Broadway To Vegas

Copyright: February 23, 2020
By: Laura Deni
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NEVADA GRABS POLITICAL HEADLINES - POSSIBLY PREDICTS FUTURE

Bernie Sanders

One of the most entertaining events of last week was watching the Democratic Presidential Debate originating from Las Vegas which aired on NBC. Anyone who thought this event would be a snooze fest would have experienced an awakening.

Prior to the debate there were two days of "early voting" in the Democratic caucus followed by yesterday's caucus. The caucus early voting was the first in the nation and drew national attention.

Since the people who participate in caucuses are the same folk who attend movies and live events such as concerts, stage events be they Broadway, local, community or regional - Broadway To Vegas took the opportunity to fulfill a class assignment for Intercultural Studies. Thought not planned to be completed in Sin City, the caucus events presented an interesting opportunity for ethnographic research.

Ethnographers immerse themselves in the setting and participate in the social activity of the environment. Immersion might require a temp job or attending an event.

Required to follow rules of the European Commission and - for this particular study - not permitted to speak to any of those being observed.

Ethnographic research is a highly specialized, complicated process. The purpose of ethnographic research is to attempt to understand what is happening naturally in the setting and to interpret the data gathered to see what implications could be formed from the data. Six trademark features: naturalism; context; multiple data sources; small case numbers; 'emic' and 'etic' perspectives, and ethical considerations.

Situation: The last day of early voting in the Nevada Democratic Caucus, again a first for both Nevada and the country and watched by the entire nation prior to a presidential debate taking place the next day in Nevada. Caucus voting in which 3-5 candidates are ranked by voters in order of preference. The voting is NOT secret.

Personal issues: (1) how dress to fit in. (2) How to spend an extended amount of time in a grocery store when I didn't need groceries.

What follows are abbreviated results.

Location: a Mexican grocery store located in a zip code currently composed of 64,096 residents . Fifty years ago was 99 percent Caucasian, college educated, homes owned, residents employed. Language English. Today, 43.85% white; high school educated; homes mixed of owned and rented with 25,373 occupied; residents if employed, blue collar with average income of $40,836; First language Spanish.

According to a Pew Research poll, Latinos are expected for the first time in 2020 to be the nation’s largest racial or ethnicity minority in a U.S. presidential election. According to Pew, more than 32 million Latinos are eligible to vote nationwide in the 2020 presidential elections.

A long line snaked around the inside of the store leading to the voting space. which was a slot machine area in which all of the slot machines had been removed for the caucus event. A table was set up for registering and obtaining a ballot.

75 people in the slow moving line requiring caucus voters to wait at least an hour to vote.

Space between people - 6 to 24 inches.

Nobody in line struck up a conversation with a stranger standing near them.

No children present.

People in line appeared to have arrived alone.

Some individuals talked on their cell phones.

Only 2 people in line had grocery carts.

Age range: from those who will vote for the first time in the November election to senior citizens.

Race: Equal number of Caucasian, African-Americans and Mexicans. Nobody with an obvious Oriental heritage was present. When people arrived to stand in line, no attempt was made to self segregate.

Dress: Extreme casual. No designer labels in clothing or accessories. No men in suits or ties, nor women wearing hose and heels or well put together pants suits. Everyone had on jeans and a shirt. All women had their hair combed, even if just in a pony tail topped by a sports cap. All women wore make-up. By appearance, stance or gestures none in line appeared to be adventurous, edgy or counterculture.

While some candidates had representatives present by the voter registration table to talk up their candidate, the speaking voices were polite, soft and suggestive, rather then high pressure or threatening.

OBSERVATION: Voters were polite, secure enough in their own voting choices not to be swayed by candidates' representatives nor candidate passionate sufficient enough to attempt swaying anyone standing near them.

Interested enough in the voting system to sacrifice at least two hours (including travel time) to vote in a caucus.

