Something From Nothing

 

Tabatha, 16, has become “obsessed with polka dots.”

She presents a large painting of dots in various shades of pink on a navy blue background and a ceramic tile with a similar motif, along with another tile decorated with the logo of her favorite band.

Her art work will be exhibited for the first time this week at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts.

 

photos by Nick Daggy/JournalNews

 

During August, artwork created by clients from Sojourner’s Adolescent Residential program will be on display in the Student Gallery of the Fitton Center. The clients received art lessons from the Arts in Common Program, which brings the arts to people who might otherwise not be able to participate. Artist Amy Edwards has been working with the Sojourner adolescent clients weekly with painting, drawing, origami and other projects.

 

A reception for the exhibition will be 5 to 7 p.m. Aug. 3. The Fitton Center is located at 101 S. Monument Ave. in Hamilton.

For Tabatha, who is in the seventh week of her second round of residential treatment at Sojourner, the art has been a way to express her thoughts through painting and drawing. She hopes it will keep her from having to come back to Sojourner again. Her first stay, when she was 13, lasted 18 weeks, she said.

“I sort of fell off the track and my grades plummeted down,” she said. “I started to re-use and I wrote a poem about one of my uses that a friend found and got frightened. She told the school and the school sent me here.”

The poem talked about the pills she had been using and ended with, “That’s the only thing I want to feel/It is the only good wonderful happiest feeling I have.”

But now she has another happiness in art.

“It’s a way I can express how I feel because I have a problem with talking,” she said. “It’s a way to express myself in a better way.”

Sojourner, a Butler County agency that provides chemical dependency treatment for families and individuals, operates six different programs in the area.

The Sojourner Residential Treatment home can house up to 16 adolescents. Many of them are sent their through the juvenile court system, but they also get referrals from area schools and Butler County Children Services.

Their holistic approach treats the whole person and the whole family through each stage of the recovery process.

Betty Huff, director of the residential treatment program and known to the dozen teenagers now staying there as “Grandma Betty,” said that her clients aren’t the bad kids people sometimes think they are.

“They’re just good kids who have made bad choices,” she said. “One of the reasons for doing the art show is to open up the world to them. Even though the Fitton Center is right here in Hamilton, they don’t experience that part of the world.”

Huff said she’s always on the lookout for volunteers who can come and share their hobbies or interests with her clients. In addition to art classes, they’ve learned landscaping and gardening, Spanish, dancing and other hobbies.

“We can help them get clean and sober. But if we don’t give them alternatives to drinking and drugs, then we’re not doing our job,” Huff said.

“Otherwise, when they get out of here, they go back to the same neighborhood and do the same things. We hope that they can learn to express themselves in a new way, and making art is new to a lot of the kids.

“They need to see that you can have fun not using drugs because a lot of them don’t believe that.”

Huff said that she visited the Fitton Center last year to discuss bringing art into the lives of her clients after two children touched her heart. She still can’t tell the story without tears welling up in her eyes.

“One of them was borderline mentally retarded and the other had a deceased mother,” she said.

The first one loved to draw pictures of cars, “low-riders,” even though he could barely read, and would constantly be showing them to Grandma Betty.

The second one was in class one day and was showing a classmate a poem he had written. The teacher tried to smooth over the disruption by saying, “Well, maybe you should read it in front of the class,” Huff said. “And so he did.

“It was heart-wrenching, about changing his life so he didn’t end up dead like his mother from a drug overdose.

“Everyone was crying, even the teacher.”

Huff began to look into options that would give her charges a creative outlet and a boost in their world view, so she went to the Fitton Center and had a meeting with Cathy Mayhugh, the director of exhibitions.

“I had her crying, too,” Huff said.

The first exhibition, which came before the teenagers started taking the Arts in Common classes, was admittedly crude, Huff said.

“It was mostly stuff on poster board, but it was our kids’ work and it was great,” she said. The artists got all dressed up for the event and even performed a rap that they had written.

“It was such a joy to see them go in there, see their artwork on the walls and to see the look on their faces,” Huff said. “That’s why I keep doing this: To see the looks on their faces.”

This year, the artists have had access to good art supplies and instruction from teachers from the Fitton Center’s Arts in Common program.

“For some of them, this is the most positive thing they’ve ever done,” said Brent Russel, Sojourner’s director of development.

“They just beam,” Huff said. “The parents come in her and you can see the pride in their faces, too.”

While some of the artists don’t always directly address the issues that got them to using drugs and alcohol, some tackle their problems head-on.

Julian, 16, spread out a life-size silhouette on the table. The figure painted in bright red is adorned with colorful swirls.

“It’s me,” he said, “just different colors. The red is about before I came in here. I had a lot of anger and rage about my past. All of the different colors represent a different mood.

“I call it ‘Mystery Man’ because people can never tell what kind of mood I’m going to be in.”

Making art, he said, “teaches you more about how you feel inside, and then you can look back and say, ‘That felt good to do that.’ When I was under the influence, I thought that was stupid. Now that I’m in here, it feels good to paint.”

He’s been counting the days of his stay at Sojourner, but is still looking forward to graduating in a few more weeks.

“I’m going to get a job, go back to school, and try to get my grades up as best I can,” he said.

He hopes that making art will be a way of helping him cope with the stress and with his changing moods.

“If I ever get in a depressed mood, I might just slap something together to see what I get out of it,” he said.

