Flopping on Broadway doesn't necessarily keep a musician from having a successful and interesting career. A case in point is conductor Sherman Frank. He is not, by any means, a failure. But he cheerfully admits that his big attempts on Broadway were flops.

Maybe his leaving the Great White Way led to more varied adventures. Also, as we will see in a moment, Frank's brief Broadway career included contact with one of the nastiest controversies in theater history.

Athol Fugard has been called "the conscience of South Africa." But he would rather refer to himself as "a harmless old liberal fossil." Regardless of which is truer, Fugard's art has been so passionately motivated by the history and the turbulence of South Africa under apartheid, one has to wonder what new pockets of unrest and social turmoil will next inspire the internationally renowned, 69-year-old playwright.

Once the toast of Broadway and the West End, Dolores Gray is in retirement once again. This time, unlike previous ones, it is a forced retirement. However, her name has suddenly popped back into the theatrical venues with the release on CD by Decca Broadway of the original cast album of her summer-of-1951 smash, Two on the Aisle, also starring the legendary Bert Lahr.

Arriving at the memorial for writer, lyricist and performer Adolph Green at the Shubert Theater on Tuesday morning, December 3, 2002, you were treated to an usual sight: Hundreds huddling in 19 degree weather, battling winds with a Wind Chill Factor of 4, in a V.I.P. line that snaked down to and around 45th Street. It was probably the first time in theatrical history that stars and Who's Who stood in a line.

The family that plays together -- or, at least, the family where the wife plays across the street from her husband -- stays together.
That was Melanie Griffith's thinking after hubby Antonio Banderas' Broadway debut as ladies' man Guido Contini in Nine at the O'Neill Theater on 49th Street. Instead of enduring a bi-coastal marriage, Griffith made her Broadway debut, too, as man-killer Roxie Hart in Chicago, literally across the street at the Ambassador.

Jim Dale is jumping for joy. Literally.  He rushes from the single digit temperatures and arctic winds of the New 42nd Street into the warmth of West Bank Cafe and shakes himself down. It may be downright frigid outside, but Dale is filled with the warmth of the accolades he and his cast in Trevor Griffiths' Comedians are receiving. The New Group's revival, directed by Scott Elliott, has many critics touting the ensemble as the best so far this season.

Robyn Baker Flatt, founding artistic director of Dallas Children's Theater in 1984, was inducted into the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Theater on April 22, 2007 in a ceremony at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

This was an honor also bestowed in 1996 upon her father, Paul Baker, founding artistic Director in 1959 of Dallas Theater Center. Ms. Flatt's award marks only the second time in the 42-year history of the organization that members of two generations of the same family have received this honor.

To understand Richard Hamburger's role as artistic director of Dallas Theater Center, one needs to follow the path of how he got there. He is only the fourth permanent artistic director in DTCs 42+ year history (its first production was in December 1959).  Hamburger stepped into some formidable shoes and a powerful legacy when he assumed the post in 1992.

You've seen him as Captain Hook in the Peter Pan revival, or as Growltiger/Asparagus in Cats (Tony nomination, Best Featured Actor in a Musical) or the NYSF production of  The Pirates of Penzance.  In fact, Stephen Mo Hanan's credits roll on and on. He's known as a singer/actor's singer/actor. Now you can add writer to his credits. And star turn. His Al Jolson in the York Theater Company's world premiere of Jolson & Co., which he co-wrote with director Jay Berkow) is a showstopper.

Julie Harris, in the midst of a revival tour of her 1976 hit, The Belle of Amherst, says these are her farewell performances of the play.  She's not retiring from the stage - just retiring the role. "I'm 75 years old," she says, "and the character I'm playing [poet Emily Dickinson] is 55. I'm getting too old. When I started the play I was just 50."

The National Arts Club Fourth Annual masked Red Ball last week honored stage, screen and concert legend Kitty Carlisle Hart. On hand to pay tribute in song were Tammy Grimes, Lee Roy Reams, K.T. Sullivan, Mary Bond Davis (Hairspray), Marni Nixon and cabaret artist Anna Bergman.

The indefatigable Miss Hart is 95 and a legendary star of operetta, stage and film ("A Night At the Opera") and a New York society doyenne. She's the widow of prodigious Broadway producer/director, playwright and best-selling author Moss Hart, who died in 1961.

The death of singer, actress, arts champion and philanthropist Kitty Carlisle Hart on April 17 at age 96 stirred a wealth of remembrances on her indefatigable spirit. In her celebrated life, she was honored by the theater, museums, universities, mayors, governors and presidents; but, explains son Christopher, "What meant most was the people's love. She gave a lot, and they remembered her for it."

A teacher came to a small town in Kansas where there was no theater. She read some prose and poetry written by an Afro-Asian girl, not yet a teenager, and who has never seen or read a play. "You should write a play. Your style is quite visual," she tell the teen.

For 19 years, Bernard Havard has been the top gun -- Producing Artistic Director -- at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theater, the oldest continually-operating theater in the United States. He took this venerable house and turned it into a producing organization with the largest subscription base of any theater in the country. In a tight economy, his company has been prospering. Other regional companies envy the Walnut's scope and affluence. (This is a company that even has its own branded Platinum Plus credit card.)

When Wilson Jermaine Heredia auditioned for Jonathan Larson's Rent, 1996's Tony-winning Best Musical, he was a seasoned modern dancer with parts in two Off-Broadway shows.  When he got the role of his lifetime, being a cross-country runner since high school prepared him for the demanding physical exertion.  However, nothing prepared him for his Broadway debut in the season's hottest property, or the acclaim for his portrayal of Angel, the street musician and drag queen dying of AIDS.

I first met and talked with Jerry Herman when a revival of his most personal musical, La Cage Aux Folles, opened at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theater in 2000. We did a question-and-answer feature for City Paper then, and I've continued talking with him, developing this longer piece for TotalTheater.

His "show" has been Broadway's longest extended run, pleasing audiences from New York to Des Moines and beyond for 77 years. His works have had the largest "draw" in theatrical history. The artist is no ordinary song and dance man, but Al Hirschfeld, whose witty, slightly caustic, warmly celebratory, right-on-the-mark caricatures have been pleasing audiences since 1925. From the pages of The New York Times, Mr. Hirschfeld went on to grace Playbill covers, show logos and book covers.

Hot off the front pages -- well, at least the Arts pages -- comes the idea for Michael Hollinger's new play, Opus, presented at Philadelphia's Arden Theater. The real-life Audubon String Quartet dismissed its first violinist because of incompatibility. The man sued and won, as the judge apparently felt that all decisions in a string quartet must be reached unanimously. The remaining colleagues were forced to give up their name and forfeit their valuable instruments. Those three players are devastated emotionally and financially.

At Louisville's Actors Theater for its 2002 Humana Festival, various playwrights represented in the repertory or attending the festivities chatted about the craft of playwriting. Prolific dramatist Mario Fratti asserted, "Yes, playwriting can be taught. I am a teacher of playwriting. But sometimes it is impossible. In America they start with great ideas, but they never know how to end the play, so I specialize in giving students structure. Structure is acutely important. Write the ending first - that is the sign of a good playwright. There's a lot of freedom in going there.