From overheard conversations of people talking on their cell phones and to candidate representatives, voters were not altruistic. No mention of sustainability, carbon footprints or even using Nevada as a nuclear dump. Interests were jobs, health care, education.

INTERACTION: Grocery store employee who checked out my purchase of Roma tomatoes at 2 lbs for 99 cents said the early voting caucus event had been beneficial to the store.

PROJECTION:The zip code selected for this study. Of all the early voting caucus sites in Las Vegas, the one chosen contained the most similarities to what is called the "average America," although there is no single source of information about the "average American."

The prediction is that Bernie Sanders will win the Nevada caucus by a wide margin and, barring a critical event, become the democratic presidential candidate.

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ART AND ABOUT

THE ART OF BANKSY "WITHOUT LIMITS"

Girl with Balloon with the caption There Is Always Hope is one of British graffiti artist Banksy's most well-known works.

by the anonymous British artist known for making political statements.

Banksy, whose identity is the art world's biggest secret, is an enigmatic artist whose graffiti-influenced stencil technique, often combined with anti-establishment slogans, is immediately recognizable and never fails to generate attention.

The exhibition, which has traveled to Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris, is not authorized by or affiliated with Banksy himself. It is comprised of 70 artworks including photographs and prints from private collections around the world, and run by Starvox Entertainment which produces, manages, represents and promotes theatre and cross-over performing arts shows that tour the world.

Girl with Balloon (also, Balloon Girl or Girl and Balloon) is a 2002-started London series of stencil murals by the graffiti artist Banksy, depicting a young girl with her hand extended toward a red heart-shaped balloon carried away by the wind. Girl with Balloon with the caption There Is Always Hope is one of British graffiti artist Banksy's most well-known works. A 2017 Samsung poll ranked it as the United Kingdom's number one favorite artwork.

In 2018, a framed copy of the work spontaneously shredded during an auction, by way of a mechanical device Banksy had hidden in the frame. Banksy authenticated he was responsible for the shredding and gave the altered piece a new name, Love is in the Bin. Sotheby said it was "the first work in history ever created during a live auction.

Opened at the King Abdullah Financial Centre in Riyadh, UAE on February 20 marking the first time the show has come to the Middle East. The exhibition also includes the screening of a 10-minute documentary.

CEZANNE: THE ROCK AND QUARRY PAINTINGS is the first exhibition to examine essential but underestimated aspects of the revolutionary French painter’s work: his profound interest in rocks and geological formations, and his use of such structures to shape the compositions of his canvases. Three of the principal areas of France in which Cézanne (1839-1906) painted landscapes are full of rocky terrain: the Forest of Fontainebleau, southeast of Paris; L’Estaque, a village in Provence on the Mediterranean coast immediately above Marseille; and the area around Aix-en-Provence, his birthplace.

With significant loans from museum and private collections in the U.S. and abroad, the exhibition features approximately 15 of the two dozen canvases that the artist made at these sites, supplemented by selected watercolors.

Organized by the Princeton University Art Museum in association with the Royal Academy of Arts, London, Cézanne: The Rock and Quarry Paintings premieres in Princeton from March 7-June 14, 2020, before being shown in London from July 12-Oct. 18, 2020. The exhibition is curated by John Elderfield, who served from 2015 to 2019 as the inaugural Allen R. Adler, Class of 1967, distinguished curator and lecturer at the Princeton University Art Museum, and is chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art.

Cézanne’s unpopulated paintings of rocks and quarries embody a distanced, formalized view of nature as having its own, ancient order, which he built up with conspicuously assembled, flat patches of paint. While this method aimed at a true representation of the external visual world, it was deeply influential upon early 20th-century artistic developments toward abstraction: Both Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso reportedly said, “Cézanne is the father of us all.”