A version of this story originally appeared in the JournalNews, Hamilton, Ohio, July 31, 2006.

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Chaplin.

 

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Mix the talents of one of America’s finest humorists (actually, an expatriate living in France) with his wacky clown of a sister, add a cheese ball and a Mister Peanut costume and you have the makings of “The Book of Liz,” opening next week at Gabriel’s Corner in a New Stage Collective production.

The script is by Amy Sedaris, star of the HBO series “Strangers with Candy” and David Sedaris, author of “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” and frequent NPR commentator. The story concerns Sister Elizabeth Donderstock, a member of the who is Squeamish faith who makes cheese balls (traditional and smoky) that sustain her entire religious community of Clusterhaven.

But when Sister Elizabeth feels unappreciated among her Squeamish brethren, she decides to try her luck in the outside world.

“It’s a picaresque journey play as Sister Elizabeth encounters all these strange characters and tries to take their advice back home,” said director Alan Patrick Kenny. “Hers is a struggle we can all identify with.

“It has that ‘Strangers With Candy’ spoofy style of humor, but there’s also an immense amount of heart. I don’t like ridiculous for the sake of ridiculous, but this is also a celebration of the human spirit.”

It’s also a chance for four comic actors to stretch their chops. Jennifer Owen plays the Squeamish woman with a sweating problem while Adam Standley, Lindsey Valitchka and Dan Davidson play a variety of other characters. All four actors were recently featured in the NSC production of “The Full Monty.”

how to go
THE NAME: “The Book of Liz” by David Sedaris and Amy Sedaris.
THE LOCATION: Gabriel’s Corner, 1425 Sycamore St., Over the Rhine, Cincinnati.
THE HOURS: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, Aug. 3-26.
THE TAB: $15 adults; $8 students.
THE PHONE: (513) 826-2060; www.newstagecollective.com

A version of this story originally appeared in Go!, the arts/entertainment supplement to the JournalNews, Hamilton, Ohio.

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The Ovation Theatre Company is lucky to have Corinne Mohlenhoff Phillips as the leading lady of “As Bees in Honey Drown.”

She seems a little over-the-top in the early scenes, a little too Katherin Hepburn. But we soon learn why Phillips lays it on so thick. It’s because Alexa Vere de Vere, the character she plays, puts it on so thick.

Although the play, cleverly scripted by Douglas Carter Beane, has surprises to come, it’s pretty clear to the audience that Alexa is not all she seems to be. We know the type. The person who drops names a little too easily, who seems to have a ready excuse for every action that seems beyond the norm.

So when Alexa drops $1,000 in cash on Evan Wyler, a hot young writer who’s waiting for his income to catch up to his new fame, we know there’s something not quite right about Alexa.

But what is right about Alexa, a presentation of her that is enjoyable to watch and absorb, illustrates what’s so very wrong about the rest of this production of “As Bees in Honey Drown.”

We love watching Corinne work, but her kung fu is so much stronger than the rest of the cast that we feel a little embarrassed for them, a little pained at the beating they’re taking. I won’t name names, but some of the cast seemed to have trouble even remembering their lines. When Alexa is off-stage, the energy dwindles perceptibly, and we simply bide our time, hoping to keep some attention to the plot that transpires as we wish for her return.

The staging itself is uneven and klutzy. The action moves awkwardly around platforms using black boxes as a stand-in for real stage dressing. And every theater in Cincinnati should black-ball the person who decided on the gaudy wallpaper motif of the back drop.

There is one nicely staged moment at the beginning of Act II when Alexa’s nature is revealed in a sort of fugue among the ensemble cast, but otherwise, “As Bees in Honey Drown” is a mess.

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Daluni's handiwork showed up in a recent issue of Cin Weekly.

Megan Witt and Hailey Wagner seem to be enjoying Kids Eat Free night at Beef 'O' Brady's in Liberty Township.

David Sorcher | CiN Weekly

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I drive a lot and I see all kinds of nuttiness on the road. Even cause a little bit of nuttiness myself once in a while. This weekend, I began to notice that I was getting behind a lot of cars with their left brakelight out.

So I took my camera with me when I drove across Tylsersville Road to meet my son for lunch.

 Sure enough, I got behind three people on Tylsersville Road with their left brakelight out. I managed to capture images of two of them.

 

Is this a conspiracy of some kind?

Who's conspiring? And why?

Is this a message from God?

What is the universe trying to say?

Is it pure randomness to get behind at least 10 such cars in the course of a couple of days?

I think not.

