Broadway To Vegas

Copyright: January 31, 2021
By: Laura Deni
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LITTLE WARS - POIGNANT, POWERFUL, FUNNY, IMPORTANT AND CAPTIVATING

Alice B. Toklas is throwing a dinner party. She is in France, along with her lover Gertrude Stein, waiting out World War II. Toklas has done the inviting, the guest list causing Stein some irritation. The accommodating Stein has permitted invited guest Dorothy Parker to bring along Lillian Hellman and Agatha Christie, with housekeeper Bernadette on beck and call duty. Suddenly, a young woman arrives who identifies herself as Mary, a psychiatrist from New Jersey. She is a day early, offers to leave and sleep at the railway station, but Toklas insists she stay.

Previously workshopped Off-Off Broadway, Steven Carl McCasland's brilliantly penned Little Wars is smart and sassy. Directed by Hannah Chissick the well lit images are clear and sharp. The reading has a less-is-more approach to costuming. A hat and glasses defines Christie, while bold make-up marks Parker. Hairstyle, posture and facial expressions give notice of Hellman's aloof attitude.

With each actress isolated in her own home with the props she would need, the production was professionally filmed over zoom. Seemlessly edited by John Walsh Brannock. There is a convincing flow, such as one guest handing another a drink.

Linda Bassett as Nurse Craine in Call The Midwife.

Linda Bassett - who celebrates her birthday on February 4 - anchors the production as Stein. Best known in America as Nurse Phyllis Craine on Call The Midwife, she began her career as a stage actress, initially working as an usher at the Old Vic, before advancing to acting in community theater and educational theate. She was nominated for an Evening Standard Award for Best Actress for the 2013 revival of the play Roots at the Donmar Warehouse. She appeared in Escaped Alone at both the Royal Court Theatre in London and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music New York.

Her role as Gertrude Stein is a familiar one for her. In film, she first gained notice when she was cast as Gertrude Stein opposite Linda Hunt as Alice B. Toklas in Waiting for the Moon.

In Little Wars, the dinner party is a based on truths, taking place in France, June 1940 on the evening the country surrendered to Hitler.

Celebrating historical literary women of the 20th century, through an intimate, hilarious, and witty fly-on-the-wall glimpse into the lives and beliefs of six exceptional wordy women.

The dinner party contains an abundance of drinks, with or without ice. The entree isn't food, but barbs, insults, questions and musings - all served well done.

Politics, personalities, professions, motives and beliefs are chewed up, spit out and digested.

The women writers are icons. Of course they are full of themselves, their egos as potent as the liquor in their overflowing glasses.

The riveting dialogue and performances resonate with today's emotions and concerns.

A memorable presentation which will stay with you long after the 1 hour, 55 minutes running time.

As the play points out: They aren't our friends. They are writers.

Little Wars brings to the table literary figureheads Gertrude Stein (Linda Bassett), her lover Alice Toklas (Catherine Russell), Dorothy Parker (Debbie Chazen), Lillian Hellman (Juliet Stevenson) and Agatha Christie (Sophie Thompson), with anti-fascist freedom fighter the mysterious "Mary" Muriel Gardiner (Sarah Solemani), while Natasha Karp as Bernadette, the German Jewish maid whose background isn't made known until the end.

Linda Bassett is an awesome Stein, alternating speaking by lyrically caressing the phrasing before a turn-on-a-dime vitriolic spew of accusations and opinions aimed at her nemesis, Lillian Hellman - who Stein insists upon pronouncing as Lilli Ann - played by a coldly determined and guarded Juliet Stevenson. Sophie Thompson is the "love of detail" nosy Christie. Debbie Chazen’s Parker is almost adolescent, while Catherine Russell’s Tokles is the voice of reason; the balance scales for the others. Played to perfection by Catherine Russell who was nominated for an Ian Charleson Award for her performance in Chekhov's Three Sisters. She has played leads in the West End, at the National, the Royal Court, Soho Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, Lyric, Almeida Theatre, and the Royal Exchange, Manchester.

All of the performers deserve low bows.

Whether to help or ignore the plight of the Jewish people is expounded upon with Stein profering that "the Jews have produced only three geniuses - Christ, Spinoza and myself."

