The best Broadway oral histories

The best Tony performances of all time

A big part of the Tony Awards ceremony is the selection of live performances from that year's nominated musicals. This Time Out list pulls together 35 of the best songs from over six decades of broadcasts, complete with videos of each. Catch the savannah-themed spectacle of 1998's "Circle of Life" from "The Lion King," the classic "Tomorrow" from "Annie," and many legendary Patti LuPone performances, among others.

The 'Ratatouille' musical started as a joke on TikTok

It all started as a meme: What if “Ratatouille” were adapted for the stage? Just a few months later, though, it was an actual production, featuring genuine Broadway stars.

100 of Broadway's best songs

From the pathos of "One Day More" from "Les Misérables," to the soaring "Defying Gravity" from "Wicked," this video showcasing 100 of Broadway's best songs will keep any musical theater lover quite busy. While the list trends toward modern pieces, there are still plenty of selections from classics and Tony Award winners like "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Miss Saigon."

Broadway's superfans unite at BroadwayCon

Like ComicCon for theater lovers, BroadwayCon convenes annually in New York and offers panels, meet-and-greets, and, of course, singalongs. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Broadway's 10 biggest flops

For every "Carousel" or "Cabaret," there's a "Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark"—a show that never found its footing, sometimes in a public and disastrous way. Here are 10 Broadway musicals the producers and stars would probably rather we forget. Some, like "The Rocky Horror Show" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's," were eventually revived and relatively well received. Others, like "Into the Light"—which involved mimes, metaphysics, and the legend of the Shroud of Turin—have rightfully stayed buried.

Hal Prince holds the record for most Tonys, with 21

As the producer and director of iconic shows like "West Side Story," "Sweeney Todd," and "Evita," Hal Prince made a huge impression on Broadway history. This episode of the "Anything Goes" podcast is part of a three-part series that highlights the songs that defined Prince's career.

10 books that get the theatre world right

The theatre world is filled with drama—both on and offstage—thanks to big egos, imagined slights, and tense interpersonal dynamics. Despite that reality, it's not easy to portray what goes on behind the scenes on the page. This list breaks down some of the exceptions, featuring 10 novels that accurately capture the insular world and fascinating personalities who populate it.

'Hair' helped redefine Broadway theater

"Hair" rewrote the rule book, bringing politics, race, and, yes, nudity to Broadway. Plenty was going on backstage, too, with the young, revolutionary cast embracing the countercultural life they portrayed onstage.

The longest-running Broadway musical is 'The Phantom of the Opera'

Andrew Lloyd Webber's legendary show holds the record for the longest-running musical on Broadway, with an astounding 13,981 performances. When it was announced the show would close, its dedicated "phans" rushed to buy tickets, leading to an unexpected extension.

Broadway is the epicenter of the American theater world

Broadway is shorthand for the Broadway theater district, an area in New York City's Manhattan borough that occupies a segment of Broadway, a 13-mile road. Although the Broadway theater district has a relatively small geographic footprint, its 41 theaters stage some of the world's most popular productions of plays and musicals.

Nonprofit theaters are incubators for new theater

Unlike commercial Broadway theaters, ticket sales account for only a fraction of nonprofit theaters' income. This lets them take chances on new playwrights and innovative shows, including Lin Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton" and Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George."

Broadway hit 'Stereophonic' was inspired by Fleetwood Mac

The show follows a 1970s rock band while they're in the studio, tracking a new album, and mirrors many of the internal conflicts that led to Fleetwood Mac's 1977 record, "Rumours." The play was a massive hit, earning 13 Tony nominations (the most ever for a play). It won five, including best play.

Is the pandemic performance art?

Interdisciplinary artist Kristina Wong sees parallels between the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the “worst performance art” she’s encountered in her career. Wong’s sharp sense of humor and clever writing mean that she gets in some good digs at the more ridiculous side of performance art, but don’t let her funny fool you: this is an incisive piece on the role of performance, empathy, trauma, and art in all our lives.

