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STAGEOut of Tune: Although the audience wasn’t...

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Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press

STAGE

Out of Tune: Although the audience wasn’t aware of it, Tommy Tune broke his left foot Sunday in Tampa, Fla., while performing in his Broadway-bound musical “Busker Alley” (known as “Stage Door Charley” when the tour stopped at Orange County Performing Arts Center last summer). As performances resumed in Tampa on Tuesday, Tune was scheduled to perform with crutches in the non-dancing parts of the show, while the show’s director-choreographer, Jeff Calhoun, took Tune’s place in the dances. A spokesman said producers of the musical were “weighing their options” Tuesday regarding the show’s planned Broadway run, which is slated to begin previews Oct. 19 and open Nov. 16.

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A ‘Slav’ No More: Actress Robin Bartlett has left her lead role in Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner’s “Slavs! Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness” scheduled to open at the Mark Taper Forum on Oct. 26. According to a spokeswoman at the Taper, Bartlett resigned to take a role in the movie “Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves.” Bartlett had played in “Slavs!” at the La Jolla Playhouse last summer, where the show had its West Coast premiere as a co-production with the Taper. Randy Danson, who played a different part in the La Jolla run, will take over for Bartlett at the Taper.

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‘Candide’ Cast: Two young opera stars, Kenn Chester and Constance Hauman, will take the leading roles of Candide and Cunegonde in Center Theatre Group’s “Candide,” opening Nov. 8. William Schallert, Nancy Dussault and Sean Smith also will be featured in CTG’s first production in the newly renovated Ahmanson Theatre.

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THE ARTS

National Medalists: President Clinton will honor 17 individuals and one organization for outstanding contributions to the nation’s cultural life at White House ceremonies on Thursday. Honorees are the 13 recipients of the 1995 National Medal of the Arts, selected by the President in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as five winners of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ 1995 Charles Frankel Prize. National Medal of Arts recipients include comedian Bob Hope, painter Roy Lichtenstein, architect James Ingo Freed, dancer and choreographer Arthur Mitchell, Beverly Hills philanthropists Gerald and Iris Cantor, and actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Additional arts recipients are opera singer Licia Albanese, poet Gwendolyn Brooks, composer David Diamond, bluegrass musician Bill Monroe and the Chicago arts education organization Urban Gateways. Humanities honorees include CBS newsman Charles Kuralt.

RADIO/TV

California View: “The California Report,” a new weekly statewide radio news program, will begin airing Friday on local public radio stations. Produced by San Francisco’s KQED-FM in conjunction with stations statewide, the 29-minute program will cover issues, trends and public policy. Hosted by KQED investigative reporter Maia Krache, the program will air locally every Friday, at 6:30 p.m. on KCRW-FM (89.9), and at 7:30 p.m. on KUSC-FM (91.5). In addition to airing the Friday program at 6:30 p.m., Pasadena station KPCC-FM (89.3) will also air a nine-minute Monday edition of “The California Report” weekly at 6:50 a.m.

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Famed Trial of the ‘40s: For legal junkies worried that they won’t have enough to watch now that the O.J. Simpson trial is over, cable’s Court TV in November will broadcast 15 hours of footage from the famed 1945-46 Nuremberg trials. During the Nuremberg trials, an International Military Tribunal of judges from the United States, England, France and the Soviet Union convicted 19 key Nazi Party members on charges including war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Court TV coverage, which coincides with the 50th anniversary of the trials, will include highlights from courtroom footage, taped interviews with the principal characters and background reports on the trial’s history and key players. In addition, Court TV will produce a one-hour “Trial Story” documentary of the Nuremberg trials to air later in the year.

QUICK TAKES

Producer Andy Friendly is leaving his post as vice president of prime-time programs at cable’s CNBC. Friendly, son of CBS News executive Fred Friendly, will join syndicator King World Productions Nov. 13 as vice president of programming and production. . . . Howard Stern lost his Chicago FM outlet this week when WCKG-FM said it had become “philosophically uncomfortable with some of Howard’s on-air content” and canceled his New York-based morning drive-time show, which also appears on AM radio there. Stern premiered on WCKG in March after being dumped in 1993 by a different Chicago station. . . . Five million kids across the country pledged more than 52 million hours of volunteer service last weekend during Nickelodeon’s eight-hour cable telethon “The Big Help-a-thon.”

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