Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

This week, two unique theater events. Kurt Andersen talks with Alex Timbers, director of a new musical about Imelda Marcos — part history lesson, part disco dance party, but no shoe jokes. A Deaf actor performing in a signed version of a Harold Pinter play explains why on stage, actors’ voices are just a distraction from actual performance. Brazilian cellist Dom La Nena performs live. And Kurt makes small talk at the deathbed of network TV.

This week in Studio 360, two takes on motherhood. In Isabella Rossellini’s new series of web videos, she acts out unusual childrearing strategies — abandonment, cannibalism — in the animal kingdom. And a listener explains how Mary Karr taught her what she needed to know about having a teenage boy. Plus, a physicist finds beauty in the race to find dark matter, and musician Marques Toliver finds the common ground between Quincy Jones and J.S. Bach.

How did a poor kid from Brooklyn escape life as a shipping clerk and instead become Mel Brooks? Even Mel Brooks isn’t too sure, but “If you’ve got your mother’s love,” he tells Kurt Andersen, “you can’t go wrong.” Meanwhile, jazz composer Darcy James Argue conjures another, imaginary Brooklyn in an epic work for big band that’s a “total sensory overload.” And we’ll see how architects have tried to heal the memory of trauma at buildings like Sandy Hook Elementary School.