Arts

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Michael Jackson crossed swords with a lot of people when he was alive, but perhaps none more important than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

The Second City e.t.c. in Chicago will open its 33rd revue, Studs Terkel's Not Working, on July 19. The title refers to the classic oral history book, "Working," by late Chicago-based historian Terkel.

Act II Playhouse in Ambler, PA, has a hit on its hands with the musical revue Respect: A Musical Journey of Women, which has been extended for a second time - now to Aug. 2.

Harve Presnell, who starred in the Broadway and film versions of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and was known as an imposing, full-voiced Daddy Warbucks to generations of Annie fans, died June 30 in Santa Monica, CA. He was 75 and lived in Livingston, MT.

Falcon Theatre, the Burbank, CA, company founded by Garry Marshall, will present five productions in 2009-10, including the world premiere comedy, The Psychic, by Sam Bobrick.

The Broadway cast of Glory Days, the pop musical about a reunion of four high school buddies, will be in a recording studio July 2-3 to create a cast album more than a year after the show's one-performance run.

Mauckingbird Theatre Company, Philadelphia's only professional theatre company devoted to gay-themed work, will present John Logan's Never the Sinner: The Leopold and Loeb Story Aug. 8-30.

LONDON (Reuters) - A housewife from Sleaford in Lincolnshire will be the first of thousands of people to stand for one hour on top of a plinth in London's Trafalgar Square as part of a 100-day "live sculpture" exercise.

The Tony Award-winning Old Globe in San Diego opens Shakespeare's Twelfth Night - one of three shows in the 2009 Summer Shakespeare Festival - on July 1, after previews from June 17. Patrick Page is Malvolio.

Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) launches Disney's Aladdin, an adaptation of the 1992 animated film, July 1 in its kid-friendly summer slot.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With her debut collection of short stories, Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah has been heralded as a major new literary voice, but she said it was a struggle to write about her homeland without being didactic.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The publication of a book that novelist J.D. Salinger said ripped off his classic "The Catcher in the Rye" was halted by a U.S. federal judge on Wednesday.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Award-winning author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a professional eavesdropper: she admits a lot of what she writes is based on what she's overheard.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German choreographer Pina Bausch, whose work is credited with revolutionizing the language of modern dance, died Tuesday after being diagnosed with cancer only days earlier. She was 68 years old.

LONDON (Reuters) - Artist Jeff Koons has presented a series of Popeye paintings in London, saying the cartoon hero born of the 1929 Depression was a symbol of self confidence, before adding enigmatically: "May be art is the spinach."

The new 2009-10 season of work by Center Theatre Group at its Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles will feature a world premiere by Lisa Kron, Malcolm McDowell as drama critic Kenneth Tynan and a new play by In the Continuum writer Danai Gurira.

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. soprano Renee Fleming will have more than the Royal Opera House audience to worry about on Tuesday night.

Casting has been announced for the Chicago premiere of Yeast Nation (The Triumph of Life), the musical from the Tony Award-winning authors of Urinetown.