Something From Nothing

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The Shadowbox Cabaret shifts gears a little bit this autumn with a kinder, gentler Halloween show.

“We switched the name from 'Freak Show’ to 'Haunted House Party,’ ” said general manager and featured performer Stacie Boord. “Even though we’ll still have the traditional Halloween characters — Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man — the show has a lighter feel.

“It’s still a very high energy show, but not as dark,” she said. “I think it will have a broader appeal.”
Sketches include “Return of the Spazoids,” in which a group of junior high school age boys and girls accidentally attend the same party.

“You have a clash with the whole hormonal thing with the boys and girls who are a little bit older and way more mature,” Boord said.

A new breakfast cereal promises to clean up those 'potty mouths’ in “Soapy Jacks,” and everyone’s favorite southern motor-mouth scares some sense into some classic ghouls as “Dr. Fill” takes on the Wolfman and Dracula.

“Of course, Vera and Laverne (the trailer park queens) are back, awaiting the appearance of a UFO,” Boord said.
Shadowbox’s house band BillWho? will perform an eclectic mix of tunes, including songs from  Led Zepplin, Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder and No Doubt.

“It’s a nice mix of rhythm ’n’ blues and classic rock,” Boord said.

• WHAT: “Haunted House Party”
• WHERE: Shadowbox Cabaret, Newport on the Levee, Newport, Ky.
• WHEN: Through Nov. 24
• COST: $30 adults; $20 students/seniors/military
• MORE INFO: (859) 581-7625; www.shadowbox
• cabaret.com

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Press release

Celebrating its 21st anniversary, the Robert S. Duncanson Society is pleased to introduce this year’s Duncanson Artist-in-Residence, playwright and screenwriter Keith Josef Adkins. Born in Cincinnati, Adkins earned his bachelor of arts in communications from Wright State University and his master of fine arts from the University of Iowa’s prestigious Iowa Playwrights Workshop.

Adkins has had plays produced in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Cleveland. Recently, the Tony Award–winning Alliance Theater of Atlanta honored him with its first August Wilson Memorial Award, which celebrates Wilson’s commitment to history, language, and the black experience. The commissioned play, The Safe House, is slated for production in its 2008–9 season.

Last year, Adkins’s play Farewell Miss Cotton was produced at the Black Dahlia Theater in Los Angeles and received favorable reviews. The Sloan Science Foundation in conjunction with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival commissioned Adkins to write The Patron Saint of Peanuts, which explores the life of renowned botanist George Washington Carver and his turbulent experience at Tuskegee. Other plays by Adkins include Pitbulls (Bay Area Playwrights Festival—Honorable Mention, Mark Taper Forum New Plays Festival), Salt on Sugar Hill (Mark Taper Forum New Plays Festival), and Cobra Neck (Humana Festival).

As a screenwriter, Adkins was commissioned by Starburst Films to write the original screenplay Walking with Aliens, which tells the story of a man’s return home to search for his missing mother and estranged father. Adkins also wrote and directed two short films, Mother’s Book and Invisible Scream, shot on location in Cincinnati. Both films have been official selections at the Independent Black Film Festival in Atlanta, Reelheart International Film Festival in Toronto, Ohio Independent Film Festival in Cleveland, Great Lakes Film Festival, Arizona Black Film Festival, Black International Cinema in Berlin, and SE Manly Film Festival in Los Angeles. Love Aquarium, a film Adkins co-wrote about three couples challenged by modern love, has screened at the Hamptons Film Festival, Harlem International Film Festival, and Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles among many others.

Adkins has also written for the popular and critically-acclaimed television series Girlfriends. His episode X Does Not Mark the Spot, which dealt with the drug Ecstasy, garnered a Prism Award nomination for the accurate depiction of drug, alcohol, or tobacco use or addiction in film, television, interactive, music, video, and comic book entertainment. He and Girlfriends were nominated for an NAACP Image Award as well as a BET Comedy Award.

Adkins currently spends time between Brooklyn and Los Angeles. He will be in residence at the Taft Museum of Art during the first two weeks of November, when he will share his talents with Taft members, the public, community and school groups.

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Chrissy Collopy makes it up as she goes along, improvising with paint and canvas the way a jazz saxophone player finds the pocket and grooves.

“Mostly, I start on the canvas and just keep going with my feeling and as things come to me,” said the Oxford artist. “I appreciate a lot of thing in  nature and that’s where my inspiration comes from.

“You go into your zone and release yourself, cement yourself to a higher power and the energy that is all around you, so that it all becomes part of you. It’s really hard to explain because it’s something bigger than myself.

Sometimes, the images come so fast that she doesn’t even know herself what the painting is about until she steps back and starts analyzing it herself and with a black marker writes notes on the white edges of the canvas frames.

“Sometimes, the meaning of the painting doesn’t even come to me until I get the text out,” she said. “I can’t ever say myself when a painting is done because it will tell me.”

And when she starts telling visitors the story of a painting, it comes out almost trance-like, a stream-of-consciousness poem: “You see Everywoman and a man coming together as lovers. You see her sisters below and they’re jealous for the love that she has. Blood is thicker than water. Butterflies and swans eyeing her, seeing all of her life and death, opening a window through all time. This is the person in her love that lights the fire that warms the soul,” she said of one of her newer paintings titled “Soul Food.”

For her solo show Friday evening at the Creative Gallery in Cincinnati, Collopy chose the title “Reflections” after she realized that not only are her paintings reflections of her own life, but also that reflected images figure prominently in her latest work.

“It came to me,” she said, “but I can’t say I wasn’t mindful of it already because I had already started working on it in my paintings.”

In addition to nature, Collopy said she finds inspiration in the works of Salvador Dali, Picasso, Gustav Klimt, Georgia O’Keefe and British painter Cecily Brown.
Born in northern Indiana, Collopy’s family moved around a lot because her father had “itchy feet,” as he likes to say.

When she was 14, he moved to New Mexico and she stayed in Oxford. It was also around that time that she started taking art seriously.

“That was the age when I realized that I can’t separate myself from art,” she said. “I painted for fun as a kid and never stopped. I wrote and drew in sketchbooks and I realized that I was getting pretty good at it, but I’m still learning.

When she was 20, she took some classes at Miami University when she was 20 from Lon Beck in Oxford and Ed Montgomery in Hamilton, but soon gave up the academic path and began studying more informally with artists she knows, especially Bill Berry, who runs the art supply store in Oxford.