At the time homosexuality was a crime. In an era when women were expected to be wives and mothers, being a lesbian was a step below the male version.

At one point Stein points out that grief and reflection are two different things. When Toklas speaks of her absolute love for Stein, she responds in the same soft language wistfully saying that what she wants to remember are "things like the first time I tasted Alice's lips."

However, Stein is irked that Tokles has permitted Hellman into their home; frequently jabs that Hellman is a liar.

Years later, in 1979, Hellman's accuracy was challenged on The Dick Cavett Show, when Mary McCarthy said of Hellman's memoirs that "every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." Hellman brought a defamation suit against McCarthy and Cavett, and during the suit, investigators found errors in Hellman's Pentimento. They said that the "Julia" section of Pentimento, which had been the basis for the Oscar-winning 1977 movie of the same name, was actually based on the life of Muriel Gardiner, a New York psychiatrist,who denied acquaintance with the author.

As Hellman points out in Small Wars: "We twist the things that happen to us and sell them between two covers."

Encouraged by liquor the women divulge their own heartaches.

Parker recounts the guilt she still feels about a teenage abortion - a procedure which cost $30.00 in which Parker was told to lie down on a kitchen table and "lift your skirt." The event is memorialized by the scars on her wrists. She wonders if someday she might stop punishing herself.

Sounding as though she has just tasted something both bitter and sharp, Christie recalls her first, philandering husband and the discovery of his mistress, which leads to her famous 11-day disappearance.

Excruciating emotional anguish bathed in the written word used as a soothing balm to calm still raw emotions.

The plot hinges on a mystery guest known as Mary (Sarah Solemani), the sometimes too coy American who identifies herself a psychiatrist from New Jersey, with a husband and 10-year-old daughter - and on the reclusive Bernadette (Natasha Karp).

The powerful, well constructed rehearsed reading of McCasland’s play, a collaboration between Ginger Quiff Media and Southwark’s Union Theatre, raised money in aid of Women For Refugee Women, a cause that remains close to values of the cast.

Begins streaming on Broadway On Demand February 1.

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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.

ART AND ABOUT

WOMEN TAKE THE FLOOR on exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Art through November 14, 2021.

“Women Take the Floor” challenges the dominant history of 20th-century American art by focusing on the overlooked and underrepresented work and stories of women artists. This reinstallation—or “takeover”—of Level 3 of the Art of the Americas Wing advocates for diversity, inclusion, and gender equity in museums, the art world, and beyond.

With more than 200 works drawn primarily from the MFA’s collection, the exhibition is organized into seven thematic galleries. Interactive programming creates a dynamic space that welcomes visitor participation, and new rotations of artwork introduced over the run of the exhibition ensure that new voices and perspectives are available on each return visit.

The Seven Galleries are:

Women on the Move: Art and Design in the 1920s and ’30s
In the decades following the campaign for women’s suffrage, a greater number of women successfully pursued careers as professional artists and designers. This gallery features well-known artists like Georgia O’Keeffe, Ruth Reeves, and Loïs Mailou Jones, as well as women artists whose importance is under-recognized.

No Man’s Land
“No Man’s Land” is devoted to artists who have reimagined the metaphoric possibilities of landscapes, often through the use of symbols that allude to female experiences. Works in this gallery span the 20th century and include a recently acquired painting by Luchita Hurtado as well as paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe and Loren MacIver.

Beyond the Loom: Fiber as Sculpture / Subversive Threads
This exhibit focuses on contemporary artists using the medium of textiles (embroidery, weaving, printed fabric, and quilts) to challenge notions of identity, gender, and politics.

Women Depicting Women: Her Vision, Her Voice
The central space features images of women, created by women. The objects range across time and place, as well as social, political, and cultural contexts, to represent the diversity of approaches women have taken in depicting one another. Highlights include such celebrated paintings as Loïs Mailou Jones’s Ubi Girl from Tai Region and Alice Neel’s Linda Nochlin and Daisy. Voices from the community play a pivotal role in this gallery, offering a range of perspectives through interpretative labels, performance, and other programming. In a video, Porsha Olayiwola, the current poet laureate of the city of Boston, performs what is the suffrage movement to a blk womyn: an anthem, a poem specially commissioned as a response to the exhibition. Visitors are also invited to participate through an interactive comment wall.