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For an Irishman living in California, the opening of an Irish pub near your house is a gift from God and a taste of home. "I was there while the paint was still wet on the walls," said Steve Twigger. "It was like being in Heaven." Patrick Murphy was the manager of O'Brien's. "On opening night a beach bum walked into the bar," he recalls. "We said sorry we're not open just yet, we'll open the doors at 6 p.m. He said he was just dropping off a good luck gift for the bar and just wanted to say hello." The beach bum was Twigger and the gift was a framed Guinness poster and to this day is still hanging on the walls of O'Brien's on Main Street in Santa Monica. "In other words Twigger was looking for free booze," Murphy said. Because it was an Irish pub frequented and managed by real Irishmen, weekend jam sessions started popping up and a band that included Twigger on guitar and Murphy on vocals started to gel. "On St. Patrick's Day, 1996, we had our first proper show," Twigger said. Although he played guitar, he'd mostly worked in rock bands, not Celtic folk groups. "I learned 44 songs," he said. "Well, I learned around 20 and faked my way through the rest. "The crowd went crazy and we never really looked back." Gaelic Storm was born. In addition to playing the traditional Irish pub and folk tunes, they soon began writing their own as they traveled around the country. "It's been our goal to expand the genre and overlap it with mainstream music - or at least bring it out of the pigeon hole. "Just as 'jam-band' music has grown in popularity, people enjoy the musicianship, seeing real people play real instruments, not just music coming out of a box in the corner." An appearance in the movie "Titanic" boosted their efforts. A growing national interest in Irish and Celtic hasn't hurt. "It's still going strong all over the country," Twigger said. "New Irish festivals are still popping up." Their latest set, "Bring Your Wellies," refers back to the posters for the band's first gig at O'Brien's. Wellies are rubber boots.

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At first glance, "The Last Sunday in June" seems to suffer from all of the cliche's and stereotypes of gay culture.

 

In fact, when Nick Rose, who's directing the regional premiere for the Know Theatre Tribe, first got the assignment, he wasn't sure this was a play he wanted to do.

"On my initial reading, it came off like a bad 'Will and Grace' episode," he said. But trusting the judgment of Know's artistic director Jason Bruffy, he gave it a second read the next day, and it fell into place.

"It came to me that the purpose of the play was to be a commentary on that social group and the type of culture that comes out of the theatre devoted to that topic," he said. "There's a lot more to it than originally meets the eye. It's like a situation comedy that breaks down."

The Jonathan Tolins play concerns a gay couple that has been together for seven years and are about to make a great change in their life by leaving their trendy New York apartment - which happens to have a terrific view of the Gay Pride Parade held every year on the last Sunday in June - for the suburbs.

The play takes place on that last Sunday in June. Tom (Juan Carlos Diaz) wants to go to the Pottery Barn to buy stuff for the new house. Michael (Steven Hunter) wants to have a party for their last Gay Pride Parade.

The party wins. Friends come over. One character sits in the window waiting for the parade to begin. Another says, "You look like you could be in a play." The comment leads the party guests into a campy exploration of all of the stereotypes of gay culture that have been perpetuated by theater, television and movies.

"As the play progresses, a lot of social topics get brought up," Rose said. "Each character has an attitude about a topic and the play raises a lot of questions. At the end, your realize that you're watching a show about relationships and most of our social debates about homosexuality get dealt with from both sides of the issue.

"Even heterosexuals will feel that the story parallels their relationships, asking questions about the nature of marriage.

The cast also includes Ryan Imhoff, Aaron Kotte, Chris Guthrie, Joshua Fisher, Scott Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Holt.

This production does have matures themes and language, and the Know Theatre Tribe would suggest "PG-13" rating for the production.

 

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I had a MySpace.com Friend request from a Mississippi singer/songwriter named Maggie Brown. Of course, before I hit the "Accept" button, I had to make sure she was worthy of a Chicks With Guitars designation. Check out her samples and see if you're not as smitten as I am with her bluesy sound. And that black guitar is just too sexy.

 Then check out the bio from her website:

The Rebirth of Maggie Brown
by Patrick Wallace

 The year country music singer/songwriter Maggie Brown turned eighteen on Lake St. John in north Louisiana, her mother saw a sign in the sky from God.

"We had a pier, so we were both laying in the sun on the end of the pier, and she looks up and she says, `Look, a sign!' Up above was this big cloud, dark gray, shaped like an arrow pointing west," Maggie tells me.

The year country music singer/songwriter Maggie Brown turned eighteen on Lake St. John in north Louisiana, her mother saw a sign in the sky from God.

"We had a pier, so we were both laying in the sun on the end of the pier, and she looks up and she says, `Look, a sign!' Up above was this big cloud, dark gray, shaped like an arrow pointing west," Maggie tells me.

Maggie's mother, for years wearied by bouts with depression and attempts at suicide, believed that heavenly arrow pointed to the world's ultimate escape hatch: California. Her daughter, Maggie, had her own band and had been singing and writing music since she was fourteen. It was obvious that the girl was talented. Mama pinned her own hopes for salvation from pain on making Maggie a country music star. She kept these plans to herself, though, until the day she spotted a twelve-year-old bus for sale on the roadside.

"It was a big, avocado green Silver Eagle gospel tour bus with Sullivan Family written on the side. We all saw it. Momma suddenly said, `That's what I'm supposed to do!' and she turned the car around. I looked at my older brother and said, `Oh no.' She had forever been doing stuff like that, but not on this scale."

Her mother sold everything, packed Maggie and her two brothers, along with a couple of extra musicians, into the old gospel bus and left Ferriday, Louisiana. They made it as far as Salado, Texas, a little tourist town on the I-35 corridor between Dallas and Austin, where they stopped for a few days to visit friends.

Something about the place appealed to Maggie's mother. God told her to stay. Perhaps it was the irony of living hand-to-mouth in a gypsy bus in a trailer park while, a mile away, well-dressed tourists strolled past quaint bed & breakfast inns with their picket fences.

"I wrote a lot out there, heart-broken stuff, because I had... The drummer in my little high school band was my high school sweetheart. Of course, the first thing he did was to break my heart two or three times. And then I'm off in Texas with nothing to think about but the hot weather and how he broke my heart. Between that and my mama, I had a lot to think about. I'm married to that high school sweetheart now."

