An actor and director – his staging of Dominique Morriseau’s “Skeleton Crew” is about to open at the Atlantic Theater – he rejects petty domestic drama, asserting that no writer who’s endured oppression would create such a scenario: “That’s why you never see a brother writing a play about falling in love with a goat or something like that.” Is this a cavalier dismissal of Jane Austen, a call for a theater of stronger convictions, or a too narrow view of goat romance? Hear his savvy argument, his tales of August Wilson, his harmonica.

•  PERSON: Gregory Hines
•  PLACE: 32 Wasson Ave., Lackawanna, NY
•  THING: inscribed copy, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
•  RANDY’S PLACE: this barber shop