Women of Action
Building on recent scholarship, this gallery recognizes the contributions of Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, and others to the formation and expansion of action painting of the mid-20th century, a movement typically credited to their male counterparts.

Women Publish Women: The Print Boom
Presented in two rotations, this gallery celebrates three entrepreneurs who founded printmaking workshops in the late 1950s and ’60s and played an underappreciated role in the revitalization of American printmaking: Tatyana Grosman of Universal Limited Art Editions (New York), June Wayne of Tamarind Lithography (Los Angeles), and Kathan Brown of Crown Point Press (San Francisco).

Women and Abstraction at Midcentury
This gallery takes an expansive look at abstraction, exploring how women artists reshaped the natural world for expressive purposes in a wide range of media including paintings, prints, textiles, ceramics, furniture, and jewelry. Among the artists featured in this space are painters Carmen Herrera, Esphyr Slobodkina, and Maud Morgan and designers Greta Magnusson-Grossman and Olga Lee, as well as Claire Falkenstein, Laura Andreson, Margaret de Patta, and others who contributed to the development of the studio craft movement.

The MFA and Tamar Avishai, the Museum’s first podcaster-in-residence, presented five episodes about works of art in Women Take the Floor.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reopens February 3 after being closed since December 16, 2020, in alignment with city leadership’s efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and keep the community healthy and safe.

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SPREADING THE WORD

THE 2021 SUPER BOWL on February 7 will have 7,500 vaccinated health care workers in attendance to watch the Kansas City Chiefs vs the Tampa Bay Buccaneers toss the ball around at the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.

Country singer Eric Church, a 10-time Grammy nominee will teams with 12 Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Jazmine Sullivan to perform the Star-Spangled Banner ahead of the big game. Two-time Grammy-winner H.E.R. will be on hand to perform her rendition of America the Beautiful.

Writer, rapper and performer Warren "WAWA" Snipe will assist the people singing the national anthem and America the Beautiful by performing the songs alongside them in American sign language. Snipe, who is deaf, was announced alongside the trio. He’ll be working with Adam Blackstone, who will arrange the performances of the two songs.

The NFL announced that Miley Cyrus will headline the NFL TikTok Tailgate pregame show. Portions of Cyrus’ performance will be televised on the game’s main broadcast on CBS ahead of the big game. The entire show can be viewed on the video-sharing app.

After a stunning performance of her poem "The Hill We Climb" at Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, the NFL announced that Amanda Gorman will perform an original poem to honor three people who have served during the coronavirus pandemic. They are: educator Trimaine Davis, nurse manager Suzie Dorner and Marine veteran James Martin who will take part in the coin toss. The trio was picked for embodying the NFL's message of "It Takes All of Us" this season.

Headlining the halftime show is three-time Grammy winner The Weeknd.

GEORGE STREET PLAYHOUSE based in New Brunswick, NJ will produce a season of four plays this season, said Artistic Director David Saint. “During the last 10 months, we have reinvented how we go back into rehearsal, and how we get back to creating art and presenting it in a safe way. The arts are vital to our soul, and we are thrilled to bring these four streaming productions to the virtual stage until we can all be in the room together again.”

The 2021 Season begins streaming with the comedy Bad Dates, written by award-winning playwright Theresa Rebeck and starring Drama Desk Award Winner Andréa Burns.

A one-woman comedy about a single mom in search of cute shoes, the perfect dress, and a romantic table for two at a great restaurant, Bad Dates is a charming, funny and hopeful tale of dates gone wrong and looking for Mr. Right.

George Street’s production will be helmed by acclaimed director Peter Flynn, husband of Ms. Burns.

The design team includes Costume Designer Lisa Zinni, Lighting Designer Alan C. Edwards, Sound Designer Ryan Rummery, and Production Manager Christopher J. Bailey. Hudson Flynn is the cinematographer. The Production Stage Manager is Samantha Flint.

Bad Dates is available to stream February 23 thru March 14.

Television and film star Maulik Pancholy will then play Sam in Becky Mode’s Fully Committed this March.

Featuring one actor playing more than 40 characters, Fully Committed takes place in a famed restaurant where patrons will stop at nothing to secure a reservation— including coercion and bribes.

