Theater

Athol Fugard is a white South African playwright, director, and actor. His work as a playwright is acclaimed for exploring the social and psychological consequences of apartheid. Fugard formed an integrated theater company in the 1960s in defiance of South African norms. Many of his plays have been produced in the United States.

Michael Bennett won a Pulitzer Prize for the musical "A Chorus Line," which he conceived, choreographed, and directed. He, himself, began his career as a Broadway dancer before choreographing musicals such as "Promises, Promises," "Company," and "Follies." Bennett's latest show is "Dreamgirls."

Playwright, actor, and screenwriter Wallace Shawn wants his theater work to be shocking and confrontational, but he is best known for the 1981 film he wrote, "My Dinner with Andre." Shawn's latest play is "Aunt Dan and Lemon."

The playwright's works include "The Zoo Story," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," and the Pulitzer Prize winning "Delicate Balance" and "Seascape."

John O'Neal cofounded the Free Southern Theater, a company closely aligned with the black civil rights movement. Louise Anderson is a prominent African American storyteller. They are both featured in the National Festival of Black Storytellers at Philadelphia's Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum.

Marchand talks about the differences between acting onstage and in television, the challenges of raising children while working, and the intersection of her celebrity and personal life.

Dean of the Yale School of Drama theater director Lloyd Richards helms the production of August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. He believes great plays are rare, and that the effort to discover them is worth the effort.

Wilson's latest work, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, is now in production at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. He discusses how writing dialog-heavy short fiction led him to playwriting.

Little tells Fresh Air about his experiences as an African American actor on- and off-Broadway. He considers how black actors have risen to greater prominence on stage and screen.

Jack Eric Williams played one of the villains in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, and found success during a run of Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. He has written a musical of his own called Mrs. Farmer's Daughter, about the life of actress Frances Farmer, which is now in production in Philadelphia.