For the next four years, Maggie lived in that bus or a succession of dilapidated country rent houses while playing and singing in roadside bars and honkey-tonks all across Texas. Maggie was both star and prisoner.

"But a willing one," says Maggie. "I'd get a little inkling that my life was not quite normal or that there was something really better somewhere else, but most of the time I'd just float along, not make waves. You have to remember, Momma was so depressed before she got this great idea. Now she was happy. She had a purpose…If music is what cured her, then we did whatever we could to make sure it worked."

Today, Maggie Brown is a good-looking, confident woman with a wide, intelligent forehead, still-sad green eyes, and a kid's mouth full of braces and rubber bands. In her mid-thirties, she is still making up for her lost youth.

She is petite and naturally attractive without having to do anything obvious about it. There is no heavy makeup. She keeps her hair straight and unadorned, streaked mostly blond. This woman is the real deal. The way Maggie walks lets you know she's not afraid to carry her own amp and set up her own speakers, thank you. She has a tough, rapid step.

"You know what I like? I like surprising people, because they think, `Oh, look, it's just a girl with a guitar.' Sometimes I'll be carrying my guitar and someone'll say, `Sugar, whose guitar is that?' Or if a guy's with me, they'll ask him, `How long have you been playing?' So I like to surprise them. It's kind of a `watch this.' And I can do it," Maggie says with a smile. She sure can.

Maggie's melodies and lyrics are simple and direct, as brutally honest as a dog fight and every bit as compelling. When she sings the high notes, the sound has a tough sheen like hand-rubbed brass. When she sings softly, there's so much painful truth in that velvety burr it raises the hairs on the back of your neck. The years her mother made her wander in the wilderness of those Texas honkey-tonks and roadside bars have taught this girl how to cut through the smoke and chatter and beer haze and grab you by both ears. Don't expect her to let go, either.

One day, after four years touring Texas, Maggie's band was in a contest and met some people that were in a band called Bayou, one of whom was Trace Adkins. The two musicians pooled their bands and toured together in the big green bus for four increasingly troublesome months in the fall of 1987.
"We put our bands together because they needed a bass player and we needed... something…"

After touring Texas, Maggie and her mother left for Nashville in the middle of January 1988. Maggie began working on her songs with producer Jerry Crutchfield. Maggie's fondest memory of Nashville, however, is that she was finally living in a place with air conditioning and heat. Then the worst happened. Maggie's mother got meningitis. Within days she was dead.

"I was sitting there in that hospital room and it was raining. Momma had just died. I'm in a strange place. Been there two weeks. And it's February. It's cold. It snows occasionally. I'm looking out this hospital window thinking, `I am totally alone.' That was the first time in my life that I was on my own." Maggie was twenty-two. She was a caged song bird who had never done grocery shopping, hadn’t driven a car since high school, and didn't know how to take care of herself.

"I said, `God, if I stay here I'm gonna be dead in six months.' So I went home. I called my uncle. I didn't have a car or anything. He said, `I'll come get you.' He was there within twelve hours."

Back in Ferriday, Maggie had one goal: to be normal. "It felt so good to be at home with people that had good sense–not to beat Momma up–but to be in a normal routine where people got up and went to work." She went to college, she got married, she had a child. The most drastic change, however, and the most important of all, was that she stopped singing.

"I stopped singing for six years, almost out of spite, I think. Just 'cause she made me sing, so I'm just not going to do it anymore. All that part of my life, I knew when to get up: it's when [Momma] wakes me up." But did she succeed at being normal?

"No," Maggie laughs. "I did for a while, but then I went off on that tangent again–in a much calmer way than my mother would have. Well, I don't know about that."

Maggie's love of music had always been a natural part of her even when she was a tiny child. It gradually returned, and grew stronger and more urgent. Her husband was a quiet man who was not used to the life of bars and saloons and did not want his wife singing in them.

"Once in a while, I'd want to sit in with a band, and he'd say, `OK, just don't make a habit out of it.' So, we'd go in these bars, rough bars, and he would be scared to death. I would be, like, this is my home, this is where I grew up. 'Cause I played in bars since I was fourteen."

"So I started booking things, just outdoor things that I could do at least to play for tips. But I was playing. He tolerated it and the in-laws pretended like it wasn't happening. And it was Maggie Brown."

Walking back onto a stage with her guitar in hand, Maggie rediscovered herself. She found the true Maggie Brown, an independent woman who has decided for herself that she has a whole lot to tell the world through her music. As her uncle said when he heard her on tape again after so many years, "You sound like a growned woman."

It was not long before a producer heard talk about how good she sounded and snapped her up. Her first CD, "Maggie Brown," will soon be released. As you listen to it, you know that Maggie is finally on her way to the stardom her Momma dreamed about. It's there in every song, because Maggie Brown is finally singing for herself.

 

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The world of Evan Wyler, a hot new writer on the brink of celebrity, begins to unravel when the mysterious Alexa Vere de Vere breezes into his life.

She wants Evan to write the screenplay of her incredible life and sweeps the young author through New York City’s trendiest restaurants, hottest clubs, and ritziest shops.

But things are not always what they seem, according to directory Gina Kleesattel, who brings the Douglas Carter Beane comedy “As Bees in Honey Drown” to the Ovation Theatre Company stage this weekend.

