ATW - Downstage Center

This week Barbara Cook (currently in "Tribute" at the Cafe Carlyle), visits "Downstage Center" to talk about her five decade career - from intimate cabarets to the Broadway stage; the people she has met and a lot more. Original air date - May 6, 2005.

Stockard Channing discusses her work in Jon Robin Baitz's new play "Other Desert Cities", acknowledging the ambiguity of the character for the audience and explaining whether she has defined her character's secret motivations with certainty. She also talks about her years breaking into theatre at Harvard, alongside other students like John Lithgow and Tommy Lee Jones, and her subsequent work around Boston before coming to New York and getting her increasingly bigger break in the Broadway musical "Two Gentlemen of Verona", which also began her association with John Guare; her years in Los Angeles, including a film gig she did simply because she needed money, namely "Grease"; her return to the stage in successive productions of "A Day in the Death of Joe Egg" at Williamstown, Long Wharf, Roundabout and finally Broadway; being given the opportunity to choose between playing Bunny and Bananas in the Lincoln Center Theatre revival of "The House of Blue Leaves"; how it felt, as a native Upper East Side New Yorker, playing an Upper East Side New Yorker in "Six Degrees of Separation", and how her performance had to change when she acted in the film version; whether she knew how divided response would be to Guare's "Four Baboons Adoring the Sun"; why she wasn't daunted about stepping into the shoes of Rosemary Harris or Katharine Hepburn for "The Lion in Winter" in 1999 -- and what about doing the show did give her pause; what it was like to do "Pal Joey", her first musical in over two decades (having previously followed Liza Minnelli into "The Rink"); and how she approached the role of Lady Bracknell in "The Importance of Being Earnest" for a production at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, Ireland last year. Original air date - February 2, 2011.

Cora Cahan, president of The New 42nd Street in New York, discusses her 20 years in the role of recapturing what was once the epicenter of Manhattan sleaze for theatre and family audiences. She talks about her early work as a professional modern dancer; her shift into management with the Feld Ballet, having had no prior experience whatsoever in management (despite being married to the Associate Producer of The Public Theater); her discovery of what became Michael Bennett's fabled 890 Studios; her dual position as the head of the Feld Ballet and the Joyce Theatre, which she and Eliot Feld conceived as a home for dance companies at a time when New York didn't have an appropriate small venue; the Joyce's brief effort in the mid-80s to curate an annual festival of the best work from America's regional theatres -- and why it didn't work; why her first act upon arriving at her 42nd Street job in 1990 was to rename the organization; the chronology of how 42nd Street shifted from Triple XXX to G-rated; the development of The New Victory Theatre as a home for innovative children's and family programming, and why she felt that was a gap in New York's cultural life that needed to be filled; what's on tap for The New 42nd Street now that the environment has changed, the theatres are reclaimed, the rehearsal studios are always filled and even the long-delayed commercial buildings now anchor the corners of the stretch between 7th and 8th Avenues; and what she thinks of nostalgia for the former grit and danger for the street she has reclaimed. Original air date - September 1, 2010.

Where are Broadway’s hottest stars? Downstage Center. The latest episode heads down south as Memphis’ Montego Glover plays the role as interviewer to her co-star Adam Pascal. The versatile duo expounds on, among other topics, their experience in "Memphis", the skill sets needed to be a working actor, and some of the other roles they may be known for: Mr. Pascal in "Rent" and "Aida", and Ms. Glover in "The Color Purple."

Playwright Jules Feiffer, perhaps best known as a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, explains why he sees little difference between his comic work, screen work and stage work, as well as why he has no issue with his 42-year-legacy of provocative work in the "Village Voice" being called, simply, a comic strip. He also talks about his early involvement in moving from the comics to the stage, including Paul Sills' adaptation called "The Explainers" and his own "The World of Jules Feiffer", which featured the first "Passionella" musical, with a score by Stephen Sondheim; how he feels about the "Passionella" segment in "The Apple Tree" and whether he prefers the original production or the recent revival; the journey of "Little Murders" from Broadway flop to London award-winner to Off-Broadway success -- all in a two-year span; how "The White House Murder Case" started off a hit and why the audiences suddenly stopped laughing; how he came to contribute to the infamous revue "Oh! Calcutta"; what shifted his play "Carnal Knowledge" from the stage to the screen before it was ever produced, and what prompted him years later to resurrect the stage script; how his troubled personal life yielded the comedy "Knock Knock"; why "Elliot Loves" drove him from the theatre for over a decade, and why he came back with perhaps his most personal play, "A Bad Friend"; and what's happening with his long-aborning collaboration with Andrew Lippa on a stage musical of his children's book, "The Man in the Ceiling". Original air date - October 6, 2010.