COVER STORY
Fairy Tales
This week, Studio 360 falls under the spell of fairy tales. Kurt Andersen and Gregory Maguire, who wrote Wicked, examine why we love stories that begin once upon a time and end happily ever after.

Nutcracker Nation
There are many predictable signs of Christmas other than snow: holiday music pumps through pharmacy loud-speakers, colorful lights adorn your neighbor's house and ballet companies mount their annual production of the Nutcracker. But how did a classical ballet from Tzarist Russia become an American Christmas tradition? Dance scholar Jennifer Fisher wrote a book about the incredible Nutcracker craze in America, and it's a stranger story that you'd think. Produced by Curtis Fox.
Go to Dances Patrelle’s website
Purchase Nutcracker Nation here

Haroun and the Sea of Stories
This fall a new opera called Haroun premiered, based on the book Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. In 1989, Rushdie was forced into hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeini and declared that his novel The Satanic Verses was heresy against Islam -- essentially marking the writer for assassination. Jonathan Mitchell has the story of how Rushdie communicated with his young son through a modern-day fairy tale in which a plucky boy hero has magical adventures, defeats a sorcerer, and restores his father's ability to write.
Go to Charles Wuorinen's website
Go to a website about Salman Rushdie
Go to the New York City Opera's website for the opera
Go to All About Opera's information page covering the opera
Purchase Haroun and the Sea of Stories here

Tom Otterness
For years Tom Otterness’s creations have been getting into all kinds of trouble. In New York he’s best known for his little bronze figures that roam throughout the 14th Street subway station. They’re cute and creepy at the same time; some even have money-bags for heads. Otterness wants his public sculptures to be accessible to the widest possible audience -– he wants people to touch them and climb on them -- so he bases them on stories that he thinks everyone can relate to. Produced by Sarah Elzas.
Go to Tom Otterness's website
Go to the gallery’s website that represents Tom Otterness
Go to the Broadway Mall association’s website

SPECIAL GUEST
Gregory Maguire
Gregory Maguire wrote the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, on which the hit musical was based. He is also the author of Mirror Mirror, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Leaping Beauty and Other Animal Fairy Tales, and many other fairy tales for adults and children.
Go to Gregory Maguire’s website
Purchase Wicked here
Purchase a collection of fairy tales here

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AHA Moment
Inspiration Strikes
You've probably had a moment in your life where something about your destiny suddenly became clear, when you could almost see the cartoon light bulb appear over your own head. Playwright David Ives remembers the scene that sentenced him to the theater for life.

Listen to the story of Rumpelstiltskin, read by Tonya Pinkins
Rumpelstiltskin
Once upon a time there was a miller’s daughter who was ordered to spin straw into gold. Tonya Pinkins, star of the musical Caroline, Or Change, reads the classic tale of Rumpelstiltskin.

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