“It poses the question ‘What would you do for fame and money?’ in a really fun way,” Kleesattel said. “It throws the question right out there. Would you compromose? Would you change your art?”

Although it’s a straight-ahead comedy, the director said that it moves at a musical theater pace. “I normally do musicals,” said Kleesattel, who teaches at Cincinnati’s School for Creative and

Performing Arts, directing that school’s annual musical, “but when I read this script several years ago, I knew that I had to do it, but needed to find the right venue.”

So when she approached Ovation about doing a show, this was on her short list, and ironically enough, had been slated for an Ovation production several years ago.

“This is one of the first shows we chose for our 2000-2001 season, but we were new and the show was new and we couldn’t get the rights,” says Ovation artistic director Joe Stollenwerk.

Corinne Mohlenhoff, a resident of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, plays Alexa.

“She’s a phenomenal actress,” Kleesattel said, “but on top of that she’s a really great person. She works so hard that she is the perfect example of the dedicated actress.”

“As Bees in Honey Drown” also features Brian Berendts as the hot shot gay writer who finds himself romantically drawn to Alexa’s allure. Local actors Mark Femia, Amy Harpring Joe Caesar and Tamara Young round out the cast.

how to go

THE NAME: Ovation Theatre Company presents “As Bees in Honey Drown” by Douglas Carter Beane.

THE LOCATION: 5/3 Bank Theatre, Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut, Cincinnati.

THE HOURS: 8 p.m. 21-22, 27-29; 2 p.m. July 23.

THE TAB: $18; $16 seniors; $14 students.

THE PHONE: (513) 621-2787; www.cincinnatiovation.com.

This story originally appeared in the Go! arts/entertainments supplement to the JournalNews, July 21, 2006).

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By Richard O Jones Staff Writer HAMILTON — Is the United States of America the New Babylon? Hamburg-based artist Axel Groehl spent two and a half years in Cincinnati, moving back to Germany late last year, with his wife Cornelia, who was transferred here temporarily for her job at Johnson & Johnson. While the Groehls admit that Germany and the rest of the Western world aren't far behind, Axel said he was taken by the rampant consumption taking place here and was inspired to create his "Babylon" series of paintings taking aim at this culture of excess. "In the Bible, in the story of Babylon, God says this is not good," he said, "and he destroyed the city. Maybe we are in the same state now." Cornelia said that her husband was overwhelmed by all the things going on in America, not only the consumerism, but the violence, greed and fear that seem to go along with it. Words and wordplay form an important part of Groehl's expression. In several of the 10 paintings that are part of "Babylon," Groehl included text and letters in both German and English. In others, the imagery of the painting expresses a visual pun. In the painting titled "Consumption," for instance, a wide-eyed man dons a hat that looks like a Coca-Cola can. He's a Coke-head. It was inspired by an incident he witnessed in which a young boy lost his money in a vending machine and was incredulous that it should run out, as if there should be a permanent flow of beverages. In the painting "Pet Markets," a pair of puppies nurse from a woman's breasts. "It amazeds us that there were supermarkets for pets in the United States," Cornelia said. "We don't have those in Europe. It seems that some Americans care more for their pets than for their own children." Groehl will present a gallery talk on his work during the opening reception of the exhibition, 3 to 5 p.m. today. "I will speak about the story of Babylon and the comparison to the modern world, the reason behind all of the consumption," he said. "This is the same thing that happened 5,000 years ago. The world has not changed." The talk will begin at 4 p.m. in the Benninghofen Theatre at the Fitton Center. Afterward, he will retire to the gallery for more informal discussions with those interested. The Fitton Center exhibition is the first time that the series has been exhibited. According to his wife, Axel Groehl is now at work creating sculptures of the characters he created for the "Babylon" paintings. Also opening today at the Fitton Center are: • "Li Hu: Paintings," born from literature, history and the artist’s personal experiences while living in China. • "Velma Morris: Lyrical Lights & Darks," poetic chair paintings in acrylic and oil pastel. Morris will also deliver a gallery talk, 6:30 p.m. Aug. 10. For more information, call the Fitton Center at (513) 863-8873 or visit www.fittoncenter.org. Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.

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That's here in the middle, in the pink, shaking her stuff. She's my baby girl, Rachel Michelle Jones.

She turned 16 yesterday, and tonight we're going to have dinner and see "As Bees in Honey Drown," at the Ovation Theatre Company.

Next week, she stars as Gertrude McFuzz in Encore Summer Theatre for Youth's production of "Seussical The Musical". Don't miss it.

how to go

THE NAME: "Seussical: The Musical."

THE LOCATION: Parrish Auditorium, Miami University-Hamilton.

THE HOURS: July 26-29, 8 p.m., and July 29-30, 2 p.m.

THE TAB: $12.

THE PHONE: (513) 737.PLAY.

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Even though they turn up in the long list of Academy Award categories, documentary short films are not standard fare in Cincinnati movie theaters.

Cincinnati World Cinema, however, has arranged a rare opportunity to exclusively screen the entire slate of Academy Award-nominated documentary short films, the first-ever presentation of its kind in this area.

Even though they turn up in the long list of Academy Award categories, documentary short films are not standard fare in Cincinnati movie theaters.

Cincinnati World Cinema, however, has arranged a rare opportunity to exclusively screen the entire slate of Academy Award-nominated documentary short films, the first-ever presentation of its kind in this area.

