90 stories from Studio 360
Tony Kushner may be the most ambitious playwright of our age. His Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America grappled with being gay, American politics, and the AIDS crisis. And h…
No stranger to controversy " the cliché fits Tony Kushner, whose groundbreaking play cycle Angels in America (subtitle A Gay Fantasia on National Themes) was one of the major flashpoints in…
The Siege at Bridgeport, a strategic site in Alabama, took place in 1862 " and again this year. Civil War re-enactors spend time and money reliving battles that were decided 150 years ago…
Given that going to a Broadway musical is easily the most expensive form of entertainment " a ticket to Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark costs as much as a dozen movie tickets or a year's sub…
The troubled Broadway production of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark got even more troubled this week with an actress suffering serious injuries. We asked for your suggestions to save the vexed…
Are there too many little theater companies in America? Last month, that question was the shot heard round the theater world from National Endowment for the Arts Chair Rocco Landesman, a for…
The new Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark finally opened this week ... or actually, not. The producers just fired director Julie Taymor, and previews may be closed for an overha…
Always wanted to see a magician eat a light bulb, then disembowel an audience member? It happens every night at Play Dead " a ghoulish haunted house of a magic show Off Broadway. It's the cr…
As Congress holds hearings this week on the radicalization of American Muslims, a Pakistani-American playwright is trying to flip the script. Wajahat Ali, who earned raves for his post-9/11 …
Government budgets are slashing arts funding across the country so we asked our listeners to tell us about the cuts their communities face. Is "taxation equal to theft," as one listener wrot…
In the off-Broadway spook show Play Dead, master magician Todd Robbins delights in pointing out that illusions are merely that. Mind-reading: fake. Speaking to the dead: fake. …
In Washington State, on the western edge of the Rocky Mountains, John Steinbeck met a young man passionate about theater and hairdressing " and the kid's furious father. Steinbeck wrote abou…
In Good People, a new play on Broadway, a charming but manipulative woman falls on hard times, and turns to a successful old friend for help. David Lindsay-Abaire tells Kurt Andersen how he …
We're celebrating 10 years on the air by looking back at some of our favorite interviews about creative inspiration. Sculptor Richard Serra talks about falling in love with steel; choreograp…
The comedian Patton Oswalt reads the title essay from his new memoir: Zombie, Spaceship, Wasteland. As Oswalt sees it, we all fall into one of these three science fiction fantasy archetypes.…
Craving a KitchenAid; answering to "ma'am;" getting turned down for space camp " Martha Plimpton reads epiphanies on growing up from members of our live audience.
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Kurt Andersen talks about seeing the premiere of Tom Stoppard's play "The Real Thing" as a young man in his twenties, and seeing it again two decades later. Had the play changed, or was it K…
Martha Plimpton may be the hardest working woman in show business. In the last year she's had recurring roles in television series, had a run on Broadway, and sold out a cabaret show at Linc…
This month we're celebrating 360's first decade on the air with the publication of the book Spark: How Creativity Works, by long-time Studio 360 executive producer Julie Burstein. In the boo…
Listen to full interviews with Isabel Allende, Chuck Close, and Tony Kushner. Think you could make a masterpiece if you could just force yourself to get to work? You're probably righ…
Last week, in honor of the publication of Studio 360's book Spark: How Creativity Works, we asked listeners to show us how they made something creative from an unexpected combination of mate…
This month we're celebrating 360's first decade on the air with the publication of the book Spark: How Creativity Works, by long-time Studio 360 executive producer Julie Burstein. In the boo…
Listen to full interviews with Donald Hall, Joel Meyerowitz, and Lynn Nottage. Sometimes great art comes out of great struggle. This week, Kurt talks with Julie Burstein about artists w…
This month we're celebrating 360's first decade on the air with the publication of the book Spark: How Creativity Works, by long-time Studio 360 executive producer Julie Burstein. In the bo…
Listen to full interviews with Ben Burtt, Stanley Kunitz, and Elizabeth Streb. This week, Kurt talks with Julie Burstein about the bricks and mortar of creativity. We hear from artists…
