Ten voices, from a Blasket Island seanchaí to a Harlem street poet, who carried the world's stories through a century that kept trying to silence them.

Ten pairs of hands, from the bunraku stage to the television studio, that taught the modern world how to believe in a puppet again.

Ten performers and showmen who turned the traveling circus, from the 1870s to the 1970s, into the greatest show on earth, one impossible feat at a time.

Ten comedians who taught the movies how to be funny, from the pratfalls of the silent screen to the first wisecracks of sound.

Ten writers, from a Norwegian parlor to a Lagos courtyard, who taught the modern stage what a play could carry.

Ten directors who, between the 1940s and the 1980s, made cinema a language the whole world could speak.