Author Archives: Laura

Theater Thursday 07/10/08: Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner ?

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Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner , directed by Stanley Kramer, is a 1967 comedy-drama film starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, and Katherine Houghton. The movie concerns Joanna “Joey” Drayton, a young white American woman (Houghton) who has had a whirlwind romance with Dr. Prentice (Poitier), an African American man she met while on a holiday in Hawaii. Prentice plans to fly to New York later that night then on to an assignment in Switzerland. Joanna plans to join him there, soon to be … Continue reading →

Theater Thursday: Children of a Lesser God

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Children of a Lesser God is a love story about a speech teacher who falls for a beautiful yet distant deaf girl in a small New England school for the deaf, and the obstacles that they face due to their differences. William Hurt plays James Leeds, a renegade teacher with an unconventional approach to education and a resume that includes stints as a bartender and a disk jockey. Upon his arrival, he is warned by school administrator Dr. Franklin Philip Bosco not to get creative … Continue reading →

Theater Thursday 05/15/08: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

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All Neal Page (Steve Martin) wants to do is make it home from a business trip in New York City and spend Thanksgiving with his family in Chicago. Instead, he finds himself rerouted from New York’s La Guardia Airport to Wichita, Kansas. Stuck in Wichita, with no other options, Neal decides to share a room in a fleabag hotel with Del Griffith (John Candy), a shower-curtain-ring salesman and fellow stranded traveler. Although Neal finds Del to be an amusing companian, he just can’t seem to … Continue reading →

Theater Thursday: Philadelphia

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Philadelphia is an Academy Award-winning 1993 drama film revolving around HIV/AIDS. It was written by Ron Nyswaner and directed by Jonathan Demme. The film stars Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Joanne Woodward, Jason Robards, Antonio Banderas, Lisa Summerour, Chandra Wilson, and Mary Steenburgen. It was partly inspired by the story of Geoffrey Bowers, an attorney who in 1987 sued the law firm Baker & McKenzie for unfair dismissal in one of the first AIDS discrimination cases. Andrew Beckett is a young up-and-coming lawyer who has just … Continue reading →

Theater Thursday: 2001: A Space Odyssey

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The Dawn of Man At the dawn of man, a primitive tribe lives by hunting and gathering in a desert. The tribe discovers a black monolith, which they approach and examine. The implication is that the monolith is of extraterrestrial origin, and it imparts the knowledge of tools on members of the tribe. After the discovery, one of the tribe members scavenges a bone from a pile and uses it as a club, discovering the first tool. After the discovery, one of the tribe members … Continue reading →

In The Studio: Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks

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Dan Hicks, (born December 9, 1941, in Little Rock, Arkansas), was the son of a career military man. At age five, Hicks moved with his family to California, eventually settling north of San Francisco in Santa Rosa, where he was a drummer in grade school and played the snare drum in his school marching band. At 14, he was performing with area dance bands. While in high school, he had a rotating spot on Time Out for Teens, a daily 15-minute local radio program, and … Continue reading →

Theater Thursday 08/14/08: Rebel Without a Cause

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One of my favorite films growing up was the classic, “Rebel Without a Cause”. James Dean was awesome, but there was always something wonderfully haunting about Natalie Wood. She was made for this film. As a matter of fact, she was made for any film she was in. The story goes like this: Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is a film directed by Nicholas Ray that tells the story of a rebellious teeager played by James Dean, who comes to a new town, meets a … Continue reading →

Poetry Wednesday 06/17/09: Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz

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Link: www.ronmccurdy.com Jazz Montage: A Multimedia Concert Performance of Langston Hughes’s Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz The Langston Hughes Project is a multimedia concert performance of Langston Hughes’s kaleidoscopic jazz poem suite. Ask Your Mama is Hughes’s homage in verse and music to the struggle for artistic and social freedom at home and abroad at the beginning of the 1960s. It is a twelve-part epic poem which Hughes scored with musical cues drawn from blues and Dixieland, gospel songs, boogie woogie, bebop and … Continue reading →

Mary Travers

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BOSTON – Mary Travers, one-third of the popular 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary who were perhaps best known for their hit “Puff (The Magic Dragon),” died in a Connecticut hospital after battling leukemia for several years. She was 72. The band’s publicist, Heather Lylis, said Travers died Wednesday at Danbury Hospital. Bandmate Peter Yarrow said that in her final months, Travers handled her declining health with bravery and generosity, showing her love to friends and family “with great dignity and without restraint.” “It … Continue reading →

Cool Quotes by Albert Einstein

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“Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.” “Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.” “Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a … Continue reading →