Playhouse Artistic Director David Saint will direct Fully Committed, which will be available for streaming March 23 through April 11.

George Street Playhouse’s inaugural virtual season then continues with Tiny Beautiful Things, based on the best selling novel of the same name by Cheryl Strayed and directed by GSP Artistic Director David Saint. Tiny Beautiful Things is based on the Dear Sugar advice column, and was adapted for the stage by Nia Vardalos.

Closing the 2021 Season is the hilarious Broadway comedy about Broadway -- It’s Only A Play -- by famed playwright and Tony Award winner Terrence McNally. It is opening night and the cast of characters is waiting eagerly for what could only be rave reviews.

ANDREW STENSON IN RECITAL is available free on the Seattle Opera our website, YouTube, and Facebook, and will be available through February 19, 2021. Please note: this program contains adult language and may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Tenor tenor Andrew Stenson in recital with pianist David McDade, performs a mixed program of love songs ranging from composers Roger Quilter and Ralph Vaughn Williams to amusing selections from the popular CW show Crazy Ex Girlfriend.

THE SHENANDOAH CONSERVATORY Jazz Ensemble presents Swinging the Blues, its first digital performance featuring tunes by Charles Mingus, Jerome Richardson, Frank Foster and more. Available through February 26, 2021.

THE INAUGURAL DR. CHARLES WHITE SPEAKER SERIES at Stetson University - a private, nationally ranked university founded in 1883, with four colleges and schools located across central Florida - will feature six visual and performing arts speaker events via Zoom during Spring 2021.

The Dr. Charles White Speaker Series was founded in 2021 by the Creative Arts Department Anti-Racism Committee for Equity (CREA ACE) as part of its mission to advance equity for and inclusion of historically underrepresented ethnicities and races.

Speaker schedule and information:

Wednesday, February 3 at 3 p.m.: Painter and sculptor Eric Manuel Santoscoy-Mckillip.

Monday, February 22 at 3 p.m.: Collage artist, painter, printer and textile printer Jordan Ann Craig, BA. Note: Jordan Ann Craig's speaker presentation is co-sponsored by Stetson Organization for Native American Revitalization (SONAR).

Tuesday, March 9 at 4 p.m.: Ceramic artist Chotsani Elaine Dean, MFA.

Wednesday, March 15 at 10 a.m.: Painter Biraaj Dodiya, MFA.

Wednesday, March 31 at 6 p.m.: Women of Color in the Arts: A panel discussion on career paths of women of color in the arts. The event will feature Stacey Derosier, MFA (lighting design), Nadia Garzon, MLS (acting and directing), Erica Palmiter, MFA (performance art and art education) and Winnie Yoe, MA (design and interactive art).

Monday, April 19 at 5 p.m.: Recording engineer Nagaris Johnson, BA, Department Chair of Recording Arts at the MediaTech Institute in Dallas, Texas.

ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE How Shakespeare Invented the Villain. The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC's 2020/21 Season is officially here beginning with a virtual presentation of STC Affiliated Artist Patrick Page's acclaimed one-man show All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain.

Join the Tony Award nominee, Grammy Award winner, and Helen Hayes Award winner as he explores how Shakespeare created the treacherous characters we all love to hate, including Macbeth, Iago, Claudius, and more. With Page as your guide, experience the evolution of evil in Shakespeare’s villains—from rogues and cutthroats to tyrants and sociopaths—from the comfort of your home.

This mesmerizing performance is available to stream online only beginning Thursday, February 4.

THEATREWORKS SILICON VALLEY'S Artistic Director Tim Bond and Executive Director Phil Santora have announced that the Tony Award-winning theatre has postponed the opening of its 51st mainstage season to October 2021, with eight plays to be presented through August 2022. Said Bond, “The safety and well-being of our community is of paramount importance and while the pandemic continues, we understandably must delay in-person performances."

THE LUCILLE LORTEL THEATRE has announced its upcoming guest lineup for its popular “Live at The Lortel” virtual conversation series. In February, fans can listen to conversations drag artist and political activist Marti Cummings (February 8), actor Michael Potts (February 15), playwright Lynn Nottage (February 22). In March, to kick off Women’s History month the series will feature actress Robyn Hurder (March 1) and notable women in the theatrical field all month long.

