SUMMARY: Broadway director and producer Harold Prince died Wednesday at age 91. Prince won an astonishing, record-breaking 21 Tony Awards with shows that became household names -- and whose popularity still endures decades later. Judy Woodruff reports on a theater legend who wasn’t satisfied with merely entertaining his audiences but aspired to “provoke conversation” even after the curtain fell.
SUMMARY: The hit Broadway play “Choir Boy” chronicles an African-American prep school and its star pupil, the choir boy, who happens to be gay. Written by Tarell McCraney, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient, the play explores themes not often addressed publicly within the black community or outside it. Jeffrey Brown sits down with McCraney to discuss what it means to bring important voices to the stage.
SUMMARY: Glenda Jackson is back on Broadway for the first time since 1988, starring in Edward Albee's "Three Tall Women." Jackson, 82, sits down with Jeffrey Brown to discuss the challenge of finding interesting female roles and why she spent 23 years away from acting as a Labor Party member of the British Parliament championing women's rights.
SUMMARY: When John Lithgow was a child, his father would act out his bedtime stories, a tradition he carried on when his father grew ill later in life. Now Lithgow brings his own tradition of storytelling to a one-man show on Broadway, called “Stories by Heart.” Jeffrey Brown talks to the actor about our human need to tell tales, and his career in theater and film.
SUMMARY: When the members of an Egyptian band arrive in an Israeli city for a performance, it's clear something is wrong -- they've gotten the name wrong and ended up in a sleepy desert town. That's the premise of a new musical, "The Band's Visit," that's connecting with audiences and critics alike. Jeffrey Brown reports.
SUMMARY: “Dear Evan Hansen,” a surprise hit musical, is the story of an ordinary teen who all his life has felt invisible. But when a classmate commits suicide, Hansen is mistakenly seen as his one friend and becomes the center of attention. The Tony-nominated show draws awareness to the loneliness and pain of teen life and how isolation can be intensified in today's social media world. Jeffrey Brown reports.
SUMMARY: On this day nearly six decades ago, “West Side Story” premiered on Broadway. And the music of the Sharks and the Jets, and star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria is as vibrant as it was in 1957. Jeffrey Brown sits down with composer and musician Rob Kapilow to discuss what it is about Leonard Bernstein's hit musical style that has allowed the love story to live on for decades.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Finally tonight, on a light note: On this day in 1957, “West Side Story” debuted on Broadway.
Composer and musician Rob Kapilow is back to tell us why the music has withstood the test of time.
Jeffrey Brown sat down with Kapilow recently.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): Ron Kapilow, welcome back.
ROB KAPILOW, Composer: It's great to be here.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, “West Side Story,” one of the most famous musicals in history, but not quite what it was intended to be, I guess.
ROB KAPILOW: I think that's true.
You know, Leonard Bernstein had already written two his musicals, “On the Town” and “Wonderful Town,” and those shows are filled with Bernstein's love, facility, and affection for the popular music of the day. But they're lighthearted musicals, fundamentally.
And now he wanted to do something serious, and he got together an incredibly serious crew of guys. I mean, we had Jerome Robbins, who did serious ballets. We had Arthur Laurents, who wrote serious plays. We had Leonard Bernstein, and they wanted to do something serious.
That was the amazing thing about Bernstein. He could actually do both, and he crossed over. And this whole piece is really about, in a way, the conflict between those two worlds, between the serious world.
This is going to be, he called a tragic musical comedy, if that's not an oxymoron.
JEFFREY BROWN: Tragedies get turned into operas all the time.
ROB KAPILOW: All the time.
In fact, tragedy is the lifeblood of opera. It's not really an opera unless somebody dies at the end. But people don't usually die at the end in a Broadway musical.
And this one had a body count of three, with two of them dead at the first act curtain. I mean, that is not the stuff of a Broadway musical, not to mention a classic Shakespeare play, “Romeo and Juliet,” as the background.
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 "Broadway or Bust," and it's produced by WGBH in Boston. The first episode aired last week, and the second is this Sunday.
You can watch the full first episode and learn more about the series and watch web extras at the "Broadway or Bust" website.
