relation to the country today.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1328850060;}i:13;a:27:{s:5:"title";s:48:"New Staging Of 'Yentl' Tells A Transgender Story";s:11:"description";s:264:"Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule is best known for her hit single "I Kissed a Girl." But today she's taking on a new kind of project: writing original music for a new staging of the play Yentl. Her version shares little with Barbra Streisand's movie musical.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:00:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:104:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/05/146431727/new-staging-of-yentl-tells-a-transgender-girls-story?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:104:"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/05/146431727/new-staging-of-yentl-tells-a-transgender-girls-story?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:49:{s:5:"title";s:48:"New Staging Of 'Yentl' Tells A Transgender Story";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"146431727";s:6:"teaser";s:264:"Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule is best known for her hit single "I Kissed a Girl." But today she's taking on a new kind of project: writing original music for a new staging of the play Yentl. 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These days, she's taking on a new musical project: the gender-bending play by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yentl.Barbra Streisand turned Singer's play into her 1984 hit movie musical of the same name. Although Sobule's version features music, it's a little more Singer and a little less Streisand."She changed the ending and made it kind of Funny Girl coming to America. ... We keep to the word," Sobule tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.Sobule composed original songs for the new staging of the play, which is running through April 26 at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Fla. Unlike Streisand's version, which could be seen as a feminist film, this new version of Yentl is more about a transgender person's coming-of-age."If you read the book, and there was no word for it back then, but I think Yentl was transgender," Sobule says. "I mean, it's several times in the book where the father says to her, 'You have the soul of a man and the body of a woman.' "Singer was critical of the singing in Streisand's 1984 film when it was released. In this staging, none of the characters sings onstage. Sobule's songs are heard through a kind of Greek chorus that offer a commentary to the play and the characters' feelings.Sobule says she thinks Singer would like the music in Yentl this time around."I think he would approve of my music, I really do, because it keeps the spirit of the play and it has a sense of humor," she says. "I think he would really like it because it doesn't feel intrusive."As for Streisand: "You know, I don't know. ... I would love to know what she would think, I'm not sure she'd like it. I'd hope she would," Sobule says. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]";s:12:"textwithhtml";s:9:" ";s:22:"textwithhtml_paragraph";s:2110:"Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule is probably best known for her 1995 hit single, "I Kissed a Girl." These days, she's taking on a new musical project: the gender-bending play by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yentl.Barbra Streisand turned Singer's play into her 1984 hit movie musical of the same name. Although Sobule's version features music, it's a little more Singer and a little less Streisand."She changed the ending and made it kind of Funny Girl coming to America. ... We keep to the word," Sobule tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.Sobule composed original songs for the new staging of the play, which is running through April 26 at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Fla. Unlike Streisand's version, which could be seen as a feminist film, this new version of Yentl is more about a transgender person's coming-of-age."If you read the book, and there was no word for it back then, but I think Yentl was transgender," Sobule says. "I mean, it's several times in the book where the father says to her, 'You have the soul of a man and the body of a woman.' "Singer was critical of the singing in Streisand's 1984 film when it was released. In this staging, none of the characters sings onstage. Sobule's songs are heard through a kind of Greek chorus that offer a commentary to the play and the characters' feelings.Sobule says she thinks Singer would like the music in Yentl this time around."I think he would approve of my music, I really do, because it keeps the spirit of the play and it has a sense of humor," she says. "I think he would really like it because it doesn't feel intrusive."As for Streisand: "You know, I don't know. ... I would love to know what she would think, I'm not sure she'd like it. I'd hope she would," Sobule says.9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
The audio version of this interview, as did an earlier Web version, lists Isaac Bashevis Singer as the author of the original theatrical version of Yentl. Actually, Singer wrote the short story the play was based on. Playwright Leah Napolin co-wrote the play with Singer.
Actress Hillary Clemens portrays Yentl/Anshel in the new staging of Isaac Bashevis Singer's play at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Fla.
Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule is probably best known for her 1995 hit single, "I Kissed a Girl." These days, she's taking on a new musical project: the gender-bending play by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yentl.
Barbra Streisand turned Singer's play into her 1984 hit movie musical of the same name. Although Sobule's version features music, it's a little more Singer and a little less Streisand.
"She changed the ending and made it kind of Funny Girl coming to America. ... We keep to the word," Sobule tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.
Sobule composed original songs for the new staging of the play, which is running through April 26 at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Fla. Unlike Streisand's version, which could be seen as a feminist film, this new version of Yentl is more about a transgender person's coming-of-age.
"If you read the book, and there was no word for it back then, but I think Yentl was transgender," Sobule says. "I mean, it's several times in the book where the father says to her, 'You have the soul of a man and the body of a woman.' "
Singer was critical of the singing in Streisand's 1984 film when it was released. In this staging, none of the characters sings onstage. Sobule's songs are heard through a kind of Greek chorus that offer a commentary to the play and the characters' feelings.
Sobule says she thinks Singer would like the music in Yentl this time around.
"I think he would approve of my music, I really do, because it keeps the spirit of the play and it has a sense of humor," she says. "I think he would really like it because it doesn't feel intrusive."
