Arts and Entertainment Coverage from today's Sun ...

Sun reporter Jill Rosen writes about the unique casting decisions behind the new production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern: Color wasn't a question for playwright Tom Stoppard when he wrote Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. But it certainly was for Irene Lewis, who cast the play, a tragicomedy which opens today at Baltimore's Center Stage. She decided the two lead characters, drawn from minor players in Shakespeare's Hamlet, would be black -- roles typically played by white men.

The debate over the firing of Marc Steiner hits WYPR's airwaves: A continuing decline in The Marc Steiner Show's ratings and its host's refusal to consider changes to the early-afternoon program left WYPR management with no choice but to fire Steiner, station President and General Manager Anthony Brandon said during an on-air interview yesterday.

Sun Art Critic Glenn McNatt reviews Sondheim winner Tony Shore's new show at Grimaldis: After seeing Violence and Tranquility, Tony Shore's unexpectedly dark vision of his hometown at C. Grimaldis Gallery, I couldn't help thinking the prize-winning Baltimore painter has been watching The Wire, HBO's award-winning dark drama about crime and corruption in Baltimore.

Sun reporter Stephanie Shapiro previews a provocative new show at the Creative Alliance: It's time that sex workers get the respect they deserve, says an industry veteran who calls herself Annie Oakley. Prostitutes, strippers, Internet models and others in the sex industry are just as entitled to safe working conditions and fair wages as anyone providing a service, Oakley, 32, argues. That's the message she wants audiences to take away tonight from her Sex Workers Art Show that is making its third appearance in Baltimore with two shows at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson.

(Photo: Actors Howard W. Overshown (left) and Michael Jean Dozier from "Rosencratz & Guildenstern Are Dead" / Photo courtesy of Center Stage)