August 25, 2006
You might know her as Lisa from Six Feet Under. Or maybe you remember her as the depressive folk singer in Say Anything, or as Andy Warhol's would-be-killer Valerie Solanas in I Shot Andy Warhol. Lili Taylor has stolen a lot of scenes over the years -- and left audiences wondering exactly where they've seen her before. Kurt Andersen talks with the indie queen about her craft and why she needs to build her characters from the ground up.
Right now, New Yorkers can see Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline performing in Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children at the fiftieth annual Shakespeare in the Park festival. This isn't the first time a playwright other than Shakespeare has crashed the festival. WNYC's Sarah Montague talks with Meryl Streep about a cultural tradition that doesn't always stick to the script.
Credits: Joseph Papp’s interview courtesy Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound / New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, donated by the New York Shakespeare Festival and Gail Merrifield Papp. Portions of this interview were also heard on The Fishko Files, June 24, 2005. Individual performance segments courtesy of the artists; Merel Julia; and the Public Theater, with the permission of Actors Equity.
The author T.Coraghessan Boyle has turned himself into a brand name -- which is remarkable since Boyle doesn't write within a specific genre. If anything, T.C. Boyle's fans expect the unexpected topic with each book, but they always count on Boyle's wit and charm. Kurt Andersen talks with the California-based author about why he wants to be a storytelling guru.
When Amy Douglas was a teenager; her parents forced her to attend a far away boarding school in the Arizona desert. Amy fell deep into a depression -- but a cassette of The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads helped save her life. Produced by Adda Birnir.
In the late 1930s, Edgar Kaufman told the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright he wanted him to design a country home by a waterfall in Pennsylvania. Wright informed Kaufman he intended to build the house over the waterfall -- and an icon of American architecture was born. Peter Crimmins explores the anything-but-simple country home known as "Fallingwater," and wonders why Wright's masterpiece bore no successors.
Studio 360 is a co-production of
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WNYC New York Public Radio, and is funded in part by
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National Endowment for the Arts, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, and
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National Endowment for the Humanities. Our series on creativity and science is supported in part by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Our series on Underground Heroes is supported in part by the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. 
