Theater

National Endowment for the Arts spokesperson Jill Collins.

Jon Robin Baitz is a playwright who was awarded a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). While he has accepted the money, he has turned around and donated the exact amount to the two institutions that were recently turned down by the NEA's acting Chairwoman, Anne-Imelda Radice.

Actress Amy Madigan. She's now playing on Broadway as Stella in "A Streetcar Named Desire" opposite Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin. You may remember her as Kevin Costner's wife in the film "Field of Dreams." She's also played in the films "Uncle Buck" and "Roe V. Wade," among others.

Singer Angelina Réaux. She's gained international recognition for her interpretation of Kurt Weill music. She performed in a one-woman show, "Stranger Here Myself," a collection of Weill music, dramatically linked. (A recording of the show is on the Koch Classics International label). Réaux also performs in Opera and Concert engagements and collaborated with Leonard Bernstein in a some of his final projects: recordings of "West Side Story" and "A Quiet Place." She began her career in Broadway musicals.

Performance artist Rhodessa Jones. She wrote and performs "Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women," a theatre piece that grew out of her work as an aerobic instructor in the San Francisco City Jail. Her work has been seen in international festivals in Amsterdam, Munich, and Boston. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Actor John Cullum. He plays Holling Vincoeur on the TV show "Northern Exposure." Holling is a 63-year-old bartender in a relationship with an 18-year-old beauty queen. Cullum is best known for his broadway roles in "Camelot," "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever," and others. Cullum talked with Terry before a live audience in Seattle.

Monologuist, actor and writer Spalding Gray. His latest monologue "Monster in a Box" is about all the distractions that prevented him from completing his novel, "Impossible Vacation." Now the monologue has been made into a film of the same name. It's also out in book form, and on top of that, "Impossible Vacation" has just been published. (The book "Monster in a Box" is published by Vintage Press, the book "Impossible Vacation" is published by Knopf, and the film "Monster in a Box" is distributed by Fine Line Features.)

B.D. Wong won a Tony award for his performance in the title role of "M. Butterfly." He played a man posing as a woman. Now, he's taking on another challenge: in the new one-man musical "Herringbone," which opened last week at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia, he plays eleven characters, including a eight-year-old boy, his parents, his grandmother, his dance teacher, and a tap-dancing midget nicknamed Lou the Frog. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Conductor and arranger John McGlinn. He re-orchestrated the Irving Berlin musical "Annie Get Your Gun" according to the original 1946 performance. In preparing the remake, McGlinn discovered that the 1966 revival of the show left out several musical numbers, which he incorporated into the current performance. McGlinn also included a song that had been written for the 1946 version, but never before recorded.

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews the restored score of Voltaire's "Candide," conducted by Leonard Bernstein a year before his death.

British actress Juliet Stevenson of the Royal Shakespeare Company. She's probably best known for her role in "Truly, Madly, Deeply," a role that was written for her. She create the role of Madame de Tourvel in the original British production of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." And she's playing the role of Nora in Ibsen's "A Doll's House," which airs on PBS'S Masterpiece Theatre this Sunday (March 29).

Playwright Lanford Wilson. Wilson won the Pulitzer Prize for his play, "Talley's Folly." His new play is "Redwood Curtain," the story of a Amerasian girl in the Pacific Northwest, looking for her father, a Vietnam Vet.

Actor Stephen Lang. He starred in the film adaptation of "Last Exit to Brooklyn," and is about to play Hamlet on Broadway. He's also co-starring in a made-for-TV movie based on the story of the rape of Nancy Ziegenmeyer.

Actor Everett Quinton. He's the director of "The Ridiculous Theatrical Company," a New York based acting troupe who's members often appear in drag. The company's won many Obie awards and is now in its 25th year. To celebrate, they're staging two shows, "Bluebeard," the story of a man trying to create a third sex, and a one-man show called "The Bells."

Playwright, lyricist, and novelist Joe Keenan. His new book, "Putting On the Ritz," follows the further misadventures of the Broadway characters he first created in the book "Blue Heaven." (It's published by Viking).

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews the new opera, "The Ghosts of Versailles ("vahr-SIGH") by composer John Corigliano ("core ee ahn no"). It premiered two weeks ago at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the first new opera to premiere at the Met in 25 years.

With everyone making plans for Christmas and New Year's Eve, we wondered what magician Penn Jillette (pronounced like "Gillette") would be up to. Jillette's one half of the magic team, Pen and Teller. The pair's latest show, "Penn and Teller Rot In Hell," is now playing off
Broadway.

Cartoonist and writer Lynda Barry. Barry's comic strip about her childhood, "Ernie Pook's Comeek," is popular in many alternative newsweeklies around the country. She's also written a show based on the comic, called "The Good Times Are Killing Me." It's playing now Off-Broadway. (This interview was recorded this summer before a live audience in Seattle, when Terry visited station KPLU).

Actor Joe Mantegna. Mantegna plays a tough cop investigating a murder in the new David Mamet film, "Homicide." Mantegna's worked with Mamet several times before, starring in his movie, "House of Games," and in the Mamet play, "Glengarry, Glen Ross."

We remember theater impresario Joe Papp. He was responsible for bringing out such hits as "A Chorus Line" and "Hair," and for staging many memorable performances at the New York Shakespeare Festival. He died yesterday at age 70. We'll listen to a Fresh Air interview with Papp from 1987.