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HERE'S TO LIFE
The Life and Times of Diahann Carroll may sound like the title of a 12-hour miniseries, but it's actually the name of the star's new cabaret act, which debuts at Feinstein's at the Regency, April 18-30. "I'll be doing old songs, new songs, and songs in a manner which you've never heard before," says Carroll. "And although I've never been talkative onstage before, this time I will be. People will be hearing new things about House of Flowers and No Strings [for which she won a Tony Award], and I'm going back and learning those songs all over again. It's been a very interesting experience to do that."

She has performed infrequently in New York over the past 20 years; her last Broadway appearance was in Agnes of God. "I had a fabulous time doing that show," she says, "and being onstage with Geraldine Page every night was a lesson in itself. At some point during the run, she decided I was quite serious about the role -- I always was -- and she opened up her heart and began to share with me."

Carroll was very disappointed that she didn't make it to the Great White Way in Sunset Boulevard (she starred in the well-regarded Toronto production) or in the revival of On Golden Pond (she had to bow out of that show before it opened in Washington D.C. due to back problems). "But I have to be honest," she tells me, "I don't relish the idea of being onstage eight times a week right now. If it was something I really wanted to do, I could probably live with my physical therapist and make it through. But I could still tackle a film."

To call Carroll's achievements in theater, film, and television "groundbreaking" is an understatement. She was one of the first African-American women to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress, for the 1974 film Claudine; the first African-American woman to have her own sitcom, Julia, in 1968; and she became what she lovingly refers to as "the first black bitch on television" when she joined the cast of Dynasty as the glamorous Dominique Deveraux. But Carroll feels that many people today don't realize the importance of these accomplishments. "When Halle Berry won the Oscar," she says, "there were all these people who had no idea what she was crying about. When I did Julia, there was criticism from everywhere. A lot of Black people didn't think it depicted the larger portion of the community, because I played a working nurse who had a great relationship with her son. They thought I was painting this fairytale. I didn't even realize the stress on me until I ended up in the hospital for nerves and fatigue."

She had previously faced threats during the Broadway run of No Strings, in which she was half of an interracial couple with Richard Kiley, and during the filming of Hurry Sundown in Louisiana. "People wanted to shoot the messenger," Carroll remarks. "Initially, those threats scared me because I didn't expect them. Eventually, I understood that whenever people are exposed to anything new, it can be frightening. But I still find the naivete of some people in this country staggering -- like all the brouhaha about Brokeback Mountain. We live in a cocoon."

TALKING THE TALK
John Heilpern, Gregory Mosher, and Christopher Shinn are among the notables scheduled to participate in Rachel Corrie and the Theatre of Public Opinion, a free discussion of the play and the controversy surrounding it, at Columbia University on April 7. Composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz will talk about his groundbreaking musical Pippin on Spotlight Night, April 9 at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle.

Married actors Rip Torn and Amy Wright will join Robert LuPone for a conversation entitled A Life in the Theater: 50 Years on April 10 at the New School. And Scott Bakula, who's starring in Shenandoah at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., will be the featured speaker at the National Press Club Luncheon on April 19.

The League of Professional Theatre Women's annual TV series Women in Theatre begins airing on CUNY on April 7. Over the course of 13 weeks, you can watch Newsday critic Linda Winer interview such theatre greats as Patti LuPone (April 7 & 9), S. Epatha Merkerson (April 14 & 16), Edward Albee (April 21 & 23), Estelle Parsons (June 16 & 18), and Zoe Caldwell (June 30 & July 2).

A TIME FOR LOVING
Plenty of solo shows are based on the performer's tragic childhood, but New York Times scribe Bob Morris jokes that he wasn't so lucky. "My parents never neglected me or laid a hand on me," he says. "It's a miracle I even have a show." Instead, his Assisted Loving -- which runs through this month at the D-Lounge, located in the basement of the DR2 Theater -- focuses on Morris' recent travails in supporting his widowed father as he reentered the dating world. According to Morris, "This show really addresses the universal issue of dealing with our parents getting older. I say a lot of what people are afraid to say: 'If you're happy then you're out of my hair.' But I think we're also guilty about not giving enough to our parents, and maybe that's a good kind of guilt to have."

Still, Morris admits that there are limits to father-son bonding: "At one point, when we were both single [Morris is currently partnered], my father suggested that we buy a place in Queens together. I know people do that all time in non-Western cultures, but we're so not that way. I recently came back from shuttling him around for four days, and I was ready to kill myself."

Making the transition from writer to actor was the fulfillment of a long-held dream for Morris but was not without its challenges. "I picked Gordon Greenberg to direct because I knew he was at good at working with actors," he says, "but I really took him to the mat on some of his cuts. Though I'm used to my work being touched -- every week, I look forward to a good, solid smack from my editors at the Times -- it took me awhile to understand what Gordon was after. But I think the show is in great shape now, and Gordon can finally go take a vacation in St. Bart's."

A BEAUTIFUL MIND
Considering how much pride Sandra Bernhard takes in how she looks these days, it's hardly surprising that the opening night of her new show Sandra Bernhard: Everything Bad & Beautiful at the Daryl Roth Theatre on Wednesday brought out celebrity admirers and fashion world royalty in equal measure.

The show-biz pack milling about the after-party at Splash was led by the one-and-only Liza Minnelli, along with Emmy Award winner S. Epatha Merkerson, her former Law & Order colleague Jill Hennessy, the always fabulous Michele Lee, Sopranos star Michael Imperioli and his set-designer wife Victoria Imperioli, playwrights Anna Deavere Smith and Charles Busch, and producers Daryl and Jordan Roth.

The couture contingent included three of the world's foremost designers, Donna Karan, Isaac Mizrahi, and Zac Posen (who designed the floral frock that Bernhard wears during the first part of the show), as well as its hottest new one, Project Runway finalist Daniel Vosovic. Also on hand were style maven Robert Verdi, socialite Ann Dexter Jones, and Interview editrix Ingrid Sischy.