The Tony-winning director talks directing Denzel Washington and Samuel Jackson in his new memoir Take You Wherever You Go.

Following this week's exciting announcement that the next NBC live broadcast will be a reimagining of The Wiz, Playbill.com took to social media to ask readers to dreamcast the TV production that will subsequently arrive on Broadway.

"Life's Essentials with Ruby Dee," a documentary about late activists and theatre artists Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, will make its world premiere June 22 at Film Life’s 18th Annual American Black Film Festival in Manhattan.

Thomas Martell Brimm, an actor who cut his teeth at Joe Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, died Nov. 30. He was 75.

Katori Hall's The Mountaintop, which received a 2010 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Play and was previously announced to arrive on Broadway this season, will now likely make its Main Stem debut in fall 2011, according to the New York Times.

The New York Post reports that two famed film actors will be sharing a Broadway stage this season.

The NYPD and the Times Square Business Improvement District (TS BID) have issued a traffic alert for the Theatre District effective through Nov. 17.

PATTI LuPONE
Be sure to catch Patti LuPone's dynamic one-woman show, An Evening with Patti LuPone, which is currently being broadcast on PBS stations around the country. I was able to catch the program this past Sunday evening, and it was a thrill to watch Patti burst through the small screen. Some of my favorite moments included La LuPone's wonderful version of Sunset's "As If We Never Said Goodbye," her defiant "As Long as He Needs Me" from Oliver!, her belty, spine-tingling "Being Alive," and, of course, Evita's "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." One minor quibble. . .who decided to cut Patti's riveting "Meadowlark" from the broadcast. . .oh well!

And, don't forget, LuPone will return to the concert stage of the Hollywood Bowl this September. On September 5, 6 and 7 our effervescent Evita gal will take part in a tribute to Broadway that will also include a selection devoted to the songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Patti will be joined onstage by fellow Broadway performers Davis (The Phantom of the Opera) Gaines and Rebecca (Show Boat) Luker. The trio will perform songs from Chicago, Candide, Ragtime, Rent, Titanic, Evita, Sunset Boulevard, The Phantom of the Opera and other Broadway hits. For information and tickets, call 213 850-2000.

SARAH BRIGHTMAN
The original Christine of The Phantom of the Opera, who has starred in a few other Andrew Lloyd Webber works as well, will release her newest album on Angel Records. Entitled Time to Say Goodbye, the recording has already sold five million copies in Europe (under the title of Timeless) and features the acclaimed soprano backed by the London Symphony Orchestra. The single from the album, "Time To Say Goodbye," topped the charts all across Europe, and featured a duet with Italian opera star tenor Andrea Bocelli. On this new recording Brightman gets a chance to show off her classical side as well as her worldly and cosmopolitan influences, singing in a plethora of languages: English, Italian, Hebrew and Spanish.