How do today’s masters create their art? American Masters: Creative Spark presents narrative interviews that go in-depth with an iconic artist about the creation of a single work. Each episode offers a unique window into the world of art and the creative process of artists and cultural icons across a wide range of disciplines, from music and comedy to poetry and film.
Witch hunts, political hysteria, and paranoia! Listen to previously unreleased interviews with Tony- and Pulitzer-winning playwright Arthur Miller and actresses Madeleine Sherwood and Lee Grant, who explore the themes of Miller’s landmark play The Crucible (1953). Published amidst the milieu of government persecution when McCarthyism struck Hollywood, the play is a stark and powerful allegory of the era with lasting implications. [“American Masters – Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan and the Blacklist: None Without Sin” (2003)].
Season 2 of the American Masters Podcast looks at the artists that challenge and shape our thoughts through the power of the written word. We begin with a new interview with Pulitzer Prize-winner and MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient Suzan-Lori Parks (Topdog/Underdog, The Red Letter Plays, Venus), who discusses her writing, inspirations and teaching the arts, and performs original music.
This season the American Masters Podcast presents Revolutionary Writers: 10 episodes that look at the artists that challenge and shape our thoughts through the power of the written word.
Listen to singer-songwriters Joan Baez and Dar Williams perform as a duet in this impromptu rendition of “If I Wrote You”, written by Dar Williams. This exclusive performance is from the cutting room floor of award-winning filmmaker Mary Wharton’s Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound (2009).
Before jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald became the First Lady of Song and earned 13 Grammy Awards, she spent much of her teenage years as an orphan, finding odd jobs to get by and, at times, living on the street.