COACHELLA AND STAGECOACH FESTIVALS scheduled for three consecutive weekends in April at Indio's Empire Polo Club, have been cancelled - again. AccordCovid-19.ing to an announcement by the Riverside County Public Health Officer, the events were shuttered "based on concerns of a resurgence" of Covid 19.

WHAT DO CAMILLA, THE DUCHESS OF CORNWALL AND DOLLY PARTON HAVE IN COMMON?

Both Camilla and Dolly are royalty in their own right Camilla as the wife of Prince Charles, who will one day reign at the King of England, and Dolly, who reigns as an entertainment superstar.

Both women are gracious and charming, sharing a lifestyle which forces them to endure invasions into their private lives and subjects them to gossip, rumors, lies and speculations. Their every move - from what they wear to what they are suppose to be thinking - is the subject of conjecture and criticism.

What they happily have in common is their love of books.

In this Covid-19 era both women have stepped forward to tout reading.

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library operates within the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Republic of Ireland.

Parton, the woman who donated $1M of her own money to help develop a corona virus vaccine, has spent years donating books to children.

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is a book gifting program that gifts free books to children from birth to age five in participating communities within the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Republic of Ireland.

. Inspired by her father’s inability to read and write Dolly started her Imagination Library in 1995 to benefit the children of her home county in East Tennessee, USA. Dolly’s vision was to foster a love of reading among her county’s preschool children and their families by providing them with the gift of a specially selected book each month. Today, her program spans five countries and gifts over 1 million free books each month to children around the world.

Over 150 Million Free Books Gifted As Of December 30, 2020

“When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer.

"The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free, high-quality books to children from birth until they begin school, no matter their family’s income.

Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall celebrated Burns Night with a video on social media reciting her favorite Robert Burns poem, My Heart's in the Highlands. Her Royal Highness has launched The Duchess of Cornwall's Reading Room.

Following the success of the two recommended reading lists she released during the pandemic, the Duchess of Cornwall has launched a new literary project designed to celebrate books and their creators. With "The Duchess of Cornwall's Reading Room," Camilla, the first royal to launch a book club, decided an online book hub could work after sharing two reading lists with the Clarence House Instagram followers over the summer.

Now she has launched The Duchess of Cornwall's Reading Room, beginning with a list of four books.

An avid reader, Camilla, who recently revealed she has spent much of the coronavirus lockdown reading books, has posted The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, Restless by William Boyd, and Elif Shafak’s The Architect’s Apprentice.

She will regularly release new book selections in groups of four.

Addressing her 30,000 Instagram followers in a recorded video message filmed at Clarence House, Camilla described reading as “a great adventure,’ adding: ‘I’ve loved it since I was very small and I’d love everybody else to enjoy it as much as I do. You can escape, and you can travel, and you can laugh and you can cry. There’s every type of emotion humans experience in a book.”

The online project dovetails with Camilla’s work in promoting literacy - she is patron of seven literacy based charities including the National Literacy Trust.

In addition to the four books Camilla recommends, there will be exclusive content from some of the authors featured on the Duchess’s reading list. Author and illustrator of the best-selling The Boy The Mole, the Fox and the House, Charlie Mackesy, has publicly backed the Duchess’s new venture and spoke with the Royal in an Instagram video. During an online chat with Mackesy Camilla said that she loved the book which “I’ve read so many times” and revealed that she spent much of her childhood drawing horses but wasn’t very good. Joking that she should have done more drawing during the lockdown she revealed she “immersed myself in books.”

The Duchess of Cornwall says that she has been contacted by people from all over the world since releasing her lockdown reading lists last year.

The Instagram account @duchessofcornwallsreadingroom, will feature information about each book and its author. Book Club Kits have also been created by researchers as part of the Lockdown Reading Project, a collaboration between the University of Portsmouth and the University of Copenhagen to study how reading habits are changing throughout the pandemic.

Camilla has a long history of working with literary-focused charities, and is patron of seven such organizations including The London Library and The Wicked Young Writers Award.

In related news, Renaissance, consideed a global leader in pre-K–12 education technology, has introduced The Life is Better When We Read Together initiative to highlight the importance of daily reading during the COVID-19 pandemic. Renaissance is offering unlimited free access to more than 6,500 myON digital books and news articles from February 1–7, 2021.