As for Streisand: "You know, I don't know. ... I would love to know what she would think, I'm not sure she'd like it. I'd hope she would," Sobule says.
Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule is best known for her hit single "I Kissed a Girl." But today she's taking on a new kind of project: writing original music for a new staging of the play Yentl. Her version shares little with Barbra Streisand's movie musical.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:264:"Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule is best known for her hit single "I Kissed a Girl." But today she's taking on a new kind of project: writing original music for a new staging of the play Yentl. Her version shares little with Barbra Streisand's movie musical.";s:12:"atom_content";s:553:"Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule is best known for her hit single "I Kissed a Girl." But today she's taking on a new kind of project: writing original music for a new staging of the play Yentl. Her version shares little with Barbra Streisand's movie musical.
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";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1328479200;}i:14;a:17:{s:5:"title";s:45:"'Backstage With' Fred Willard And Martin Mull";s:11:"description";s:359:"Martin Mull and Fred Willard are comic partners in many minds. They helped create Fernwood Tonight in the late 1970s, and while they went on to solo careers in films and stage, they were reunited to play one of TV's first gay couples on Roseanne. Host Scott Simon sat down with the duo for the public television show Backstage With.";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 28 Jan 2012 08:00:00 -0500";s:4:"link";s:95:"http://www.npr.org/2012/01/28/146024077/backstage-with-fred-willard-and-martin-mull?ft=1&f=1046";s:4:"guid";s:95:"http://www.npr.org/2012/01/28/146024077/backstage-with-fred-willard-and-martin-mull?ft=1&f=1046";s:5:"nprml";a:28:{s:5:"title";s:45:"'Backstage With' Fred Willard And Martin Mull";s:9:"partnerid";s:9:"146024077";s:6:"teaser";s:359:"Martin Mull and Fred Willard are comic partners in many minds. They helped create Fernwood Tonight in the late 1970s, and while they went on to solo careers in films and stage, they were reunited to play one of TV's first gay couples on Roseanne. Host Scott Simon sat down with the duo for the public television show Backstage With.";s:10:"miniteaser";s:69:"Host Scott Simon sat down with the duo, comic partners in many minds.";s:4:"slug";s:15:"Performing Arts";s:9:"storydate";s:31:"Sat, 28 Jan 2012 08:00:00 -0500";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 28 Jan 2012 08:00:00 -0500";s:16:"lastmodifieddate";s:31:"Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:52:30 -0500";s:4:"show";s:9:" ";s:12:"show_program";s:24:"Weekend Edition Saturday";s:13:"show_showdate";s:31:"Sat, 28 Jan 2012 08:00:00 -0500";s:11:"show_segnum";s:1:"8";s:12:"organization";s:9:" ";s:17:"organization_name";s:21:"National Public Radio";s:20:"organization_website";s:19:"http://www.npr.org/";s:10:"transcript";s:9:" ";s:15:"transcript_link";s:87:"http://api.npr.org/transcript?id=146024077&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:6:"parent";s:36:" ";s:12:"parent_title";s:48:"TheaterPerforming ArtsPerforming ArtsArts & Life";s:11:"parent_link";s:465:"http://www.npr.org/sections/theater/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1144&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/performing-arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1046&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/performing-arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1046&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001http://www.npr.org/sections/arts/http://api.npr.org/query?id=1008&apiKey=MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001";s:5:"audio";s:9:" ";s:14:"audio_duration";s:3:"555";s:12:"audio_format";s:11:" ";s:16:"audio_format_mp3";s:156:"http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/wesat/2012/01/20120128_wesat_08.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1046http://api.npr.org/m3u/1146024058-a7f915.m3u?orgId=1&topicId=1046";s:15:"audio_format_wm";s:99:"http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg_wmref_em.php?id=146024058&type=1&mtype=WM&orgId=1&topicId=1046";s:24:"audio_format_mediastream";s:86:"rtmp://flash.npr.org/ondemand/mp3:anon.npr-mp3/npr/wesat/2012/01/20120128_wesat_08.mp3";s:17:"audio_permissions";s:11:" ";s:8:"fulltext";s:3123:"Martin Mull and Fred Willard are comic partners in many minds. They helped create Fernwood Tonight in the late 1970s, and while they went on to solo careers in films and stage, they were reunited to play one of TV's first gay couples on Roseanne. Host Scott Simon sat down with the duo for the public television show Backstage With.
9(MDAyMTgwNzc5MDEyMjQ4ODE4MjMyYTExMA001))
Martin Mull and Fred Willard are comic partners in many minds. They helped create Fernwood Tonight in the late 1970s, and while they went on to solo careers in films and stage, they were reunited to play one of TV's first gay couples on Roseanne. Host Scott Simon sat down with the duo for the public television show Backstage With.
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Martin Mull and Fred Willard are comic partners in many minds. They helped create Fernwood Tonight in the late 1970s, and while they went on to solo careers in films and stage, they were reunited to play one of TV's first gay couples on Roseanne. Host Scott Simon sat down with the duo for the public television show Backstage With.
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