Among the landmark paintings shown in the exhibition are L’Estaque (1879-83, Museum of Modern Art, New York), with its massive triangle of rock and distant coastal promontory; the dark and dramatic Rocks at Fontainebleau (1895-1900, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); Montagne Sainte-Victoire seen from Bibémus (1895-1900, Baltimore Museum of Art), combining the orange limestone wall of this originally Roman quarry with the cool gray-blue of the famous mountain; and Rocks above Château Noir (1900-1904, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), one of the latest canvases in the exhibition, originally owned by Matisse.

THE DICEMAN Remember the Diceman? This new exhibition celebrates Dublin's High King of Grafton Street. Actor, model and street-artist Thom McGinty was a living statue and a much-loved presence on the streets of the capital city. Most people knew him simply as the Diceman.

As a famous Dublin figure who was living with AIDS, Thom did much to challenge preconceptions about the disease, and his 1994 appearance on The Late Late Show was one of the most ground-breaking interviews in Irish television history.

Thom died at the age of 42 in 1995. Now, 25 years after his death, a new exhibition celebrates the life and legacy of a man who became as synonymous with the streets of Dublin as Bang Bang and Zozimus. The Diceman exhibition opened on Friday, February 21 at The Little Museum in Dublin, Ireland.

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SWEET CHARITY

ST. PAT'S FOR ALL BENEFIT CONCERT Irish Arts Center proudly once again hosts the annual St. Pat's for All Benefit Concert supporting the inclusive St. Pat's for All Parade, which takes place in Sunnyside and Woodside on Sunday, March 1.

Led by Ireland’s 2016 Presidential Distinguished Award recipients Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy and Brendan Fay, the parade and concert celebrate the openness and diversity of the Irish and Irish American communities of New York.

The concert takes place Friday, February 28, 2020 at the Irish Arts Center in New York City.

SPREADING THE WORD

LA THEATREWORKS RECORDS the World premiere of Frankenstein. Written over 200 years ago, Mary Shelley’s Gothic masterpiece retains all of its power to horrify and fascinate. This original L.A. Theatre Works commission is adapted from Shelley’s novel by the BBC’s Kate McAll. Celebrated actor Stacy Keach stars in the role of “The Creature," and Adhir Kalyan is Dr. Victor Frankenstein.

Also in the cast: Seamus Dever; Mike McShane; and Darren Richardson; and Karen Malina White. Directed by Anna Lyse Erikson.

A post-performance discussion following the 3 p.m. matinee on Saturday, February 29 will be moderated by Leslie S. Klinger, author of The New Annotated Frankenstein and one of the world’s foremost authorities on Frankenstein as well as Sherlock Holmes; Dracula and H. P. Lovecraft.

Each of the four performances at UCLA’s state-of-the-art James Bridges Theater will be recorded live in front of an audience for future radio broadcast, distribution on CD, digital download and online streaming. Four performances Friday, February 28 - Sunday, March 1, 2020 at the James Bridges Theater UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in Los Angeles, CA.

ONE NIGHT ONLY BENEFIT READING OF ARSENIC & OLD LACE by Joseph Kesselring. Directed by Jonathan Silverstein. Featuring Kathleen Chalfant as Martha Brewster, Marsha Mason as Abby Brewster, Michael Urie as Mortimer Brewster, Graham Rowat as Jonathan Brewster, Reg Rogers as Dr. Einstein, Steven Rattazzi as Teddy Brewster, Lilli Cooper as Elaine Harper, Chuck Cooper as The Rev. Dr. Harper, Gabriel Ebert as Officer O'Hara, Major Attaway as Officer Brophy, Kyle Sherman as Officer Klein, Ian Bedford as Lieutenant Rooney, Jay Russell as Mr. Gibbs, and Hal Robinson as Mr. Witherspoon.

This marks the first time father and daughter Broadway stars Chuck & Lilli Cooper are appearing on stage together, playing father and daughter!

In Arsenic and Old Lace, we meet two charming but not so innocent spinsters who have been poisoning lonely old men, their brother who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt, their nephew who looks strangely like Boris Karloff, and poor Mortimer who does his best to control his family’s antics just long enough to announce his engagement.