To help teachers/parents make the most of their free week of myON, Renaissance is making available it's latest What Are Kids Reading report, featuring lists of popular titles on the myON platform.

According to a Renaissance official, "There is an urgent need to teach young people how to be more discerning consumers of information. Research conducted at Stanford shows that students from middle school to college struggle to assess the credibility of the information they encounter online."

OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

AMERICANO! a record-setting musical based on the life of a DREAMer –finalized an agreement with New York City-based Amas Musical Theatre to co-produce a live production of Americano!, starting with a two-week workshop in Fall, 2021.

Tony Award-winning producer Ken Davenport serves as Americano!’s Executive Consultant. He was instrumental in initiating the deal with Amas. Davenport has produced 20 Broadway shows and received a Tony Award for Kinky Boots and Once on This Island. Broadway veteran Ryan Conway has been hired as the General Manager as the show continues to press forward in New York.

The agreement between Amas and Americano! Producer Jason Rose and his Quixote Productions also provides an option for both parties to continue to co-produce moving forward.

Americano! is the true-life story of Antonio Valdovinos, a DREAMer who grew up in Phoenix and learned of his undocumented status on his 18th birthday after trying to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Americano! completed its record-setting 27-show run on February 23, 2020 at The Phoenix Theatre Company, breaking all-time state records for an original musical. Besides the box office record, nearly 10,000 people saw Americano! with a string of 10 sold-out performances to complete the run. Americano! was also the centerpiece of The Phoenix Theatre Company’s 100th Anniversary season.

The production is also proud to have the first Latina composer of a major American musical, singer and songwriter Carrie Rodriguez, and a cast that was, in Arizona, ninety percent Latino. The musical’s choreography is by the multi-talented Sergio Mejia. Sergio Mendoza, a member of the Grammy-nominated band Calexico, is the musical arranger.

For over 50 years, Amas has been a non-profit, multiethnic theatrical organization in New York, founded in 1968 by Ms. Rosetta LeNoire to create more diversity in the American theatre. The organization is devoted to the professional production of new American musicals presenting cultural equity, minority perspectives and the emergence of new artistic talents.

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E-Book

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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.






AFI AWARDS 2020 HONOREES ANNOUNCED Celebrating film and television arts’ collaborative nature, AFI Awards is the only national program that honors creative teams as a whole, recognizing those in front of and behind the camera. AFI Awards honorees include 10 outstanding films and 10 outstanding television programs deemed culturally and artistically representative of this year’s most significant achievements in the art of the moving image. AFI also recognizes Hamilton with an AFI Special Award, designated for a work of excellence outside the Institute’s criteria for American film and television.

The award honors culminate with a virtual benediction on February 26, 2021. The word "benediction" is generally associated with a religious service, so official Shari Mesulam explained to Broadway To Vegas how AFI uses the word.

"We do not use it in a religious sense. When the event is in person, there is always a special guest that surprises the audience and does what we call benediction for the honorees - offering some words of wisdom at the end of the luncheon. It is always a highlight of the event. Recent guests that have done this include Rita Moreno, Angela Lansbury, and Norman Lear."

AFI MOVIES OF THE YEAR
Da 5 Bloods
Judas and the Black Messiah
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Mank
Minari
Nomadland
Onenight in Miami…
Soul
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

AFI TELEVISION PROGRAMS OF THE YEAR
Better Call Saul
Bridgerton
The Crown
The Good Lord Bird
Lovecraft Country
The Mandalorian
Mrs. America
The Queen's Gambit
Ted Lasso
Unorthodox

AFI SPECIAL AWARD
Hamilton

Audi will also launch AFI Awards Audi Scholarships Initiative Providing $250,000 In Scholarship Funds To Women And BIPOC Fellows At The AFI Conservatory In The Name Of Each AFI AWARDS Honoree.

