41 stories by "Bob Mondello"
The playwright Tom Stoppard, who penned shows including Arcadia and Travesties and the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love, died last week.
The Library of Congress' new collection includes more than 5,000 items from the Broadway legend, including ideas for Sweeney Todd lyrics and notes for Glynis Johns as she sang "Send in the C…
Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower envisioned the Kennedy Center as an "artistic mecca." President Trump recently told reporters he'd never seen a show there.
Proposed in 1955 by President Dwight Eisenhower and championed by the arts enthusiast whose name it would ultimately bear, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has a storied hi…
President Trump plans to fire several Board Members at Washington D.C.'s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and indicated that he's naming himself chairman. Here's why i…
Plowright brought stage and screen characters to vibrant life for more than six decades in such works as A Taste of Honey, Tea with Mussolini and Enchanted April.
Broadway theaters will dim their marquee lights on Nov. 7 in honor of Dame Maggie Smith, who died in September. Smith began her acting career on stage and took theater roles well into her 80…
With three shows running currently in NY and two more on tour, the late composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim is as present in contemporary theater as he was when he was alive.
The late composer/lyricist was once considered an acquired taste " but with three shows running in New York and another on tour, he's a hit.
Ginger Rogers would have turned 112 this week. We remember her and her collaboration with her most famous partner, Fred Astaire.
Marcel Marceau, who spent more than half the 20th century re-popularizing the ancient art of pantomime for a modern age, was born 100 years ago this month.
With four nominations, more Asian performers were recognized by the Academy in 2023 than in any single year in its history. In other respects, this year was a step back from diversity at the…
You're at the theater, the last scene ends, and the cast comes out for applause. It's pretty standard today. But curtain calls once were eccentric, revealing, funny and just plain effective.
At this time of year, people travel to be with their families. And Broadway and Hollywood have been giving them something to sing about: Traveling-song show tunes.
Broadway-legend-in-training Stephen Sondheim was a college sophomore in 1948 when his musical Phinney's Rainbow was produced " and recorded " at Williams College in Massachusetts.
In the first of our six-part series, NPR's Bob Mondello explains how the theater that most Americans see is being transformed.
On the eve of the 2022 election, Arena Stage presents monologues on the theme of choice by eight female playwrights. The show runs for 18 performances and tickets are $18, a nod to the US vo…
Brook's work ranged from classical star-studded productions to radical experiments in theater. He reinvented King Lear and explored the fragility of civilization in the film Lord of the Flie…
A thousand pages of correspondence by Oscar Hammerstein II, the lyricist for such musicals as Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel and The Sound of Music are available to a wide public for the fir…
NPR's Bob Mondello looks at a show-stopping theatrical phenomenon that's fallen out of fashion " the encore.
Why should Americans care about Ukraine? An answer from 1960s Broadway.
Two new books about a legendary silent film comic " Dana Stevens' Camera Man and James Curtis' Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life " give fans new reason to revisit Keaton's work.
Tony and Maria, Sharks and Jets " Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner take a fresh look at the musical theater classic West Side Story.
Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, one of the most influential figures in the American musical theater, has died. He was 91.
Dev Patel as a knight of the Round Table, Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne Boleyn, the mostly nonwhite casts of Bridgerton and Hamilton " all belong to a tradition that has its roots in live theat…
