PBS ARTS FALL FESTIVAL 0 Kicks Off October 8

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PBS ARTS FALL FESTIVAL 2013 Kicks Off October 18

Festival Spotlights Broadway Shows and Top-Flight Stars

Award-winning Actor Anna Deavere Smith Returns as Host; Barbra Streisand, Neil Patrick Harris, Patti LuPone, Stephen Colbert, Hugh Jackman Star in Mix of New and Returning Programs

LOS ANGELES, CA; August 5, 2013 -- The 2013 PBS Arts Fall Festival returns in October with seven weekly programs that highlight Broadway classics, music from around the country, and legendary superstar Barbra Streisand.

Underscoring PBS' ongoing commitment to giving audiences a front row seat and a backstage pass to the best of the arts on-air and online, the series will be hosted by award-winning television, film and stage star Anna Deavere Smith ( Nurse Jackie, The West Wing ) starting Friday, October 18, 2013 at 9 p.m. ET (check local listings).

New offerings in the Festival include: the television premiere of GREAT PERFORMANCES Barbra Streisand: Back to Brooklyn, featuring the great singer's return to her hometown; A RAISIN IN THE SUN REVISITED: The Raisin Cycle at Center Stage, which explores the impact of the groundbreaking play; NASHVILLE 2.0 which looks at some of the greatest Americana and folk music artists in the country music capital**; and a GREAT PERFORMANCES 40th Anniversary Celebration with a star-studded lineup celebrating the iconic series at Lincoln Center. Also scheduled from GREAT PERFORMANCES are a star-studded version of Stephen Sondheim's musical Company, San Francisco Opera's new operatic version of Moby-Dick and a re-airing of the 1999 London stage revival of Oklahoma!

[** Reporter Note: Rosanne Cash will perform at the Television Critics Association meeting on Monday, August 5, 2013 at 5 pm.]

PBS' commitment to arts programming has been strong for more than four decades, and our role as the broadcast industry's only true home for the arts is solidified by this fall's robust lineup, said PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger. With the incredible 40-year run of GREAT PERFORMANCES on public television, and the constantly regenerating pool of creative talent we bring to viewers through the Festival, I think this is the strongest fall ever for the arts on PBS.

The Festival showcases all forms of art from across the country, with great star power and fantastic performances. It's a veritable arts road-trip from New York to San Francisco with exciting stops along the way, said PBS Vice President of Programming and Talent Management, Donald Thoms. With Anna Deavere Smith as our host and guide, we expect these shows to resonate with audiences who seek out classic performances, cutting edge music and some of the greatest artists of all time.

The full PBS Arts Fall Festival line-up follows below.

GREAT PERFORMANCES 40th Anniversary Celebration

Friday, October 18, 2013, 9:00 p.m. ET

Throughout its 40-year history on public television, GREAT PERFORMANCES has provided viewers with an unparalleled showcase of the best in all genres of art, serving as America's most prestigious center for the lively arts. Over four decades, GREAT PERFORMANCES has provided a national stage where popular artists reveal the surprising dimensions of their creative gifts and often go beyond audiences' wildest expectations. The honored series has also offered artists a chance to pay homage to the influential figures in their lives and careers, and has spotlighted emerging artists in their feature-length television debuts. In celebration of this legacy, GREAT PERFORMANCES hosted an all-star celebration from Lincoln Center. A stellar roster of alumni share personal stories of what GREAT PERFORMANCES has meant to them, with reminiscences and performances by Julie Andrews, Audra McDonald, Don Henley, David Hyde Pierce, Josh Groban, Itzhak Perlman, Peter Martins, Patti Austin and Take 6, Met Opera star El?na Garan?a and Michael Bubl .

A RAISIN IN THE SUN REVISITED: The Raisin Cycle at Center Stage

Friday, October 25, 2013, 9:00 p.m. ET

Lorraine Hansberry's groundbreaking 1959 drama, A Raisin in the Sun, was the first Broadway play to depict the strength and humanity of an African-American family striving for a piece of the American dream by buying a house in a white working-class neighborhood in Chicago. More than 50 years later, playwright Bruce Norris created Clybourne Park, a sardonic Pulitzer Prize-winning prequel and sequel that takes place in the same Chicago house and revisits the questions of race, real estate and gentrification in America.

Inspired by Hansberry's original and Norris' follow-up, Kwame Kwei-Armah, artistic director of Baltimore's Center Stage, penned a third play, Beneatha's Place, which follows two of the Raisin characters to Nigeria and its post-colonial struggles. Center Stage mounted Clybourne Park and Beneatha's Place as The Raisin Cycle and as part of its 50th anniversary season. Producers James Arntz and John Paulson, in collaboration with Maryland Public Television, present A RAISIN IN THE SUN REVISITED: The Raisin Cycle at Center Stage. The 60-minute performance documentary captures the history and legacy of Raisin and the backstage challenges of mounting two issue-driven plays simultaneously.

GREAT PERFORMANCES Moby-Dick from San Francisco Opera

Friday, November 1, 2013, 9:00 p.m. ET

One of the nation's leading opera companies, San Francisco Opera has been the site for many memorable GREAT PERFORMANCES productions. In October 2012, GREAT PERFORMANCES partnered with the company once again to record composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer's acclaimed adaptation of the classic Herman Melville novel Moby-Dick. Joshua Kosman in The San Francisco Chronicle dubbed the opera a masterpiece of clarity and intensity, with a score that is at once thematically compact and richly inve

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