“I wanted to work on my own stuff and they want you to learn through the professor,” she said. “I felt like I just needed to paint and draw.”

how to go
WHAT: Reflections: A solo show by Chrissy Collopy
WHERE: Creative Gallery, 1319 Main St., Cincinnati
WHEN: 6 to 11 p.m. Sept. 28
COST: No admission fee
MORE INFO: www.chrissyart.4t.com/

 photos by Nick Daggy

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Growing up in “the middle of nowhere” in Kansas, Jenn Franklin’s only outlet was playing with bands in the biker bars.

She first started when she was but 12 years old, far too young to even be in the places she was playing.

“I had a pretty mature voice and I looked older than I was,” she said, “so I was able to get into bands without too much trouble.

“The other musicians were always a little bit skeptical when they first heard how young I was, but once they heard me, they took me in and watched out for me.

“Of course, my parents always tagged along.”

By that time, however, she was already an experienced songwriter, having started a songwriting group at her elementary school in the fourth grade. She and her colleagues were confident enough in their abilities that they looked in the Hays, Kansas, phone book for recording studios and sent in a dozen songs, certain that they would be the next big thing. And amazingly enough, she got some of her songs recorded.

“I don’t know if prodigy is an accurate word, but I was obsessed by music and getting recorded,” she said.

“When I got to Hays, they sat me down and wanted to know where I got my inspiration, but I didn’t have an answer. It just came out of me from listening to Top 40 radio and trying to sound like what I was hearing. I knew all the cliches and knew how to put a song togehter.”

Even now, she says, she can look back at some of those first songs and see how they got the attention they did.

“The lyrics weren’t great, but the melodies were strong,” she said. “I didn’t have a whole lot of experience or influence to draw from. Later, I learned how to find more within myself.”

She eventually made her way to Nashville, which she felt was centrally-located for what she wanted to do with her music, and she frequently performs at festivals like MidPoint Music Festival, where she’ll play at the Pizza Bar, 1207 Main St., 10:30 p.m. Saturday.

how to go
WHAT: MidPoint Music Festival
WHERE: Various venues in downtown Cincinnati
WHEN: Continues through Saturday
COST: $10 one-day all-venue wristband; $25 three-day all-venue wristband; $100 full delegate badge
MORE INFO: (877) 572-8690; www.mpmf.com

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As a teenager in Richmond, Ind., violinist Annalisa Pappano started feeling a little frustration at the baroque music she was playing and not enjoying very much.

But when she got to the Interlochen Academy, the renowned Michigan music school, she took an early music course to help her find some insight and perhaps get over her block.

A teacher there handed her a strange-looking instrument called the “viola da gamba,” and Pappano’s outlook — and aspirations — changed in that moment.

“I caught the early-music bug,” she said. “I found my voice in the viola da gamba.”

The viola da gamba, she said, is a family of instruments that are more related to the guitar and lute than the violin and viola. With five-to-seven strings tuned like a guitar and a fretted neck, the viola da gamba family is also played with in under-hand bowing style, she said.

The downside, however, is that it’s difficult to find people to play with. When she came to Cincinnati seven years ago, Pappano found herself a rare musician in a city that is relatively full of musicians.

“But it’s not like you can call up another player who knows about these instruments,” she said. “So started my own group.”

She named the group the Catacoustic Consort, a sort of plastic band that allows her to not only play with like-minded musicians but also produce concerts.

“We bring in musicians from all over the world for Renaissance and baroque music,” she said.

Her performance in Oxford this weekend with the Morpheus Chamber Orchestra, however, grew out of her association with Miami University to spread the gospel of the viola da gamba, lirone and other old-style instruments, as well as the unusual techniques used to play them.

“Approaches to music have changed over time,” she said. “So much of what you do now is the opposite of my techniques.”

how to go
WHAT: Annalisa Pappano with the Morpheus Chamber Ensemble
WHERE: Souers Recital Hall, Center for Performing Arts, Miami University, Oxford
WHEN: 5 p.m. Sunday
COST: Free
MORE INFO: (513) 529-3067; www.catacoustic.com

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“Snapshots” begins with Sue going to the attic to retrieve a suitcase so that she can move out of the house and a 30-year relationship.

Then her husband Dan walks in on her, and in the process they spill a box full of photos that leads them into a review of their friendship, courtship and marriage.

But “Snapshots,” which is being reviewed from a preview performance, not only refers to the photos they find, but also to the career of Stephen Schwartz as it culls material from his entire career, from his breakthrough “Godspell” to his latest Broadway hit, “Wicked.”

Three actors play Dan and Sue in different stages in their lives. Young Susie and Danny are played by Denise Devlin (recently seen in the Jersey Productions version of “Grease” at the Carnegie in Covington) and Scott Hunt (a Human Race resident artist). The college-age and honeymooning Susan and Daniel are by Kristy Cates (who was in the original cast of “Wicked” and played Elphaba in the Chicago production) and Michael Marcotte. The mature Dan and Sue are played by Stefanie Morse and Jay Montgomery.

What “Snapshots” does very well is putting the old tunes in a new context at various stages in the couple’s relationship. “Popular,” one of the signature tunes from “Wicked,” concerns 10-year-old Susie taking the new kid on the block under her wing, and “All for the Best” from “Godspell” is sung while Susan and Daniel are on a double date with other people. “The Spark of Creation” from “Children of Eden” is not about the beginning of the world in this show, but about Susan’s pregnancy. Other tunes come from “Pippin,” “The Baker’s Wife,” “Rags” and other Schwartz productions.

The assimilation is done so well that if you didn’t recognize the tunes from the other shows, it wouldn’t be obvious that they are borrowed.

What “Snapshots” doesn’t do so well is make a good case for Sue’s decision to leave a marriage that seemed to be working most of the time. Sue and Dan seem to drift apart entirely during the course of one song (“Code of Silence”), dispatched all too conveniently when such matters take years to transpire.