According to CWC's Tim Swallow, it may well be the first exhibition of its kind anywhere.
"Never before — according to the distributor and as best I can determine via my own research — has the public had the opportunity to see the entire slate of Academy Award-nominated documentary short films at one time and in one place," he said.

The films include:

• "A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin," which celebrates the career of America's pre-eminent radio dramatist Norman Corwin and highlights his broadcast commemorating VE Day in World War II.
• "God Sleeps in Rwanda," an uplifting but sobering film that shares the hope, resilience and dedication of the women of Rwanda as they rebuild their lives and their country.
• "The Death of Kevin Carter," set against the backdrop of apartheid in South Africa and starvation in the Sudan. This film investigates the tragic death of a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and highlights the risks to all first-responder professions that cover trauma and extreme human distress.
• "The Mushroom Club," a timely look at the consequences of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945.

Following the screenings, Norah Bagarinka, translator for the directors of "God Sleeps in Rwanda," will participate in a discussion of the films.

"Documentary filmmaking is probably the most personal of all modes of film creation," Swallow said. "Because the documentary process is typically small-budget, this means that often just one or two people write, edit, narrate conduct interviews and do all of the camera work.

"The 'Oscar Docs' directors are diverse in terms of their approach and accomplishment, producing a rewarding and enjoyable cinematic mix."

how to go
THE NAME: Cincinnati World Cinema presents Oscar Docs 2006.
THE LOCATION: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, 50 East Freedom Way, Cincinnati.
THE HOURS: 7:30 p.m. Monday, July 24 and Tuesday, July 25.
THE TAB: $8 adults; $6 students.
THE PHONE: (859) 781.8151; www.cincyworldcinema.org.

This story originally appeared in the Go! arts/entertainments supplement to the JournalNews, July 21, 2006).

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The pressure from being an award-winning songwriter emerges from unusual places.

Last year, Emily Strand found that her song "Lou" took the prestigious Grand Prize in the Folk category in the 2004 John Lennon International Songwriting Competition, chosen out of thousands of entries from all around the world. The judges included such noted performers as Elton John, Judy Collins, Foo Fighters and Björk.

Part of the prize package included disc reproduction and sleeve printing. Since she had just released her CD "Delay in the Connection," she held onto the coupons for a while, hoping to put together an album with her band, the Town, sometime this year.

"Well, as it turns out, the coupon had an expiration date on it and we weren't ready to put out a full-length record yet," she said.

But with a producer in the band (bassist Ashley Shepherd) and a couple of songs already in the repertoire, Strand and the Town recorded two new songs and re-cut some favorite tracks from her previous albums with the band.

The new songs include "Carry Away My Heart" and "Martha's Very."

The first one, she said, "I wrote when I first met the band, it was one of the first songs they were aboy to put their own energy into the creation of, so it's become one of our signature tunes."

"Martha's Very" was inspired by the Bible story of the two sisters who squabbled over the proper way to serve Jesus.

"The story rings about the Christian life, but also about life in general," Strand said. "Are we here to run around like crazy and try to get things done or are we meant to be more contemplative beings? "I lean toward Mary," the one who sat at Jesus' feet instead of scrambling around making preparations for his visit. "She may be right in her way of living and thinking."

But that begs the question: Would Mary have managed to get the EP manufactured before the expiration of the coupons?

(This story originally appeared in the July 14, 2006 issue of Go!, the arts/entertainment supplement to the JournalNews, Hamilton)

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In Katie Melua's native country of Georgia (that of the former U.S.S.R., not that of the peaches), there is a strong arts and cultural tradition. "In Georgia, they pay a lot of respect to the arts, but there's no music industry," she said, "so no one does it for a living."

Even though she left at the age of 8 on a "great adventure" with her father, a physician who jumped at the chance to escape the changing political and social landscape of the former Soviet state for the more stable climes of Ireland,

 Melua experienced enough of the rich cultural life there to instill a deep appreciation of music. But it wasn't until five years later, and another relocation to London, that she fell in love with song and decided that music would be viable career for her.

She began creating programmed song demos on her home computer, but decided to pick up the guitar a few years later just so that she could have more control over the sound on stage.

In 2004, her debut album, "Call Off the Search" sold over 1.2 million units and the 2006 follow-up, "Piece by Piece," entered the U.K. charts at #1 and has since reached six-times Platinum status, and after six months still charts in the Top Five.

With a sound that is equal parts cool jazz and mellow pop, Melua composed about half of the tracks on "Piece by Piece," and included a couple of interesting cover tunes.

We get a chance to hear what she can do with a standard in "Blues in the Night." "That's one the producer brought to me," she said. "I really liked it, but it was such a huge song, recored by everyone from Billie Holiday to Frank Sinatra, that I knew we'd have to do something special with it."

When the band dug into it, they gave it a slower, grittier feel than the versions she knew about, and when it came time to add the vocals, something really cool happened.

"The harmonica player and I recorded our parts at the same time, after the band had laid down all their tracks," she said. "So it became like a duet between us that really gave the song the extra thing I felt it needed."

(This story originally appeared in the July 14, 2006 issue of Go!, the arts/entertainment supplement to the JournalNews, Hamilton)

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This message forwarded to me from a friend:

Hello from russia..

