Performing Arts

Michael Jackson died shortly before a scheduled London concert series. The show goes on without him in Kenny Ortega's backstage documentary This Is It — and in what's likely to be a long and lucrative posthumous career. James Mitchell/AP hide caption

Meng Jinghui is China's leading avant-garde theater director. His latest work, Murder in the Hanging Garden, is a musical — his first — and it addresses "the relentless grabbing for material goods and people's spiritual loss." Louisa Lim/NPR hide caption

Solo-performance pioneer Anna Deavere Smith set the standard for documentary theater in the 1990s; she's reached broader audiences with roles on TV's The West Wing and Nurse Jackie, and in films including Rachel Getting Married. Mary Ellen Mark hide caption

Modern jousters often adopt the names and colors of actual Renaissance knights. Ripper Moore, a 14-year veteran of the circuit, jousts as Sir Henry Clifford, Second Earl of Cumberland, and wears his coat of arms. Courtesy Jacki Lyden hide caption

Angie Pontani performs at the Sixth Annual New York Burlesque Festival on Sept. 18, 2008, at Corio Supper Club in New York. Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Actor Michael McKean (as Arthur Przybyszewski) in Superior Donuts. hide caption