But with top-notch performances by all — but especially from Devlin, who also creates a host of hilarious secondary characters, and Morse, who has a chilling, emotionally-charged delivery — “Snapshots” is an engaging and entertaining production, enjoyable on many levels.

how to go
WHAT: “Snapshots” by Stephen Schwartz, book by David Stern
WHERE: Human Race Theatre Company, Loft Theatre,
WHEN: Through Oct. 7
COST: $15.50-$34
MORE INFO: (937) 228-3630; www.humanracetheatre.org

Scott Hunt and Denise Devlin star in
"SNAPSHOTS: A Musical Scrapbook."
Photo: Scott J. Kimmins

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“I heard this play before I saw it,” says director Bekka Eaton of “The Trojan Women.”

“It’s a very noisy play — there’s war, trumpets sounding, women crying,” she said.

To that end, she has created a “soundscape” that runs through the production, and boosted the capabilities of the Gates-Abegglen Theatre at Miami University with the installation of subwoofers to get a deeper, more resonant sound.

“The Trojen Women” takes place after the fall of Troy and concerns the survivors, the women, who are in captivity waiting to be shipped off as slaves, sometimes to the men responsible for the deaths of their husbands and children.

Eaton said that when Euripides wrote the play, he was bucking the conventions of his day by focusing on victims and not writing about acts of heroism.

“Even when he wrote it, the war was in their deep past, so he was using it not as history, but to address some of the issues about the Peloponnesian War that was going on in his day,” she said.

But even though the anti-war sentiments are there for the taking, Eaton said she did not set out to proselytize with this production.

“It’s an absolutely brilliant play and that’s reason enough to do it,” she said. “There is always going to be wars and rumors of wars, but I believe that plays work better when you ask a question rather than make a statement. I don’t need to do anything to it. The play tells us, ‘This is what war does. Do we really want to keep doing it?’”

how to go
WHAT: “The Trojan Women” by Euripides, translated by Edith Williams
WHERE: Gates-Abegglen Theatre, Miami University, Oxford
WHEN: Oct. 4-14
COST: $9 adults, $8 seniors, $6 for Miami students and youth under 18
MORE INFO: (513) 529-3200; www.tickets.muohio.edu.

Photo: Jenna Watson as Hecuba and Catherine Turco as Andromache

 

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Bill Engvall always wanted to be a singer, but knew he didn’t have the voice for it. And he wanted to be an actor, but growing up in small Texas towns limited his opportunities in that direction.

So he set his sights on becoming an educator, but before he landed a job as a teacher, he took on work as a disc jockey in a Dallas night club that was attached to a comedy club.

“I went up to the amateur night with some friends just to watch and after a couple of beers, I let them talk me into going up,” he said. “I don’t remember what I did, except that I did five minutes and ended up with the job as house emcee.”

Part of his duties was to pick up the headlining comedians at the airport and take care of them while they were in town, then take them back to the airport.

“This was in 1982, the days when Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy were all touring,” he said. “I liked it. It was a fun job and a cool hobby. I got to stay up late and sleep in.”

Part of his act was about how stupid people can be and how they say things they should be slapped for.

“My wife took exception to that,” he said. “She said I wasn’t the kind of guy who’d be slapping anybody, so I came up with the idea of giving people sign to wear that says ‘I’m stupid.’”

He even made up a batch of “I’m stupid” signs and sold them after the show for a dollar apiece, or two for five dollars.

That became his signature routine and his first album, “Here’s Your Sign,” came out in 1997. It was funny enough to land Engvall a spot alongside Jeff Foxworthy and company for the Blue Collar tour, and his career was made. Mostly.

“It was like being married to a rich girl,” he said. “It’s a blast, but after a while you want people to know that you can make it on your own. I put a lot of pressure on myself for that.”

So now he’s not only doing weekend solo gigs across the country, but his TBS series, “The Bill Engvall Show,” has just been picked up for a second season. Part of its success may be that, unlike his colleague Foxworthy, Engvall made sure that he had a hand in the development of the show.

“I saw what Jeff went through in his sitcom and he didn’t have any control,” he said, “so from the get-go I said I wanted to have my hand on it.

“Nobody knows my style of comedy better than I do.”

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People seem to want Nicole Tuthill to feel brave.

She’s been told the actress that she’s brave for getting up on stage, for promoting her recent role by doing a photo shoot in a bathing suit.

But the only difference between Tuthill and a thousand other actresses is that she’s overweight, but maybe there is some amount of courage to be had in taking on the lead role in a play with the title “Fat Pig,” the Neil LaBute drama opening the New Edgecliff Theatre’s season.

But for Tuthill, it’s more about honesty than courage.

“If I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t be honest to the story we’re telling,” she said. “Why does there have to be that double standard? Is it only OK to pose in a bathing suit if you’re thin?

“I really like the honesty (of this play). It doesn’t apologize for the story it’s telling.”

“Fat Pig” is at heart a boy-meets-girl kind of love story. Tom (Ryan Gilreath) is the all-American guy. Helen is a librarian, “a very confident go-getter” who has a passion for old war movies.

Although she and Tom hit it off from the moment they meet, she soon becomes aware that he isn’t introducing her around to his friends. But he has his reasons: His friends are already aware of his relationship with his “fat chick.”

“The story explores whether love can survive with the social pressure,” Tuthill said. “His friends don’t even know her, but judge her by her personal appearance.”

Tuthill said that although she and Helen have a lot in common, she handles these issues differently in her life.

“There is a bit of personal resonance in that when I walk into a room I wonder what people are thinking, if they are judging me,” she said. “Helen is a little more outspoken than I am. I tend to try to kill them with kindness.”

If nothing else, she hopes the play will help break down some of the barriers between the fat world and the thin world, and that being in the play has helped her in her struggle.

“We’re people, we’re intelligent and we can talk about this openly,” she said. “I know I’m fat. You can see that I’m fat. So why can’t we just move past it.

“I’m less concerned now about what people think.”

how to go
WHAT: “Fat Pig” by Neil LaBute
WHERE: Columbia Performance Center, 3900 Eastern Ave., Cincinnati
WHEN: Oct. 4-20
COST: $20 adult; $15 senior; $12 students 
MORE INFO: (888) 588-0137; www.newedgecliff.com

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JournalNews feature

OXFORD — Long before oil began to dominate the world economy, the best-known commodity of the Middle East was the rug.

But rugs also had an important role in the local culture. Rug shops were the center of the community, the place where people would go to get the latest gossip, and rugs were the center of the home because in a culture without furniture, people sat on the floor.