One Night Only: Monday, February 24th In Celebration of Their 20th Anniversary at Theatre Row in New York City.

THEATRES PROMOTE ENDING GUN VIOLENCE International City Theatre in Long Beach, CA is the latest venue to sign on to join #ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence, a national campaign that seeks to spark critical conversations about gun violence by providing middle and high school students with a platform to express themselves through storytelling, foster open dialogue in their communities, and inspire creative action.

ICT joins a growing list of regional theater companies across the U.S., including Arizona Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Orlando Repertory Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and the Utah Shakespeare Festival, that are calling for submissions of short plays written by students about gun violence. #ENOUGH will culminate in an evening of staged readings of the most impactful plays, presented simultaneously across the country on December 14, 2020 — the eighth anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings.

The finalist plays will be chosen by a panel of award-winning, nationally recognized playwrights, including Lauren Gunderson and Karen Zacarías, two of the most-produced playwrights in the country; Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang; Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney; and Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Robert Schenkkan. The student authors of the chosen plays will be brought to the Utah Shakespeare Festival to workshop their scripts in August before their plays are made available to communities taking part in the #ENOUGH nationwide reading.

“This is an opportunity to address an important challenge in our society,” says ICT producing artistic director caryn desai [sic]. “Children’s voices can be powerful. This initiative is good for our community and it’s good for our children.”

International City Theatre is located in Long Beach, California; desai is working closely with local schools and with Mayor Robert Garcia, local businesses and community groups to ensure that students learn about the initiative and participate.

According to #ENOUGH producer Michael Cotey, “Our young people are growing up in a country where constant gun violence is becoming the norm. That’s unacceptable and shameful. Our program is an opportunity for young people to be at the center of the conversations about gun violence every community in America needs to be having. The stories these teens tell will be a powerful reminder to the rest of us that, no, this is not normal, and hopefully inspire their communities to come together to take positive action.”

Submissions of short, 10-minute plays from students in grades 6-12 are being accepted through April 20, 2020 - the 21st anniversary of the Columbine shooting. Educators looking to involve their students, as well as theaters and other organizations looking to partner with #ENOUGH, should connect with the project via their website.

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INTIMATE APPAREL: THE OPERA is based on Lynn Nottage’s acclaimed play of the same name. The score is by Ricky Ian Gordon.

Directed by Bartlett Sher.

Back in 2006, LCT and the Metropolitan Opera created a collaborative program to bring new works to our stage and theirs. Intimate Apparel will be produced by LCT as part of this program. It is their first opera.

Set in 1905 in turn of the century New York, Intimate ApparelL tells the story of Esther, a lonely, single African-American woman who makes her living sewing beautiful corsets and ladies’ undergarments. There is warm affection between her and the Orthodox Jewish man who sells fabrics to her, but any relationship between them, even a touch, is completely forbidden. Seeking love and romance, Esther eventually embarks on a letter writing relationship with a mysterious suitor laboring on the Panama Canal. When he moves to New York they embark on an unhappy marriage, leading Esther to realize that only her self-reliance and certainty of her own worth will see her through life’s challenges.

Featuring (in alphabetical order): Dominic Armstrong, Justin Austin, Errin Duane Brooks, Helena Brown, Kearstin Piper Brown, Chanáe Curtis, Adrienne Danrich, Leroy Davis, Matthew Gamble, Arnold Livingston Geis, Christian Mark Gibbs, Tesia Kwarteng, Anna Laurenzo, Justin Lee Miller, Jasmine Muhammad, Naomi Louisa O’Connell, Kimberli Render, Krysty Swann, Chabrelle Williams.

Previews begin February 27 in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center in New York City.

BUNDLE OF STICKS by J. Julian Christopher.

Directed by Lou Moreno.

Featuring Lucille Duncan, Fleece, Laura Jordan, Melissa Navia, Zo Tipp, and Hope Ward.

“Bundle of Sticks’s characters are gay men. We have cast it without CIS male actors. We hope the play will reveal why," states the release.