This year’s jury featured acclaimed artists including Debbie Allen, Cynthia Erivo, Rian Johnson, David Mandel, Marlee Matlin, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Wes Studi and Lulu Wang; renowned authors and scholars representing prestigious universities with recognized motion picture arts and television programs; film historians Mark Harris, Molly Haskell and Leonard Maltin; the AFI Board of Trustees; and film and television critics from media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, TV Guide and The Washington Post. The jury was chaired by AFI Board of Directors member Jeanine Basinger (Chair Emerita and Founder of the Film Studies Department, Wesleyan University) and AFI Board of Trustees Vice Chair Richard Frank (former Chairman of Walt Disney Television, President of Walt Disney Studios, President of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences).

THE LATIN GRAMMY CULTURAL FOUNDATION announced the winners of its Research and Preservation Grant program. This program provides grants to music institutions, nonprofit organizations, musicologists, and researchers around the world who are enhancing and preserving Latin music heritage. This year, an eclectic group of institutions and scholars will receive this support. The four grants, with a maximum value of $5,000 each, support diverse initiatives: The Preservation Grants fund the archiving and preservation of Latin music and its unique customs, while the Research Grants support projects that emphasize historical and anthropological research, in addition to documenting traditions and Latin folklore.

Awarded Preservation Grants:

Rafael Escalona Foundation, Bogotá, Colombia - "Arte, vida y obra del maestro Rafael Escalona" is a project in conjunction with the Facultad de Creación y Comunicación de la Universidad El Bosque. It seeks to preserve more than 174 physical files belonging to the Rafael Escalona Foundation in order to create a digital collection recounting, through transmedia tools, the musical, artistic and cultural legacy of Rafael Escalona. In this way, the project aims to enable people of all ages and interests to appreciate the collection, but by offering it in new user-friendly formats, the goal is to enable young audiences to participate and learn about music, culture and vallenato as a music genre from Colombia.

The Latin American Music Center at The Catholic University of America, Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, Drama and Art Washington, D.C., U.S. – Funding for "Digitizing and Documenting The Latin American Music Center and The Catholic University of America" will support necessary ongoing archival and cataloguing work at the Latin American Music Center (LAMC) at The Catholic University of America. The LAMC for Graduate Studies in Music was created in 1984 in cooperation with the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Music Council, when the University inherited a very exclusive collection of compositions and manuscripts. This collection includes the compilation of a complete and specialized library of scores, books, and recordings of Ibero-American music making it a special asset to those who study, teach, and perform this music. Through the Center, musicians from the Americas come together with the essence of their own cultures to investigate, exchange, develop, perfect, and promulgate their musical knowledge and gifts as a means of better understanding one another through mutual respect of the peoples and arts of our hemisphere.

Awarded Research Grants:

Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Registro de canto con caja en entornos acústico originarios" seeks to create a dialogue between the ancestral music of a region and the landscape in which it developed through acoustic research and the creation of audiovisual recordings that can be experienced using immersive technologies (virtual reality, binaural audio). Specifically, the goal is to record Canto con Caja (singing accompanied by drum)—an ancestral tradition of the Andean region—in a very rich acoustic space: the natural amphitheater at Quebrada de las Conchas national reserve in Argentina.

María Alejandra de Ávila, Córdoba, Colombia – Through "Historia social del disco de banda tradicional en el Caribe Colombiano a través de sus actores”, de Ávila plans to produce — by compiling oral sources featuring the main actors — an interactive social history e-book of discographic productions recorded by traditional banda groups from the Caribbean region of Colombia from the 1960s through the 1990s. The book's objective is to highlight professional musicians who have remained unknown.

A committee of experts from Latin America, the Iberian Peninsula, and the United States selected the recipients among numerous qualified candidates. Since its inception in 2015 to date, the program has awarded more than $135,000 in grants to support projects, one of which received a Latin Grammy and Grammy Award.

THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION (ABA) SECTION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW
Intellectual Property Law strongly pertains to the entertainment industry.

A special Mark T. Banner Award virtual event will take place on Thursday, June 10 at 4:00 pm Eastern Time.

Named for its late Chair, ABA-IPL’s annual Mark T. Banner Award honors exemplary individuals and groups who have contributed to intellectual property law and/or practice. All have expressed a passion and enthusiasm for, and advanced the practice, profession, and/or substance of, IP law through extraordinary contributions to teaching, scholarship, innovation, legislation, advocacy, bar or other association activities, or to the judiciary. The award is for the widest range of individuals, including those who are not lawyers or ABA members.