“The carpets are important to the economy because they link people together,” said Christopher Kremmer, author of four books on Afghanistan and the Middle East, including “The Carpet Wars: From Kabul to Baghdad.” Kremmer was in Oxford for "The War Rugs Symposium," held in conjuction withthe Miami University Art Museum exhibition, “Tanks, Helicopters, Guns and Grenades: The Afghan War Rugs of 1980 - 2007.”

  “The book is really a portrait of the Muslim countries in a time of crisis, particularly Afghanistan and nearby countries,” he said. “I didn’t want to write a politcal tract or an academic analyis, but a book that general readers would enjoy and find an eye open about the history of the culture and the area.

“From the nomadic shepherds who move the sheep to the women who dye and spin the wool to the people who weave it into rugs, the carpet industry has managed to survive 30 years of conflict because it is a low-tech business that doesn’t depend on electricity,” he said.

Kremmer was a reporter for Australian radio and television when he was assigned to India in 1990. At the time, the Soviet war in Afghanistan was “the biggest story in my neighborhood,” so he began to focus his attention there and began to realize the importance of the rug industry and how it can serve as a metaphor for the bigger Middle East picture.

“Religion and politics tend to divide people, but the carpets are kind of a bridge,” he said. “If we can connect through the rugs, perhaps we can be one step closer to understanding the people who made them.”

In the 1980s, he said, the Soviets were “not very polite” in their treatment of the Afghani people.

“They would cleanse an entire village to get one person, so you had 3 million Afghanis living in Pakistan,” he said. “There was a great deal of misery and anger caused by this and a huge support for the anti-Soviet struggle.”

Although there is no precedent for rugs to carry political messages, refugee weavers began working imagery inspired by the Soviet occupation into their rugs, first as a way to rally Soviet resistance, then as a way of making money from the tourist trade. Some of the rugs in the museum exhibition serve as warnings to people to be aware of unexploded ordinances, illustrating what not to touch. Others contain maps and other images that detail the Soviet occupation, and later, the terrorist attacks against the United States in 2001.

Kremmer said he was in Kabul in 1992 when the mujahideen came back and ended the Soviet occupation.

“There was a huge celebration after 13 years of war and the night sky was lit with what they called ‘happy fire,’ people firing their guns in the air,” he said. “Forty-eight hours later, the gunfire was in the street again as people started fighting among themselves for control.

“The cities has been protected by the Soviets and so descended into chaos for the next five years as the struggle for control continued among the various factions,” he said.

The anti-Soviet rugs began to lose their relevance as people lost confidence in the mujahideen. Then in 1997, the Taliban came onto the scene.

“In the beginning for a lot of people, they represented law and order — a tough group, but they could maintain some control over the cities. But then they got involved with Al Qaida and tehy have no idea how the world works and the danger of using Afghanistan as a base of operations against U.S. interests,” he said.

“In the beginning, the rugs celebrated Islamic rebellion, but now they are more ambiguous. Some are pro-American, but I’ve never seen a pro-Taliban rug.

“These rugs are quite mysterious,” he said. “They haven’t been studied in any great detail, who made them and why, what are the messages. That’s why this exhibit is important.”
 

Photos by Nick Daggy 

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Cincinnati playwright Blake Bowden believes in the power of legends and myths.

With the Performance Gallery, he developed a stage adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy that was produced in three consecutive years, 2001-03.

“By the time that was done, we realized that we needed another myth,” he said.

So he dug deep and found what may be one of the oldest stories in the world, the epic poem about the Babylonian king Gilgamesh, which he found in reading it had a lot of relevance to what’s going on in the world today, particularly in regard to the situation in the Middle East.

“We’re exploring questions that we’re being told it’s unpatriotic to ask,” Bowden said. “But it’s a great myth and with my background in clinical psychology I have spent some time working with veterans with post-traumatic stress syndrome and with children, and having them tell the story is really healing for them.”

The story begins in modern day with soldiers trying to figure out what is going on in the world, then there’s some magic, and the stage is transformed into the ancient world.

Bowden said that although he’s listed as the playwright, the development of  “Gilgamesh in Uruk: G.I. in Iraq”  has been a group effort with the actors and designers from the Performance Gallery.

“When I went to the first rehearsal, I told them that I had a script but that it is likely to be completely different by the time we get it to the stage, and it’s still changing,” he said two weeks before opening night.

“In fact, the actors are telling me we need to stop changing lines so that they can memorize them. It’s been very energizing.”

The development of the play was assisted by the first-ever Theatre Forward grant, a competitive grant from the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Acclaim Awards in collaboration with Cincinnati Arts Association.

how to go
WHAT: Performance Gallery presents “Gilgamesh in Uruk: G.I. in Iraq” by Blake Bowden
WHERE: Fifth Third Bank Theater, Aronoff Center for the Arts, Eighth and Main streets, Cincinnati
WHEN: Sept. 27-Oct. 7
COST: $18
MORE INFO: (513) 621-2787; www.cincinnatiarts.org

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In 1957, Sally Ann Howes took over the role of Eliza Doolittle in the Broadway run of “My Fair Lady” so that Julie Andrews, who created the role, could take it to London’s West End.

“I had already done about six shows and I wondered about my longevity,” she said in a phone interview. “I knew I would always be in the theater, but I remember wondering if I’d still be around when I’d be old enough to play Mrs. Higgins,” the elderly mother of Henry Higgins, the professor who takes Eliza under his wing.

Now 50 years later, she wonders no more as a revival of “My Fair Lady” kicks off its national tour next week at the Aronoff Center in Cincinnati.

“I am loving it,” said the 77-year-old actress. “I wear wonderful clothes and get to say pithy remarks. Mrs. Higgins is the only one who gets to bully the professor who spends his time bullying everyone around him.”

Howes is also quite impressed by how technology has changed the pacing and flow of the show.

“We can do incredible things moving scenery on and off,” she said. “We can continue a musical number while they’re changing the set.”

The daughter of British stage star Bobby Howes, she began her show business career as a child movie star after a friend of the family who was an agent, recommended her for a role in the 1943 movie “Thursday’s Child.”

By 1950, she had made the transition to stage, including a 1953 West End run of “Paint Your Wagon,” which she appeared in alongside her father, who came out of retirement for the occasion. Eventually, she became a star on both sides of the Atlantic, but it wasn’t until 1967 that she took on her most famous role as Truly Scrumptious in the film “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” with Dick Van Dyke.

