724 stories from PBS
"I'm fifteen! I never did this before! I'm not an actor!" That's a Mel Brooks ad-lib from his first stage appearance. The crowd loved it. The director did not.
Mel Brooks remembers growing up poor and exotic fruit cocktails.
Not everybody gets Mel Brooks. Don't worry though, he'll take it personally. Susan Stroman, director for the Broadway run of Brooks' The Producers, remembers a WWII vet who walked out on the…
The literal buttons on Carl Reiner's jacket.
Writer, director, producer and editor Robert Trachtenberg talks Mel Brooks: Make A Noise with AMERICAN MASTERS.
The 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced Monday at a ceremony at Columbia University.
Winning in the letters, drama and music categories were...
Poetry: "Stag's Leap" by Sharon Olds,…
With the government sequestration now a fact of life, we've been looking on the program at how cuts are affecting or might affect various sectors. Today, we look at the arts and arts organiz…
In the theater industry, there are already a sizable number of videos tagged with #broadway and #musical on Vine, including ones from popular shows such as "Wicked," "The Book of Mormon," "S…
Mel Brooks is one of those rags to riches, only in America stories. But, it's not like Brooks hit the lottery. He worked hard for what he made of himself. Here, Brooks remembers his mother -…
In 1963, Mel Brooks and director/animator Ernest Pintoff came up with the animated short film The Critic, a satire of arty, esoteric cinema. Brooks supplied running commentary as the baffled…
Starting in 1960, Carl Reiner teamed with Mel Brooks as a comedy duo on The Steve Allen Show. Their performances on stage and television included Reiner playing the straight man to Brooks' 2…
Watch Video | Listen to the AudioGWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, to the latest in our series on high school dropouts, this time through the words of the bard, William Shakespeare.
Nearly half …
British composer Thomas Adès conducts the Met premiere of his contemporary masterpieceThe Tempest, an English-language opera based on Shakespeare's final play. The Met's fantastical new pro…
Mary Zimmerman, a member of Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre Company and a professor at Northwestern University, started working on her adaptation of "Metamorphoses" back in 1996. Based on the…
After 60 years in show business, Mel Brooks has earned more major awards than any other living entertainer; he is one of 14 EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) winners. Yet, the comedy giant…
Verdi's Shakespearean tragedy Otello starring Johan Botha in the title role and Renée Fleming as Otello's innocent wife, Desdemona, airs on Great Performances at the Met Sunday, February 24…
Writing a book is "a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness," George Orwell once said. The literary giant behind "1984" and "Animal Farm" was comparing his l…
Information on Great Performances and Great Performances at the Met's upcoming 2012-2013 Season.
Find out why the Broadway musical has proven to be such fertile territory for Jewish artists of all kinds.
The surprising universality of the 1964 Jerry Boch and Sheldon Harnick musical Fiddler on the Roof.
Watch the full documentary about the controversial and surreal Beatles film.
From Irving Berlin to Stephen Sondheim, and from Fanny Brice to Barbra Streisand, the film explores the phenomenon of how Jewish-American songwriters created a uniquely American art form
Video shot and edited by John Dargan.
Social worker-turned-playwright Cheryl L. West spent more than two decades studying people. "As a writer, your charge is to create a story that tells a…
With its elements of music, singing, theater, dance and video, "Elsewhere" is described by its creator, cellist extraordinaire Maya Beiser, as a "CelloOpera." It's a collaboration of Beiser …
Have you ever wanted to be on Broadway? Well, thousands of young people from around the country do, and a new three-part PBS series is documenting their struggle to get there. It's called "B…
