For the past six months, Jennifer Coolidge has been trying something new. Something that's a bit different from the on-screen comic riffing she has been regularly known for: stand-up.

The most striking feature of the new Six String Cafe isn't the stage, but what's behind it.

Sometimes kids and parents are both worn out before the actual tick of midnight on New Year's Eve.

Need something to perk you up after all the exhaustion of unwrapping presents and devouring holiday feasts? Try a little improv to get the ho-ho-ho's going again.

Chatham County Line has never exactly been puritanical about bluegrass, which you'd expect from its members' rock backgrounds. But for a long time, the group had a rule: no covers, especially rock songs.

There's still time to catch "A Trailer Park Christmas," the return of last year's kooky holiday spoof from Durham's Common Ground Theatre.

Dan Brown's 2003 mystery/thriller novel "The Da Vinci Code" broke just about every sales record in the publishing world. At one point, it was selling about 100,000 copies per week.

A man and his old flame sat in Jackpot!, a Hillsborough Street barroom thick with hipsters and their cigarette smoke. His wig barely covered a shock of blond hair; her purse was filled with water balloons. Both wondered: "Just how fast can I reach my water pistol?"

If it weren't for Lenora Locklear, Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal wouldn't be singing about Wal-Mart, Facebook and the underrated game of cornhole for online audiences.

Innovative director Jay O'Berski sets his Duke Theater Studies production of "The Lower D's" (based on Maxim Gorky's "The Lower Depths") not in Russia but in Lagos, Nigeria.

The reborn Six String Cafe was scheduled to open next week in its new location in Cary.

It's just minutes after Aisha Tyler has said goodbye to "Jeopardy" host Alex Trebek, and she won't spill on whether she won her "Celebrity Jeopardy" match.

Woody Allen once opined that 90 percent of life is just showing up, which is certainly true as far as it goes. But how far you'll go comes down to that last 10 percent, which largely consists of moxie, self-confidence and nerve.

The letters between English naturalist Charles Darwin and American botanist Asa Gray document a fascinating debate about God and nature. A dramatization of that correspondence, "Re: Design," plays this weekend in the Kennedy-McIlwee Studio Theater in N.C.

Tonight, Durham's Manbites Dog Theater debuts a new work by North Carolina playwright Howard Craft, noted for his exploration of African-American themes.

Improv and stand-up comedy are usually mutually exclusive -- like peanut butter and barbecue sauce or the Democratic Party and Rush Limbaugh. Some things just don't go together.

David Copperfield, who will entertain and misdirect Tuesday and Wednesday in Durham, started doing shows when he was 12.