“I loved working on that,” she said. “You’re not aware when you’re working on something how important it is going to be. We were just having a grand time, and it’s amazing so many years later how much interest there still is. We didn’t know it was going to be a classic.”

how to go
WHAT: Lerner & Loewe’s “My Fair Lady”
WHERE: Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut, Cincinnati
WHEN: Tuesday through Oct. 7
COST: $30-$60
MORE INFO: (513) 621-2787; www.cincinnatiarts.org

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Go! review

David Lindsay-Abaire has an unusual way of letting a story unfold.

For instance, in the opening scene of “Rabbit Hole,” now making its regional premiere at the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, Izzy tells a long, complicated tale of how she got into a fight in a bar while her sister Becca folds the laundry of a child at her kitchen table.

We learn a lot about both characters during her rambling tale, although the important plot points aren’t revealed until we know them both. That is, Izzy is pregnant and Becca is folding the laundry of her dead child so she can give the clothes to charity.

Most of “Rabbit Hole” is like that, and fortunately so.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning drama tells the story of the aftermath of the death of 4-year-old Danny, who ran out into traffic in pursuit of his dog and hit by a teenage driver.

Becca, played by ETC regular Annie Fitzpatrick, is trying to clear the house of all traces of Danny, even desires to get rid of the house for the memories it holds, but her husband Howie (Drew Fracher) wants to cling to those things — and the dog — as a way of remembering.

Most of the time, they speak around the issues that really concern them, but resident scenic designer Brian Mehring’s set evokes their true thoughts: Danny’s room seems to hover precariously above the kitchen and living room of their non-descript home, the furnishings so generic that it could just as well be a furniture show room.

The Fitzpatrick/Fracher study in contrasts is refereed by Izzy (delightfully scatterbrained as played by Sara Mackie) and their mother Nat (Cincinnati newcomer Lourelene Snedeker), who also lost a son some years ago, but under quite different circumstances.

Just as they seem to be getting their world in order, putting the house for sale so they can move on, a wrench is thrown in the works by Jason (Joshua Borths), the teenager who drove the car that killed their son.
He approaches them first with a letter, then with a visit, in his own attempt to come to some kind of resolution to the matter.

While the subject matter will drive a stake through the heart of any parent, Lindsay-Ablaire’s witty script and insightful storytelling in the capable hands of director D.Lynn Meyers, keeps it from being melodramatic or maudlin — and in fact has an ending that is quite hopeful if not cheerful.

how to go
WHAT: “Rabbit Hole” by David Lindsay-Abaire
WHERE: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St., Cincinnati
WHEN: Through Sept. 30
COST: $27-$35 adults; $16 children
MORE INFO: (513) 421-3555; www.cincyetc.com
 

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There's a pretty good article about Neil Young cover songs in Stylus magazine.

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Review

During the 2007 Cincinnati Fringe Festival, we made a concerted effort to squeeze in as many shows as we possibly could, eventually taking in 20 of the 30 shows offered, but “The Kid in the Dark” was one of those that we couldn’t get to.

So I’m glad that Know Theatre Company decided to revive the Mark Halpin/Andrew Smithson revue, directed by CCM chair Richard Hess.

“The Kid in the Dark” is a collection of 17 songs performed by a five-singer ensemble. The songs don’t tell a story, but tell 17 stories. Many of them funny, the others thoughtful and reflective. The funny ones are better, but there’s really not a clunker in the bunch.

There’s “It’s All Going to End,” a solo tango sung by a young woman waiting for a date in a restaurant, trying not to act annoyed or embarrassed as she comes to the realization that she has been stood up and the evening is going to end with cake, leading into a complete dessert binge.

In “Not a Gay Anthem,” a young man asserts that his sexuality is not a political issue, nothing to be fussed over. He just likes guys, that’s all. “Black and White” is an ode to the crossword puzzle, and in “The Sum of Us,” a childless couple find shades of each other’s personality in their dog.

On the more reflective side, there’s “A Blank Sheet of Paper” in which an artist engages himself to the possibilities inherent in the empty page, and “I’m Going to Live Forever,” an ensemble piece that explores the good and band points of immortality.

“How Could I Not?” is an explosion of joy and “Daylight on Mars” finds pleasure in life’s little surprises.
Halpin has a nice way with words, able to turn a phrase with a bit of flair and come up with some unusual rhymes.

There’s no plot or through-line to the songs, but many of the characters seem to be seeking out some kind of connection. The title song, for instance, tells about a young man in a theater surrounded by strangers, some of them his family, absorbing the magic.

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Go! feature

This weekend brings a three-year dream to fruition for Ballet Tech Cincinnati’s director Marvel Gentry Davis.

“It was very difficult to assemble all the elements for this,” Davis said of the premiere of “The Jazzy Sleeping Beauty,” a contemporary take of the classic Tchaikovsky ballet.

“We have to put things on the stage that people want to see,” she said. “We don’t want to take anything away from the traditions of ballet, but we have to make it relevant to people who can watch movies on their phones.”

But combining contemporary and classical is not as breezy as she thought it would be.

“I thought I could just get a jazz band to play the Tchaikovsky, but they told me it wasn’t hat easy, that you had to have the music re-scored,” she said.

So she contacted Columbus-based jazz drummer and composer Mark Lomax who has a great deal of experience translating music from contemporary to classical and back in his work re-scoring Negro Spirituals for the Nashville Symphony and his own jazz trio.

“I then needed a choreographer who could do both classical and contemporary, who could get his head around a ballet from the 1700s and jazz it up for today’s audience,” she said.

She found that in  Waverly Lucas II, co-founder and artistic director of Atlanta’s Ballethnic Dance Company, who has taken on Tchaikovsky before.

“His 'Urban Nutcracker’ has become an Atlanta tradition” since its 1992 debut, Davis said.

The premiere is doubly-exciting for Davis and her troupe because they will perform with a live orchestra, the three-time Cappie Award-winning Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy Electric Jazz and Student Orchestra under the direction of Conductor Dan Grantham.

