Playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America) has been named the first recipient of the "Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award," which is to be awarded biennially to an American playwright whose body of work has made significant contributions to the American theater. The prize comes with a cool $200,000, which Kushner says will "buy me time to work on plays," after he finishes up a screenplay about Abraham Lincoln for Steven Spielberg and another film script about......

Actor/director John Turturro was among the protesters assembled at City Hall today for a rally to save the Carnegie artist studios, which could soon be taken over by Carnegie Hall expansion plans. But the big star of the day was 95-year-old Editta Sherman, the building’s longest living tenant, having resided there since 1949. She’s seen here holding a photograph she took of Leonard Bernstein, a former resident; Sherman’s studio in the building was once......

TV star Matthew Fox went to his alma mater today to give the Class Day speech at Columbia College. Fox, class of 1989, was a controversial speaker choice amongst the Columbia community, given that other Columbia University schools had, er, Nobel Laureate and former Treasury Secretary types speaking. Just Jared has a partial transcript of his remarks:“You may have an idea where you want to be in 20 years and some of you will get......

Apparently, sexy Hollywood beefcake is what Columbia College is trying to promote at its Class Day this year! Last year, father-of-fellow-Columbia College-student Senator John McCain spoke, to wide protest. This year, Columbia College has selected Matthew Fox, star of Lost, to be the main speaker. Naturally, students are very divided about the news. One tells the Columbia Spectator, "I've never heard of this guy. The years before got a Pulitzer Prize-winner and a potential presidential......

(Photo by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times) Rachel Corrie was an American college student killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to block the demolition of Palestinian houses near a refugee camp in Gaza. (Israel officials claimed the demolitions were intended to stifle attacks along a road parallel to the Egyptian border.) Those who follow the New York theater world know all about the controversy that ignited earlier this year when New York Theatre......

Comedian Dane Cook has a massive following, from his huge record sales to his zillions of MySpace friends. This weekend we'll see if he can extend the brand loyalty to the cineplex, as his first starring role in Employee of the Month hits theaters. Cook plays the slacker box boy Zach who's the Parker Lewis of the bulk bargain store, SuperMart. However, Zach decides to buckle down and shape up when he discovers the new......

Robin I. Shane, Costume Designer...

Gothamist must admit that we were one of those pasty, sun-deprived toddlers who merrily shunned the joys of sportsmanship and early childhood socialization for the more solitary pleasures of pop-up books and cartoon fantasy lands. To this day, the mere glimpse of a page from one of our favorite children's books will stop us in our tracks even faster than a shiny object, compelling us to re-read the book in question immediately. Foremost among these......

After brushing off the RNC dust and settling back into a week of normalcy Gothamist noticed this Crain's piece on the effect the invasion of the Republicans had on Broadway. Basically, they got creamed, with an 18% attendance drop compared to the same week last year and a whopping 20% drop in box office grosses. Variety via Yahoo gives the skinny on which shows suffered the most, reporting "significant five-figure slippage" at "Fiddler on the......

We were stoked to read in Playbill that Academy Award-winning actress Holly Hunter (Thirteen, The Piano, Broadcast News) is playing first lady Laura Bush opposite Cynthia Nixon and Lisa Kron in a staged reading this week of Tony Kushner's Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy at the New York Theater Workshop, on a double bill with an encore presentation of Mark Crispin Miller’s Patriot Act: a Public Meditation . Co-starring with Hunter......

HBO has been hyping their $60 million epic film, Angels in America, for weeks and weeks, and it seems that the hype of seeing Tony Kushner's Pulitzer and Tony–winning play on screen, directed by Mike Nichols, with performances by Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, Mary Louise Parker, and Jeffrey Wright is justified. Gothamist read Angels in America ten years ago, so we've been eagerly awaiting the adaptation (buy Angels in America: The Millennium......