Melvin van Peebles

In less than a month, a new performing arts center will open its doors in Chicago. Or perhaps it's best to call it a new/old venue, its novel concept taking root in a familiar building. Come April 1, the noted Chicago jazz drummer and impresario...

On Sunday, the two-part miniseries “Bag of Bones” premieres on A&E, the latest in a very long line of efforts to bring Stephen King’s unique vision to TV. Mick Garris, the director and King's most established TV collaborator, discusses...

The late Gil Scott-Heron was many things -- poet, activist, icon, cipher -- but it’s easy to forget: He could sing, too. Following his passing on May 27, a parade of accolades have lauded his achievements as a cultural figure,......

On Wednesday morning, as part of the lead-up to Sunday's Brooklyn Book Festival, One Story magazine will be handing out free stories at Brooklyn subway stops. Commuters heading into Manhattan from 7:30 a.m. t 9 a. m. may find their......

Black luminaries, including Cornel West, Ruby Dee and Melvin Van Peebles, are condemning persistent racism in Cuban society, prompting a rebuke from the Havana government....

Those lucky enough to catch the musical "FELA!" on Broadway know that a transformative scene takes place in Los Angeles in 1969. It's here that the Nigerian bandleader and singer Fela Ransome Kuti, known for the creation of what he......

The 2010 PEN World Voices literary festival will feature 150 writers from 40 countries. The festival's lineup includes literary fiction heavyweights Toni Morrison, Richard Ford, Salman Rushdie, Sherman Alexie, Elias Khoury, Roddy Doyle and Aleksander...

Here's a documentary about a piece of history many won't believe ever happened. In the late 1970s through the mid-'80s, there was a much ballyhooed club for "swingers" in Manhattan, a place where the beautiful and the buzzed, the homely and promiscuous,...

Subscriptions are still the primary currency of theater programs, with all sorts of "flex" options to hook patrons into returning. But what if the shows you want most to see in 2007-'08 are spread all over the map? This handy guide, geared to the...

We're not sure what route, exactly, takes you from "New Jack City" to "All My Children," but Mario Van Peebles has traveled it. Van Peebles is joining the cast of the ABC soap opera later this month. It's his second foray into daytime drama; one of his...

Back in 1971 Melvin Van Peebles, already one of the first black directors to have had a film in general release with "Watermelon Man" the year before, scorched screens across America with "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song," a surreal odyssey in which Van...

The rowdy "White Chicks" has Shawn and Marlon Wayans, handsome, buff and African American, passing themselves off as a pair of socialite sisters who seem rather clearly inspired by Paris and Nicky Hilton. Thanks to the wizardry of special effects...