“This will be the first time we’ve ever performed with a live orchestra,” Davis said. “You can hear the music as Tchaikovsky wrote it, but played by saxophone and guitars.”

how to go
WHAT: “The Jazzy Sleeping Beauty” by Ballet Tech Cincinnati
WHERE: Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut St., Cincinnati
WHEN: 8 p.m. today; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday
COST: $26
MORE INFO: (513) 621-2787; www.ballettechcincinnati.org
 

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Go! Feature

In his 13 years as the chair of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Richard Hess has seen a lot of talent pass his way.

Sometimes, it even comes in through the back door.

Take the case of Mark Halpin, a scenic designer who has designed some 20 sets for CCM productions, who approached Hess a few years ago and announced that he’d written some music he’d like Hess to hear.

“It was the biggest shock of my life that a guy who draws and engineers sets could also write music,” Hess said. “So I agreed to listen to him.”

Halpin didn’t even play an instrument, but sang in a shy and quivering voice the “brilliant lyrics” and tunes that he had in his head.

“They were wonderful, so I told him he needed to find someone who could help him flesh them out,” Hess said.

Two years later, with the help of composer Andrew Smithson, Halpin delivered to Hess “a little pile of songs, not in a linear, plot driven story but with a through-line of people facing obstacles in their lives,” Hess said.

“The lyrics are true, clever, really funny and the next moment so heartbreaking that they really seemed like life to me,” he said.

So Hess agreed to direct a production of “The Kid in the Dark,” as they named it, for the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, where it was one of the most popular shows presented. So popular, in fact, that Know Theatre Company is hosting a revival this weekend, a slightly sharper, re-ordered version with the same cast.

The title comes from one of the songs, what Hess described as “Mark’s love song to the theater, as a little kid, sitting in the dark in the magic of the stage.”

how to go
WHAT: “The Kid in the Dark” by Mark Halpin and Andrew Smithson
WHERE: Know Theatre Company, 1120 Jackson St., Cincinnati
WHEN: 8 p.m. today and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
COST: $18-$22 adults; $15 seniors; $12 students
MORE INFO: (513) 621-2787; www.knowtheatre.com
 

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Go! review

“Romeo & Juliet” has been adapted, revised, re-visioned, tweaked and fine-tuned in countless forms and guises since William Shakespeare first presented it near the end of the 16th century.

However, the current Cincinnati Shakespeare Company presentation plays it fairly straight and very successfully. The costume and set design hearken back to the Elizabethan era, and only the creative use of lighting and sound would put date this as a 21st century production.

The casting and some of the acting are questionable. Chris Guthrie is a decade too old to be a totally credible Romeo, but Hayley Clark lets us believe that she’s a 14-year-old maiden eager for love.

And while Sherman Fracher, always a joy to watch, uglies up nicely and nearly steals every scene she’s in as the Nurse, and Jeremy Dubin offers up an energetic Mercutio, other guests artists don’t quite live up to the power of the script. In this play especially, Shakespeare earned his reputation for creating memorable secondary characters, but here it’s a little hard to keep track of who is who. Perhaps it’s all the doublets and cod-pieces that look alike between the houses of Montague and Capulet, but it’s wise to keep a program handy.

In spite of a few missed opportunities, director Richard St. Peter, artistic director of the Actors Guild of Lexington in Kentucky, shows how powerful the story is without setting it in a space ship or in some urban setting. Good old fashioned Verona is good enough.

how to go
WHAT: “Romeo & Juliet”
WHERE: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, 719 Race St., Cincinnati
WHEN: Through Oct. 7
COST: $26 adults; $22 seniors; $20 students; $12 previews
MORE INFO: (513) 381-2273; www.cincyshakes.com
 

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Go! review

Some things are better left dead. Or undead, as the case may be.

By this time, it’s nearly impossible to create a “Dracula” on stage that is truly as chilling and terrifying as it’s meant to be. It’s a story that’s been so done and overdone that even when one tries to play it straight with some spectacular special effects, it still comes across as dated and, frankly, smells a bit cheesy.

The current Playhouse in the Park production is a case in point. Though loaded down with special effects — some more effective than others — the story plods along with the same tired cliches and when the moments come when the hair is supposed to be standing up on the backs of our necks, we laugh instead. And it’s not the uncomfortable laughter that sometimes squeaks out when we’re afraid, but the laughter that comes from seeing something silly.

In this century, it might seem to make more sense then to play it for laughs, the camp it up, to let the Count pose and posture, to turn the spooky music up loud and let us have some fun with it.

But director Stephen Hollis seems to believe that there are still some chills left in the tired old story, but he’s mistaken. The actors all seem to want to break out in melodramatic swoons and swaggers, but their restraint is, unfortunately, nearly palpable.

The Count just doesn’t seem to have the bite he used to have.

how to go
WHAT: “Dracula” by Hamilton Dean and John L. Balderson, based on the novel by Bram Stoker
WHERE: Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Eden Park, Cincinnati
WHEN: Through Oct. 5
COST: $43-$56
MORE INFO: (513) 421-3888; www.cincyplay.com
 

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Press release

Always Patsy Cline by Ted Swindley
May 7 – May 25, 2008
Always Patsy Cline is based on the true story of Patsy’s friendship with Houston housewife Louise Seger.  Having first heard Patsy on the "Arthur Godfrey Show" in 1957, Louise became an avid fan. So when the great Patsy Cline gave a show in Houston, the two women met and struck up a friendship that lasted until Cline's untimely death in a plane crash in 1963.  As seen through Louise’s eyes, the show offers old fans and new ones a chance to see the American original and dazzling star that was Patsy Cline. All the great songs are featured too, including: I Fall To Pieces, Crazy, Walking After Midnight, Just a Closer Walk with Thee, Your Cheatin’ Heart, Stupid Cupid and many, many more.  Directed by Leslie Jo Bissett
 
Go-Go Beach by John Wimbs, Michael Shaieb, Brent Lord                            
June 4 – June 22, 2008
It's the biggest beach weekend of the summer, with a surfing race, a dance contest, and the annual luau! Surfer Woody's carefree California life is set - he’s with the cutest beach girl, a great bunch of moon-dogging friends, and to top it all - he has never wiped out!  But when his old surfing pal comes back from the “flower power” scene in San Francisco, Woody begins to question his beach-boy world.  Things get worse when he falls for a runaway teen star! Can Woody keep surfing and discover the meaning of life? Fluffy and funny, this show has great songs reminiscent of the 1960’s beach party movies, including Go-Go Beach, A Boy and A Girl, It’s All About Love. And it’s all as wholesome as a glass of Vitamin D Milk! Frankie and Annette – eat your heart out!  Directed by Mike Fielder
 
Cheaper By The Dozen                                                                          
July 9 – July 27, 2008
From the book by Frank Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey.  Dramatized by Christopher Sergel.
What if you're an attractive high school girl and you're not only a member of a large and unique family but your father is, in fact, one of the great pioneers of industrial efficiency? What if he decides to apply his maniacal organizational methods to you and the rest of your big, unmanageable, riotous family? The results would be embarrassing, upsetting, unsettling and extremely funny! Come join the family as they negotiate a world of bobbed hair, be-bopping boyfriends and boisterous antics – despite Dad’s best efforts to halt the progress of time. A hilarious, endearing and ultimately touching family play, Cheaper by the Dozen is a classic!  Directed by Gina Kleesattel.


