Theater

Magnuson starred in the movies, "Making Mister Right," and "A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon," and on the TV series, "Anything But Love." She's had numerous one woman monologue shows in Manhattan. She joins Fresh Air for an interview, and shares an excerpt of one of her life performances, about groupies following Doors' frontman Jim Morrison.

Luft is featured on the new complete recordings of the 1930 musical Girl Crazy -- she sings the part that gave Ethel Merman her start on Broadway. Luft's mother was Judy Garland, and her sister is Liza Minnelli.

Writer Wendy Smith is author of Real Life Drama, about the Group Theater, which was founded in the early thirties to bring social realism to the Broadway stage. The ensemble of actors and directors stayed together for ten years and had a lasting effect on American theater.

Classical Music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews new CD reissues of original cast recordings of classic Broadway musicals, including Oklahoma, Carousel, and Annie Get Your Gun.

Whitelaw is well-known in Britain, but she's little-recognized in America. She can be seen in the new gangster movie, The Krays. Whitelaw also worked with playwright Samuel Beckett.

Lane wrote the scores for several Broadway shows, including Finian's Rainbow and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. He accompanies Michael Feinstein on piano on the new album, Michael Feinstein Sings the Burton Lane Songbook.

O'Keefe, who wrote the performance piece Shimmer, returns to read excerpts from his newest work, VID.

Gray has a new piece called Monster in a Box, about the wending process of writing an as-yet unpublished, 1600 page novel, titled Impossible Vacations. He says that his autobiographical writing distances him from his real life, including his experience of pleasure.

Coyote was a member of the Digger, a San Francisco-based guerrilla theater collective. After a brief stint as a stockbroker, he's now a movie actor, appearing in Jagged Edge, E.T., and Outrageous Fortune. He wrote the introduction to a new edition of Emmett Grogan's autobiography, Ringolevio, about the 1960s counterculture.

Adler has a new memoir about his career in musical theater. He wrote songs with Jerry Ross for The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees. Ross died early in their partnership in 1955.