Archive: Arts & Entertainment

ITHACA, NY - Pop culture, modern art and classroom technology combine for a fun and entertaining evening of dance titled "N2 Da Fu Cha Cha." This look into the future of dance will be presented at the Cornell Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts March 8-11. Tickets are on sale now by calling 607-254-ARTS.

"This dance concert is designed to appeal to a wide range of audiences - dancers, academics, scientists, and families," said Dance Concert Director Jim Self, Cornell Senior Lecturer in Dance. "It's focused on collaboration with students and faculty across the Cornell campus."

Smart Talk SMART TALK
By Dr. Viva Palaver

WAITING ON: As staff psychologist at the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired, I often notice the interesting emotional issues behind mistakes in usage.

Take the reputation of New Yorkers, for instance. I mean natives of New York City, of course, because in Texas, New York means the city, not the state.

Anyway, New Yorkers have a reputation here in the hinterlands for their aggressiveness and antagonism. But I suspect that deep down, they want to help and serve others.

My suspicion comes from their habit of waiting on line rather than in line. To wait on is to serve, as at table. These people are clearly waiting in a line of people, but they insist they’re waiting on line, as if their feet covered a stripe on the pavement.

Perhaps these good people believe they wait on each other by being patient and orderly in line. Isn’t that sweet?

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February 20, 2007 – (ITHACA) The wait is over! The Hangar Theatre is proud to announce that this summer’s Mainstage season will open with John Patrick Shanley’s award winning play, Doubt. “After many months of negotiating, we’re thrilled to finally be able to announce that the Hangar is bringing this captivating play to Ithaca,” says Artistic Director, Kevin Moriarty. “Doubt is the most lauded play of the past ten years,” he explains. “It is the winner of every major theater award, including the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it has just recently completed its sixteen-month run on Broadway.” The Hangar production, which runs from June 6th through the 16th, will be the play’s regional premiere and one of the first regional productions of the play anywhere in the country.

Set against the backdrop of a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, Doubt is the mystery-tinged story of a strong-minded nun faced with a difficult decision. Should she voice concerns about a priest’s behavior, even if she's not entirely certain of the truth? Writing in Newsday, Linda Winer called Doubt, "the #1 show of the year.” She praised it for being, “blunt yet subtle, manipulative but full of empathy for all sides…Doubt is a lean, potent drama...passionate, exquisite, important, and engrossing." Howard Kissel of the New York Daily News lauds the play as, “the richest piece of theater we've had in years." The New York Times referred to Doubt as “remarkable! Inspired, extraordinary, tight, absorbing … a superb new drama.”

ITHACA, NY: The Kitchen Theatre Company’s alternative series, KITCHEN COUNTER CULTURE will be featuring Dynamic Trinidadian performance artist and poet Roger Bonair-Agard as he shares stories, poems, and calypso over a bottle of rum in his newest work Masquerade: Poems of Calypso and Home. You may have seen him on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, don’t miss this rare local appearance! Friday, March 2nd at 8pm, Saturday, March 3rd at 8pm and Sunday, March 4th at 4pm. All performances will be followed by a talk back with the artist.

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This year the Lansing High School will perform the musical production of “42nd Street”. The 43 high school cast members will tap their way through the show to the music played by the 14 musicians that compose the live orchestra pit. They will tap dance in dazzling costumes with spectacular sets and backdrops as they “Shuffle Off to Buffalo”. Based on the 1933 classic movie by Busby Berkeley, about a totally unknown chorus girl, Peggy Sawyer, played by Katie Bruno, taking over for the aging leading lady, Dorothy Brock, played by Veronica Palladino who breaks her ankle and can’t perform the day before the show is to open.

As in all fairy tale stories, the producer Julian Marsh, played by Adam Beckwith pushes Peggy to learn the lines, the dances and the songs in 36 hours. The ever-present romantic leading man, Billy Lawlor played by Andy Lockwood, has taken Peggy under his wing and together they save the show.

Christopher DurangITHACA, NY -- The Cornell Department of Theatre, Film & Dance is pleased to present a symposium "An Uncommon Woman" honoring the life and work of Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein the weekend of February 23-24. The symposium is being held in conjunction with the production of her first published work, Uncommon Women and Others, being performed at the Cornell Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts February 14 through 25. At the time of her death, Wasserstein was appointed for a six-year term as the President's Council of Cornell Women Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large. All events are free and open to the public and will be held at the Cornell Schwartz Center.

"Wendy's work is frighteningly insightful, daringly witty and utterly human. This is a powerful combination. As an artist Wendy was always accessible and beloved--I know she intended (in her tenure as AD White Professor-at-Large) to share her work and her vision with our students and our community," said Theatre Professor and symposium organizer Beth Milles. A prolific writer known for her self-deprecating humor, Wasserstein wrote the popular plays The Heidi Chronicles and The Sisters Rosensweig as well as the books Shiksa goddess: or, how I spent my forties and Bachelor Girls, among many others. She was the author of the screenplay The Object of My Affection, which starred Jennifer Aniston.

Smart Talk SMART TALK
By Laconia Crisp, N.P.

VERY UNIQUE: Potential patients at the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired can often be screened with this simple test: Do they use adjectives with “unique?” If they do, they need about a week of treatment at the William Safire Center to relearn the word “unusual.”

They also learn that “unique” needs protection as a unique word. It means one of a kind and saves us the trouble of saying “one of a kind.” If something is unique, there’s nothing like it. That makes phrases like very unique and most unique redundant.

These patients leave saying highly unusual, most unusual, etc, understanding that modifying “unique” is fatuous, a lot like saying a little bit pregnant or surrounded on all sides.


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Aurora, New York - In honor of V-Day, a grassroots movement to end violence against women, Wells College and several other New York schools will be presenting "The Vagina Monoloques" on their respective campuses this month. The Wells event will take place on Saturday, February 24 and Sunday, February 25 at 7:00 pm in the Sommer Center, Smith Hall. Tickets are available at the door and cost $3 for students and $5 for general admission. A reception will follow with an opportunity to meet the student actors.

Based on interviews with more than 200 women, Eve Ensler's Obie-winning play "The Vagina Monologues" takes an intimate look at women's memories and experiences of sexuality and their deepest fantasies and fears. "The Vagina Monologues" has been performed at cities across the country and on hundreds of college campuses. It has inspired V-Day, the dynamic nationwide grassroots movement to stop violence against women. The play is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery.

The Upstairs Gallery’s new show “Pastel Variations” will open on February 27th, with a reception from 5-7 at the gallery that evening. A brown bag lunch will follow the next day, Wednesday February 28th at noon. This vibrant show includes pastel works by Carol Ast, Bill Benson, Anne Bialke, Terry Plater and Joanne Sonsire, five artists familiar to the Ithaca area. These talented artists demonstrate the variety of ways pastels can be used. The show will run through March 31st.

A sensuous mix of dance, text, images, sound and acting will explode upon the stage of Ithaca’s Kitchen Theatre as the Kitchen Sink presents Rêves/Rimbaud (a work in progress), for two performances only, Monday, February 19 and Tuesday, Feb 20 at 8:00 pm.

Co-presented as the inaugural offering of Theatre Incognita, and supported by an Individual Project Grant from the Cornell Council for the Arts, Rêves/Rimbaud is a collaboration between student artists at Cornell and Wells and artists from the Ithaca community exploring the life and poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, the great French symbolist poet and “bad boy” of literature.