Pete ‘N’ Keely                                                                          
August 6 – August 24, 2008
Book by James Hindman Music by Patrick Brady.  Lyrics by Mark Waldrop, Patrick Brady and others.
Staged as a live taping of a 1968 television special that reunites a divorced singing duo, this kitschy spoof had New York critics singing its praises! As Pete and Keely stroll down memory lane (with eye popping costumes and devilish repartee) reprising songs from their days of stardom, they take "unscripted" swipes at each other that dredge up hilarious moments from their turbulent past. This musical features unforgettable renditions of the era's popular favorites such as This Could Be the Start of Something Big, Fever, Besame Mucho, That’s All, as well as great new songs in the spirit of the times!  Directed by Dan Doerger.
 
Special 85th Anniversary Season Closer!
Show Boat!                                               
September 10 – September 28, 2008
Music by Jerome Kern, Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Based on the novel by Edna Ferber
One of America’s landmark musicals, SHOW BOAT premiered in 1927, four years after the Showboat Majestic was first launched! This epic show spans 40 years in the lives of three generations of showboat folk - Captain Andy Hawks, his daughter and showboat leading lady Magnolia and her gambler husband turned leading man Gaylord Ravenal. The iconic American music features such great songs as Cotton Blossom, Make Believe, Life Upon the Wicked Stage and the anthem, Old Man River. Come along on a sweeping, romantic journey set aboard (and performed aboard) a real showboat! What could be a more perfect ending to the Majestic’s 85th Anniversary year?  Directed by Denny Reed.

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JournalNews Go! section
Sept. 7, 2007

Becca and Howie Corbett are living out the American dream until an accident takes the life of their 4-year-old son.

“Rabbit Hole,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by David Lindsay-Abaire looks at what happens as the family tries to stay connected in the face of extreme grief.

“It’s very lifelike,” said actress Sara Mackie, who plays Izzy, Becca’s sister. “You know these people. You could be in a living room watching this happen.

“Nothing is held back in these people’s coping and grief,” she said, “and the dialogue is written like we talk with over-lapping lines and non sequiturs.”

ETC veterans Annie Fitzpatrick and Drew Fracher play the Corbetts.

“What I admire so much about 'Rabbit Hole’ is that it’s not a play about grieving,” director D. Lynn Meyers said in a statement. “It is undoubtedly a play about healing and moving forward and what you do when the unthinkable happens. These are characters who are learning to redefine and reinvent their own paths.”

Izzy, too, is trying to get her stuff together, said Mackie, who is married to area poet Michael Agee, a native of Hamilton and past winner of the Riverbank Poetry Slam.

“She flies by the seat of her pants,” she said “She doesn’t like confrontation and doesn’t like it when things get too heated, but she will put her claws out when she’s backed into a corner. She says what she means and although she tries not to hurt anyone, she will speak the truth. I think that’s her function in the play.”

Even though it’s a play with death at the core, it’s not totally depressing, she said.

“There are moments of hilarity and moments of hope,” she said. “I don’t think you’ll leave thinking you need a support group, but that life is going to be OK.”
 

 how to go
WHAT: “Rabbit Hole” by David Lindsay-Abaire
WHERE: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St., Cincinnati
WHEN: Sept. 12-30
COST: $27-$35 adults; $16 children
MORE INFO: (513) 421-3555; www.cincyetc.com

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JournalNews Go! section
Sept. 7, 2007

For Ty Yadzinski, the Showboat Majestic season-ending production of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein opus “Oklahoma!” is a reminder of his decade in Cincinnati’s regional theater scene.

It was the role of Curly that brought him to the area in the first place for a La Comedia production, but before that he performed the role for a European tour.

“The music alone is enough to draw any guy who fancies Broadway musicals,” he said. “But some men prefer to play him as a leading man without much depth. To find that depth, you have to find the difference between those moments he’s playing cat-and-mouse with Laurey and those moments that are real, because beneath the leading-man swagger is a real heart-felt man who cares about what happens to the people around him.

“If played correctly, there are a lot of good moments that allow him to be a boy and to be a man.”

Set in the Western Indian Territory just after the turn of the century, the love story in “Oklahoma!” spins around the high-spirited rivalry between the local farmers and cowboys. Many of the songs songs themselves have become American icons including, “Surrey with the Fringe On Top,” “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” “Kansas City” and “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No” just to name a few.

The cast also includes Lindsey Travis as Laurey, Dan Cahill as Will Parker, Lauren Shmalo as Ado Annie, Don Nicastro as Ali Hakim, Torie Pate as Aunt Eller and Mike Sherman as Jud Fry.

“We actually get to sing with a live orchestra, and that’s always a real treat,” Yadzinski said.

how to go
WHAT: Oklahoma!”
WHERE: Showboat Majestic, Cincinnati Public Landing
WHEN: Sept.12-30
COST: $17 adults; $16 seniors/students
MORE INFO: (513) 241-6550; www.cincinnatilandmark
productions.com
 

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JournalNews Go! section
Sept. 7, 2007

Hamilton actor Chris Kramer returns to his roots with a role in the Mariemont Players’ production of “Escanaba in da Moonlight.”

Written by Michigan native actor Jeff Daniels for his Purple Rose Theatre, the comedy takes place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on the first day of deer hunting season.

When the Soady clan reunites for the occasion, 35-year old Reuben Soady brings with him the infamous reputation of being the oldest Soady in the history of the Soadys never to bag a buck.