One actor made a career out of playing Mark Twain

Hal Holbrook toured in the one-man show “Mark Twain Tonight!” for over six decades. In the performances, Holbrook wore Twain’s iconic white suit and offered witticisms similar to Twain’s famous lectures. Holbrook won a Tony Award in 1966 for a Broadway run of the show.

The best podcasts about Old Hollywood

If you’re intrigued by the gossip and scandals of Hollywood’s early years, you’ll want to check out this Vanity Fair list of some of the best podcasts on the topic. Some, like Karina Longworth’s "You Must Remember This," cover a different event from Hollywood history with every episode. Others follow a single topic over the course of an entire season, like "No Place Like Home", which explores the 2005 theft of the original "Wizard of Oz" ruby slippers.

Musicals use motifs to tell stories

This clickable interactive illustrates how famous musicals reuse musical motifs to convey character, power, and change—using "Wicked," "Les Misérables," and "Hamilton" to demonstrate how recurring melodies subtly drive the story.

A professor explores the 21st-century impact of Gilbert and Sullivan

Willard Spiegelmanis, a former English professor at Southern Methodist University, details his childhood love for musical theater legends Gilbert and Sullivan, known for operettas like "The Pirates of Penzance" and "The Mikado," and profiles the theater companies keeping their shows alive.

Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda tell the story of Alexander Hamilton on 'Drunk History'

On "Drunk History," Lin-Manuel Miranda retells Alexander Hamilton's life after the musical's success—revisiting the founding-era story that made Miranda famous, this time through the show's deliberately chaotic, comedic lens.

The 2022 best picture winner, 'CODA,' was an Apple+ original

Streaming has changed more than how we watch movies—it's changed the way we recognize them during awards season. When movie theaters shut down during the early days of the pandemic, studios had no choice but to release their films on streaming. Once the shift occurred, there was no going back.

As a kid, Jay-Z was inspired by the Broadway musical “Annie”

That led to the rapper’s 1998 track “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” which sampled one of the show’s most recognizable songs, “Hard Knock Life.” "When the TV version [of Annie] came on, I was drawn to it," he told NPR in 2010.

Soaps launched the careers of countless Hollywood A-listers

Soap operas may not be considered high culture, but many actors who would go on to win television and film’s highest honors got their start with soaps. That includes Julianne Moore (“As the World Turns”), Morgan Freeman (“Another World”), Leonardo DiCaprio (“Santa Barbara”), and Michael B. Jordan (“All My Children”).

The history of 'Black Mirror,' according to its stars

"Black Mirror" began as a modest anthology show on Britain's Channel 4, offering bleak satire about contemporary technology. It quickly became a hit and attracted stars like Daniel Kaluuya, Jon Hamm, Rashida Jones, and Jesse Armstrong (who'd go on to show run HBO's "Succession"). This oral history of the show details its evolution to an international Netflix hit, providing insights into creator Charlie Brooker's approach to storytelling.

What it's like to stage in an award-winning kitchen

This video goes behind the scenes with chef Geoff Kie's stage (essentially a short internship) with nominee Crystal Wahpepah at her restaurant in Oakland. Kie learns practical skills from Wahpepah, but also discusses how the stage helped him understand the restaurant's role in the community—and how he might bring those lessons back to his own kitchen.

Hear firsthand stories from Americans who lived through the 1918 flu pandemic

This video shares personal accounts from survivors of the 1918 influenza epidemic, capturing memories of sickness, loss, and resilience. Their voices offer a glimpse into how ordinary people experienced one of history’s deadliest pandemics.

The story behind Conan O'Brien's most celebrated 'Simpsons' episode

"Marge vs. the Monorail," an episode from the show's fourth season, is widely considered not only one of the best 'Simpsons' episodes, but one of the best sitcom episodes in general. In this detailed history of it for The Ringer, writer Conan O'Brien, then a 28-year-old fresh off leaving "Saturday Night Live," explains how "The Music Man," disaster movies, and a strange billboard inspired the script.

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Experimental hantavirus vaccines and therapies, still under development, have long been funded by the US military.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

Firework or sparkler burns, even if they cover a relatively small area of skin, can significantly affect our range of motion.