Hello have a good day,
I am not sure where to begin,it is first time I try to use internet to meet the man but the thing is,that I will work abroad I can choice USA,Canada or Europe and I would like to meet the man to share free evenings and be my guide. My friends helped me to send a few letters to different address and I do hope that I am lucky to meet good and kind man.you should know that now I live in Russia and my goal is to leave this country because it is impossible to live here for young pretty woman.they tell I look well enough,I am blonde with blue eyes,I am natural blonde.I will send a few photos if you reply.

if you don't have wife nor girlfriend ,maybe we could try to meet? I am free I have not children .and I have not boyfriend here. I am 25 years old ,please write to me directly to my mail- Julia@mailwithoutwords.com See you soon ,with great hope.

MY REPLY:

Hello Julia:

I am so pleased to receive your message. I would love to show you around America. I hope you like music and dancing!!!

I am 30 years old, almost six feet tall, dark hair and green eyes. I have never been married and just broke up with a long-term relationship because I wanted to settle down and get married and she did not. I am an investigator for a big corporation in Cincinnati, Ohio, a job that requires a lot of travel and I would love to have a companion on my business trips.

Please send me a photo and I'll return the favor.

Sincerely
Jethro Peach

AND HER RESPONSE:

Hello stranger

I am so happy to see that you have decided to reply,I see it is very short letter. It is all right because you are astonished to get my letter.

I want you to know that I have only good intentions and I have not any secrets. The thing is that I will work in your country for three months or so and I would like to meet a nice man to fall in love or just be closest friends. I don't want to live in Russia because I have not any chances here,it is hardly possible to explain from first time but I want you to know my plans.I will work in any shop, bar or restaurant the agency that i am going through will suggest me some locations. It will be my choice in the end as to what option to go for.

So I will have a simple work till I improve my English. And I can choose any town of your area,agency will only help me to get a visa and all travel documents + some suggested placed to work in. My best friend last year met the man from the USA when she worked there for 12 months, too. She had two jobs. From morning till 4 pm she worked in amusement park and after it she worked as a waitress in some bar till midnight. She was very tired of course but made very good money there. It is special programm for young people who wants to work abroad and I think it is the right way for me ,I am lost here,and I think that Ilook pretty enough to find a better place .I want to repeat the same way,it is only my chance to meet a nice man.I want to work in USA or in Europe or any nice country. I am full of lans and different dreams and I want to share my life with good man because I'm also full of love and enderness,I know that I am not so beautiful like Hollywood Princess but I do hope to meet my Prince and I am sure he will be not be disappoined to meet me in the real life!

This is why I am going to go through the same way. Well,I will close this letter and I do hope to get your reply. I will leave russia in two weeks or so (I can't tell you everything exactly right now) and I would like to be sure that I have the man who waits for me there. I will work all day and I want to find a man to spend all free time together to get to know each other better.if you have any interest to meet me I will be more than happy to meet you too.

I will tell you all details about me and my life if you like my pictures and want to meet me! please send picture of you too!!!

I wrote to you with Julia@mailwithoutwords.com Now I write you from my personal mailbox doll@greatmailservice.com, please write me back here and here only. I will be checking it often.

Kiss you ,Natalia (this is my real name)!

SO TODAY I REPLY:

Dearest Natalia:

I was a little shocked to see your reply because I had a previous lady from Russia write to me whose name was Natalia. She just wanted to get me to send her money. But I am glad it is not you. You are also much prettier than her.

I will send you some photos when I get home tonight. I am at work now and do not have any pictures with me.

If you decide to come to America and let me sponsor you, you will not have to worry about jobs. I own my own business and am always in need of a good manager, especially an attractive young woman such as yourself. Even if your English isn't that good, you will do fine.

Thanks for writing back to me. Please ask me any question you want about where I live in Cincinnati or about myself. I do not know what to say, but I can answer questions okay.

sincerely,
Jethro

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My son in "Is There Life After High School"

His show, a Middletown Lyric Theatre production, has been nominated for a Cincinnati Entertainment Award. You can vote for it here: Cincinnati Entertainment Awards. The Community Theatre category is at the bottom. While scrolling down, I noted that I'd seen most of the plays under nomination except for those in the Musical Theatre category.

 

The photos are from Middletown Lyric Theatre's presentation of an excerpt at the recent OCTAfest convention. Sean Jones was honored with an Outstanding In Acting award for his performance. Theirs was one of three selected regionally to "go to State" later this summer.

Rachel was nominated for an Orchid Award for her role as Liesl in Greater Hamilton Civic Theatre's "The Sound of Music." She was robbed, really, but honored to be honored. See her next as Gertrude McFuzz in Encore Summer Theatre for Youth's production of "Seussical the Musical."  

Thanks to Joel Brown for the photos.

Makes a dad proud.... Really.

Both of my kids make me very proud. I'm glad they both got interested in theater, and doubly glad that they have the talent to shine like they do. The Clown Show gets by on nerve alone.

 

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“Last Days of Wonder” certainly isn’t the kind of record you’d go to for rich melodies and catchy arrangements.

Quite the contrary. The Handsome Family (the husband/wife team of Brett and Rennie Sparks) seems to have taken odd pleasure in creating a series of slow, meditative songs focused more on the poetry of mundane surrealism than musicianship. In fact, if they hadn’t thrown in the occasional waltz-time composition, it might be easy to think that “Last Days of Wonder” is just one very long song.

“Last Days of Wonder” certainly isn’t the kind of record you’d go to for rich melodies and catchy arrangements.