The opening day traditions are familiar to Kramer, who lived near Escanaba from the time he was in the seventh grade until he went away to college.

“There were woods behind us and the lake across the street,” he said. “We had a ball with it. My younger brother was a big trapper, but we all went hunting. When I was 16 or 17, I shot an animal and it grossed me out, so I never went hunting again.

“Deer hunting for most of them is not really about hunting but about getting away from the wife for a while. On Nov. 15, everything is closed because everybody’s out at deer camp.”

Kramer said he’d been trying to get local groups to do this comedy for a very long time to no avail, so to better his chances of getting a role, he took his high school diploma with him to the Mariemont audition.

Oddly enough, however, the role he landed was for the only non-Escanaban character in the cast, although his services have been drafted as a dialogue coach to help the other actors get the UP dialect down.

Kramer plays Department of National Resources Ranger Tom T. Treado, who arrives on the night before opening day of deer season.

“He happens to get the bejeebers scared out of him by seeing a light up on the ridge and thinking he’s seen God,” he said.

how to go
WHAT: “Escanaba in da Moonlight” by Jeff Daniels
WHERE: Walton Creek Theater, 4101 Walton Creek Road, Mariemont
WHEN: Through Sept. 23
COST: $15
MORE INFO: (513) 684-1236; www.mariemontplayers.com
 

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JournalNews Go! section
Sept. 7, 2007

For its fall exhibitions, the Miami University Art Museum explores the ethnic cultures of Central Asia and the Middle East.

“We see all these places in the news every day but we don’t understand enough about these various cultures,” said curator of collections Natalie Marsh.

To that end, the museum has been devoted to work that gives the cultures of the region their identity.

The lobby exhibition,“Jewels of Central Asia,” explores how jewelry and dress define a cultural heritage, ethnic affiliation, class or status and religious beliefs, Marsh said. The exhibition includes jewelry and clothing from a local collection and features a Turkoman bridal veil made of silver, precious gems, embroidery and bells.

All but two pieces in “Of Poems, Of Legends: Persian and Mughal Paintings” come from the museum’s permanent collection of elaborately detailed paintings dating back to the 16th century, including portraits, battle scenes, scenes of court life, hunting and calligraphic excerpts from the Qu’ran.

“Many of the paintings are from a later style that reflects a mish-mash of styles,” Marsh said. The research done in conjunction with this exhibition reflects new scholarship in the area.

The featured exhibition, “Tanks, Helicopters, Guns and Grenades: The Afghan War Rugs,” explores how the changing political landscape of Afghanistan, beginning with the Soviet invasion of 1979, has influenced the rug weavers of the area as they replaced traditional motifs with modern weaponry and warfare.

In these 80 “war rugs,” images of flowers, horsemen and minarets co-exist with helicopters, bombs, military aircraft and even the food packets that were airlifted into rural Afghanistan only to be fed to the goats.

The result is an art form that resides precariously “alongside contemporary and avant-garde art, and political
art and propaganda,” Marsh said. This exhibition will showcase approximately 80 war rugs from a private New York collection and offers a rare opportunity to investigate the complex historical, political and social realities of this region.

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JournalNews
Sept. 7, 2007

CINCINNATI — Since the glass art revolution started in the 1960s, Ohio has been at the center of development; so when Hamilton art patrons Gerald and Gerry Hammond began working with the Fitton Center for an exhibition to complement the summer quilt show, they didn’t have to look far for expert assistance.
Cincinnati art dealer Marta Hewett has focused exclusively on glass art since 1995, and her current gallery is located above Neusole Glass Works, one of the few hot glass studios in the area.

This weekend, the Marta Hewett Gallery opens a showing of work by Memphis-based artist Brian Russell, one of the first American glass sculptors to use a wax method commonly used to cast metals.

One of Russell’s creations, “Torrent,” will be installed in Hamilton sometime next year. According to City of Sculpture officials, the piece, purchased by the Hamilton Rotary Club, is in storage, slated to be installed near the Hamiltonian Hotel once renovations are completed.

“Russell uses glass in a strictly sculptural way,” Hewett said. “He uses metal and glass together, which you don’t see a lot of. The glass is a nice component because it engages the light in a different way than metal.”

Hewett said that until Harvey Littleton and Dominick Labino introduced a new way of melting glass at lower temperatures and developed the equipment to allow for individual studios, glass art was more decorative than sculptural. During a series of workshops at the Toledo Museum of Art beginning in 1962, Littleton and Labino showed that it was possible for an artist to work in their own studio like a potter or a painter.

Littleton went on to start a glass art program at the University of Wisconsin. One of his students was Dale Chihuly, who not only went on to start similar programs in Rhode Island and Washington state, but is also one of the world’s premiere glass artists.

And it was a trip to a Chihuly exhibition in Florida about 10 years ago that sparked the Hammond’s interest in glass art, and they in turn suggested to the Fitton Center’s exhibitions director Cathy Mayhugh that a glass exhibition would be a nice complement to the biannual summer quilt show.

“It’s like sharing our great love with people who need to understand why we love it so much,” the Hammonds said in a gallery statement.For the “Fabric & Glass” exhibition, Hewett selected glass works in which the artist referred to fiber arts or adapted a technique commonly used by a fiber artist, such as weaving.

Because studio glass is still a relatively young medium, such innovations are common, Hewett said.

“There aren’t any rules or limits, so every year I continue to see things that are so surprising,” she said, “someone who’s using a new technique or an old technique in different ways.”

Photos by Cameron Knight 

Top: A piece by Czech artist Martin Janecky in a current exhibition at the Marta Hewett Gallery.

2) A blown glass piece by Afro Celotto called Zona Calda shown at the Marta Hewett Gallery.

3) Glass artist Christopher Gatto cools and shapes a piece on wet newspaper Wednesday at Neusole Glassworks in Cincinnati which shares a building with the Marta Hewett Gallery. 

4) Glass artist John Ruzsa blows a glass piece Wednesday at Neusole Glassworks in Cincinnati which shares a building with the Marta Hewett Gallery. 

5) A glass vase by Louisville artist Brook White shown at the Marta Hewett Gallery

6) Glass artist Christopher Gatto pulls heated glass around a piece Wednesday at Neusole Glassworks in Cincinnati which shares a building with the Marta Hewett Gallery

"Torrent" by Brian Russell 

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