Rock icon Melissa Etheridge announces solo off-Broadway show

NEW YORK (AP) — Rocker Melissa Etheridge has found a new stage: The Grammy- and Oscar-winner will unveil a solo show mixing her music and stories off-Broadway.

“Melissa Etheridge: My Window – A Journey Through Life” will play 12 performances only starting Oct. 13 at the midtown multi-stage venue New World Stages.

“While I’ve been telling my life stories through my lyrics and concert tours for many years, this is going to be something new for me,” Etheridge said in a statement.

“I cannot wait to feel the exchange of energy and deep connection that’s provided by an intimate theater experience. That’s going to rock.”

Etheridge, best known for her songs “Come to My Window” and “I’m the Only One,” has been smitten by theater all her life and even stepped into the Green Day musical “American Idiot” for eight shows in early 2011 on Broadway, replacing Billie Joe Armstrong.

Like Bruce Springsteen’s recent Broadway run, her new show will have songs and stories, “from tales of her childhood in Kansas to her groundbreaking career highlights – with all of life’s hits and deep cuts between,” producers said in a statement.

Etheridge’s career and life have many twists, including winning an Oscar for writing “I Need to Wake Up” from Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” being diagnosed with breast cancer, coming out when the music industry was less evolved and receiving two Grammys.

Nicholas Evans, ‘The Horse Whisperer’ author, dies at 72

LONDON (AP) — Nicholas Evans, the British author of the bestselling novel “The Horse Whisperer,” has died at 72, his representatives said Monday.

United Agents said Evans died “suddenly” on Aug. 9 following a heart attack.

Published in 1995, “The Horse Whisperer” was Evans’ debut novel and sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. The story of a trainer hired to help an injured teenager and her horse back to health was adapted into a Hollywood movie starring Robert Redford as the title character and Scarlett Johansson playing young rider Grace MacLean in her breakout role.