Quite the contrary. The Handsome Family (the husband/wife team of Brett and Rennie Sparks) seems to have taken odd pleasure in creating a series of slow, meditative songs focused more on the poetry of mundane surrealism than musicianship. In fact, if they hadn’t thrown in the occasional waltz-time composition, it might be easy to think that “Last Days of Wonder” is just one very long song.

Indeed, when they do try to inject variations on the drone, the addition of a banjo or a saw played with a bow, for instance, the results seem quirky and disconcerting.

What makes “Last Days of Wonder” interesting is Rennie’s lyrics, mixing common details from the world around with a strange sense of foreboding.

The set begins, appropriately enough, with “Your Great Journey,” in which the narrator is caught up in the largeness of the universe, the complexity of life and the fact that he seems to be disappearing before his own eyes. The narrator in “Tesla’s Hotel Room” finds empathy with the science-driven imagination of Nikola Tesla, drawing word pictures of him nursing sick pigeons while dreaming of a deathray that will disintegrate matter.

There’s an engaging sort of paranoia of “All the Time in Airports,” or perhaps it’s just longing for a lost loved one as the narrator keeps catching just a glimpse of someone at a nearby x-ray machine as he pulls off his shoes, or sees the ghost of his companion flipping through magazine pages or passing by on the moving sidewalk, “But each time I get too close, you always disappear.”

While “Last Days of Wonder” isn’t likely to become a favorite party record, it’s an interesting meditative set, full of humor and observations about the bizarre coincidences and contradictions in our lives.

(This review originally appeared in the Go! section of the JournalNews, June 30, 2006)

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It is often difficult for an artist to find venues for works that are extremely political, especially when they espouse a point of view alternative to mainstream thinking.

But for the past three years, Cincinnati physician and artist Saad Ghosn has organized "SOS Art," a series of exhibitions that have allowed artists to speak out on a variety of social, political and highly personal issues.

"They only remained up for a very short period of time, so not many people had a chance to see them," Ghosn said.

So this year, a retrospective of the previous shows includes works by 50 regional artists.
Although the timing suggests that the war in Iraq was the inspiration for "SOS Art" — which stands for "Save Our Souls," Ghosn said — the works also take aim a lot of local and regional issues. Timothy Thomas, the 19-year-old black man who's death at the guns of the Cincinnati Police Department was instrumental in sparking the 2001 riots, makes several appearances, for instance, including Steven Fox's photo montage titled "Justice," which depicts a Cincinnati Police badge half-buried in a mountain of human skulls.

Jimi Jones' painting "The Riot: A Tale of Two Mothers" compares the grief of two mothers, 2000 years apart, Jesus' mother Mary and Thomas' mother Angela Leisure.

"Both men were descended from slaves and members of minority groups," said Jones' statement. "I grieve for both of them."

Next to that, however, is a painting sporting the words and title "Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction," an ironic statement made by President George W. Bush in regard to the war in Iraq and the goal of democratizing the Middle East, begging the question of whether the United States, the only nation to have ever detonated an atomic weapon on an enemy, is a free nation or not.

One of Ghosn's own works in the exhibition, "We Will Make Oil Out of Their Bodies" refers to unsubstantiated rumors that Nazi death camp operators used the dead bodies of Holocaust victims to make soap. His construction using "corpses" of dismembered fashion dolls, however, clearly refers to the death of Middle East innocents in the battle for that region's oil reserves.

Jenny Ustick's "Leichen Verbrannt" was inspired by a trip to Auschwitz, one of the Holocaust sites, which is now "simultaneously a solemn memorial and a tourist destination."

Ghosn said that while the works in "SOS Art" are highly provocative, they haven't generated a lot of controversy.

"I think that the people who disagree have just looked the other way," he said.

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As a break from the frothy musical fare of summer, New Edgecliff Theatre offers sex, sex and more sex in "The Blue Room," opening this weekend at the Columbia Performance Center.

It's actually sex times 10 in this adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's 100-year-old erotic masterpiece, an ironic commentary on the gulf between dreams and reality. 

Hare sticks to Schnitzler's device of the "daisy chain," according to director Elizabeth A. Harris, in which two actors play five different characters each in 10 different scenes. At each scene change, one character is left behind to meet with someone new for his or her next sexual encounter.

The first scene, for instance, is between a prostitute, played by Elizabeth Taylor, and a cab driver, played by Mike Hall. In the second scene, Taylor plays the cab driver's next date, and so on until the final scene, when the Aristocrat has a liaison with the prostitute of the first scene, bringing the play full circle.

"We move up the social class scale with each scene," Harris said. "It all takes place in the course of a year in present-day London."

Schnitzler's original, written in 1903 but not produced until 1920 in Vienna where it met with great controversy for its sexual content.

"The theater was closed down and the actors arrested on obscenity charges," Harris said, but said that Hare's adaptation doesn't shy away from the content. "If anything, he's beefed it up a little."

While changing the setting from Vienna to present-day London, Hare adheres to Schnitzler’s theme that sexual conquest by itself is more likely to empty the soul than fulfill it, showing how sundry couplings inevitably lead to remorse, regret, or a brutal indifference to the object of passion.

"It's about how most people don't really like who they are and are constantly trying to change," Harris said. "But using sexual intimacy to fill a hole in your life often leaves you even emptier than when you start."

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