The honorees are:

James Donald Smith, Chief IP Counsel Ecolab Inc.
Karyn A. Temple, Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel of the Motion Picture Association.
Philip G. Hampton, II, Senior Partner and Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer of Polsinelli.

MAYOR'S OFFICE OF MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT (MOME) PRESENTS Made in New York (MINY) Award to Awkwafina, the Golden Globe-winning actress, comedian, writer, and producer from Queens, and to Jeffrey Wright, the Tony-, Emmy-, AFI- and Golden-Globe-winning actor, philanthropist, and proud resident of Brooklyn. "Both recipients have made significant contributions to our city during the pandemic. Awkwafina is donating some of her earnings to the Welcome to Chinatown grassroots initiative to support struggling businesses. Wright founded Brooklyn For Life! which supports local businesses and serves meals to first responders, hospital workers and residents of public housing.

The "Made in NY" Awards were established in 2006 to recognize people and organizations that make significant contributions to New York City's entertainment and digital media industries. Awkwafina was honored at the New York Women in Film & Television's 41st MUSE Awards; Mr. Wright at the 30th annual IFP Gotham Awards.

FINAL OVATION

CICELY TYSON the Emmy and Tony-winning actress whose career spanned seven decades died January 28, 2021. She was 96.

In the early 1960s, Tyson appeared in the original cast of French playwright Jean Genet's The Blacks. She played the role of Stephanie Virtue Secret-Rose Diop; other notable cast members included; Maya Angelou, James Earl Jones, Godfrey Cambridge, Louis Gossett Jr., and Charles Gordone. The show was the longest running off-Broadway non-musical of the decade, running for 1,408 performances.

She received a Drama Desk Award in 1962 for her Off-Broadway performance in Moon on a Rainbow Shawl. Tyson also starred as Carrie Watts in the Broadway play The Trip to Bountiful.. At the 67th Tony Awards, on June 9, 2013, Tyson won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Miss Carrie Watts in The Trip to Bountiful. Upon winning, the 88-year-old actress became the oldest recipient of the Best Actress Tony Award.

Tyson was named a Kennedy Center honoree in 2015. In November 2016, Tyson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest civilian honor in the United States. In 2020, she was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. Tyson also was the recipient of three Primetime Emmy Awards, four Black Reel Awards, one Screen Actors Guild Award, an honorary Academy Award, and a Peabody Award.

Famed for insisting on roles that reflect the power and grace of Black women, her movie roles included: Sounder (1972); The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974); Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1994); Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005) and The Help (2011).

Tyson had just released Just as I Am: A Memoir on January 26, 2021.

. CLORIS LEACHMAN an American actress and comedienne whose career spanned more than seven died in her sleep at her California home on January 27, 2021. She was 94 years old. She got her acting start on the stage. Leachman studied acting under Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio in New York City. She had been cast as a replacement for the role of Nellie Forbush during the original run of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. A few years later, she appeared in the Broadway-bound production of William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba, but left the show before it reached Broadway when Katharine Hepburn asked her to co-star in a production of William Shakespeare's As You Like It. Leachman was slated to play the role of Abigail Williams in the original Broadway cast of Arthur Miller's seminal drama The Crucible. The production played four preview performances at the Playhouse Theatre in Wilmington, Delaware, from January 15–17, 1953, prior to opening on Broadway on January 22. However, Leachman left the production the day before opening night in Wilmington, with Madeleine Sherwood assuming the role. Leachman's name was heavily publicized prior to the production's opening, and her name still appeared in the printed program; a sign appeared at the box office in Wilmington noting the change.

She became a household name through television playing Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Lindstrom was a recurring character on the program for five years, and was subsequently featured in a spinoff series, Phyllis (1975–1977), for which Leachman won a Golden Globe Award.

.She won eight Primetime Emmy Awards from 22 nominations, making her the most nominated and, along with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, most awarded actress in Emmy history. She won an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Daytime Emmy Award.

From 1953 to 1979, Leachman was married to Hollywood impresario George Englund. The marriage produced four sons and one daughter: Bryan (died 1986), Morgan, Adam, Dinah, and George. Her son Morgan played Dylan on Guiding Light for several years. There are also several grandchildren including Anabel Englund. Survivors also include one great-grandson, Braden.

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Laura Deni

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