She may have played second fiddler to the “David versus David” rivalry on American Idol’s seventh season, but second runner-up Syesha Mercado is confidently taking the spotlight now in a shiny new Dreamgirls, currently kicking off a national tour at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. As Diana Ross doppelganger Deena Jones, the 22-year-old Florida native is making her professional ...

If anyone can bring 20 personalities to life in just 90 minutes, it’s Anna Deavere Smith. A performer, interviewer, writer, college professor and co-star of TV’s Nurse Jackie, Smith is currently back on the New York stage for the first time in 10 years in Let Me Down Easy, the latest example of her unique combination of journalism ...

Tony Award nominee Hunter Foster, whose Broadway resume includes such shows as Little Shop of Horrors, Urinetown, The Producers and Footloose, began his career on the New York stage over 15 years ago. So, he’s had plenty of experience to draw on for his last two gigs, off-Broadway’s New York-centric musicals Happiness and the currently playing Ordinary Days ...

Glee fans might be in a bit of withdrawal since the World Series has put the popular TV show on a two-week hiatus. But have no fear, Gleeks! Not only did the just-released CD Glee: The Music, Volume 1 become an instant smash, but Jane Lynch, who plays the show’s deliciously evil cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, is performing off-Broadway ...

In Alexander Dinelaris’ new play Still Life, Sarah Paulson stars as Carrie Ann, a famous, closed-off, not-entirely-likeable photographer paralyzed by loss, life and love. But talk to Paulson herself—a vet of series like Cupid, Deadwood and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, as well The Glass Menagerie on Broadway—for more than 30 seconds and you quickly learn she ...

She's wooed a beast into a prince in Beauty and the Beast, helped the beat go on in Hairspray, taken on alien plants in Little Shop of Horrors and scored a Tony Award nomination for her turn as a sweet, roller-skating muse in Xanadu, but, until recently, Kerry Butler had never donned a studded corset and hopped on a ...

You don’t have to be a theater fan to recognize Jason Butler Harner. He turned up as a lawyer on the second episode of the new TV series The Good Wife and a villain in the pilot of Fringe, played the Secretary of the Treasury in John Adams and the murderer of Angelina Jolie’s child in Changeling. Of ...