In Bundle of Sticks gay men from across the globe attend gay conversion therapy called The Sticks in the underground city of Coober Pedy, Australia. When they arrive they are not only challenged by Otto, their toxically masculine group leader but also by the rainbow serpent responsible for the protection of water and erections. The Sticks is real but what it promises is not.

The creatives are: scenic and costume design by Megan Healey, lighting design by Harbour Edney, and sound design by Jesse Mandapat.

Bundle of Sticks was originally developed at Pipeline Theatre Company, Ariana Schrier, Artistic Director, Natalie Gershtein, Producing Director. Further developed at INTAR theater as part of the NewWorks Lab 2018. Later workshopped as part of the Jerry A. Tishman Playwrights Creativity Fund, a program of New Dramatists.

Performances Begin February 22 through March 22 at INTAR's Theatre, New York City.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE William Shakespeare’s dark comedy.

Co-Directed bY Armin Shimerman and Elizabeth Swain.

Sex and hypocrisy abound in a disturbing tale about power, corruption and the true nature of mercy and justice. The Bard’s world is familiar: sex is a commodity, government is subject to the leader’s moral whimsy, and licentiousness goes head to head with emergency powers to constrain and punish.

“Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall.” The fine lines between justice and mercy, lust and love, forgiveness and retribution are exposed.

Each of the actors in the Antaeus production, which includes Rhonda Aldrich, Paul Culos, Ramon de Ocampo, Paul Eiding, Nicole Erb, Julia Fletcher, Bo Foxworth, Aaron Lyons, Desirée Mee Jung, Carolyn Ratteray and Lloyd Roberson II, has been cast in multiple roles.

The creative team includes scenic designer Frederica Nascimento, costume designer Allison Dillard, lighting designer Matt Richter and sound designer Christopher Moscatiello. The production stage manager is Taylor Anne Cullen.

Officially opened on February 21 at the Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center in Glendale, CA where performances continue through April 6.

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This is not your typical, totally boring textbook.

In the pages of How To Earn A Living As A Freelance Writer (the first to be lied to and the last to be paid) you'll find sex, celebrities, violence, threats, unethical editors, scummy managers and lawyers, treacherous press agents, sex discrimination; as well as a how-to for earning money by writing down words.

WHO'S WHERE

HARRY CONNICK, JR opens a Las Vegas gig at the Encore Theater at Wynn on Wednesday, February 26. In addition to Wednesday, shows take place on Friday and Saturday. Next Sunday, March 1, his tour stops at the Arizona Federal Theatre in Phoenix, AZ.

QUEEN WITH ADAM LAMBERT on stage Wednesday, February 26 at the Adelaide Oval in Adelaide, SA, Australia. Saturday's show is at the Metricon Stadium, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia.

CHANCE THE RAPPER on stage Monday, February 24, at the Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, WI.

TANYA TUCKER singing her hits Monday, February 24, at The Blue Note in Columbia, MO. Tuesday's stop is at the Bourbon Theatre, Lincoln, NE. Thursday finds her at The District in Sioux Falls, SD. Friday's sto is at the Fargo Theatre, Fargo, ND. Next Saturday the show is at the Grand Casino Hinckley, Hinckley, MN.

ELTON JOHN cranking out his hits in a two nighters Tuesday, February 25 and Wednesday at the C.ex Coffs International Stadium, Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia. Saturday's gig is at the North Queensland Stadium, Townsville, QLD, Australia.

FOREIGNER performs Friday, February 28 at the Palacio de los Deportes, Mexico City, Mexico.

WILLIE NELSON singing Saturday, February 29 in Orlando, FL at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

Next Column: March 1, 2020
Copyright: February 23, 2020 All Rights Reserved. Reviews, Interviews, Commentary, Photographs or Graphics from any Broadway To Vegas (TM) columns may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, utilized as leads, or used in any manner without permission, compensation and/or credit.
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