by Michael Lipp
“The story is over, Mr. Craig …”
Following the lynching, the rope used to hang Leo Frank was cut up into small pieces and sold for souvenirs, as were pieces of Frank’s nightshirt and branches from the tree. The now famous photograph of Leo Frank’s body hanging in the Marietta field was sold for years on a dime postcard. Under the urging of Tom Watson, the self-proclaimed “Knights of Mary Phagan,” who organized the abduction and lynching (and whose ringleaders included a former Governor, a Senator’s son, a Superior Court judge and a Methodist minister), met a few months later on Georgia’s Stone Mountain. Beneath a gigantic burning cross on a Thanksgiving evening, the group “consecrated” a new Ku Klux Klan, which had been disbanded more than 40 years earlier. Continue reading →
by Michael Lipp
When I first listen to a new cast recording of a musical, I have a very particular routine. I will find myself busy with some other activity – reading, cleaning, writing, grading – and play the CD in the background. In many cases, I don’t get distracted by what I hear and that musical gets “filed” with the hundreds of other shows I’ve listened to once that I don’t bother to listen to ever again. If the music FORCES me to take notice, however, and pulls me away from what I’m doing, I’ll take at least a second listen … this time carefully, with CD synopsis and libretto in hand.
It only took ONE listen of Parade to know that this was an important work of musical theatre. From the opening drum cadence and majestic strains of “Old Red Hills of Home,” I was completely transfixed. By the eighth track, the powerfully emotional funeral sequence “It Don’t Make Sense,” I was literally in tears. Continue reading →
by Zeina Salame
Most of you have seen the 1954 film version of Sabrina and are probably looking forward to the familiarity of the story. However, there is one major difference between the screenplay and the stage play to which I want to draw your attention—in the stage play, Sabrina does not go to the party. Now, I know this may come as a shock, but Hollywood has been know to skew a detail or two for dramatic effect (the image of Audrey Hepburn in a Givenchy gown is enough to make anybody change the plot).
Though this scene in the film is a fan favorite, it changes the statement the story makes about class – implying that society is far more accepting of class differences than the play does. Society issues Sabrina rules for acceptable behavior. If she will not comply with its definition of that, she cannot fit in. Continue reading →
by Sam Fisher & Joe Schwarz
“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” ~Voltaire
What is it that makes us human? Our struggles? Our memories? Our feelings of loneliness and isolation? Or is it simply that we are born and thus are destined to die? The moments we share and memories we create between the cradle and the grave are what we have come to call our lives – and while each life may have its own unique variety of experiences, events and people contained within – there are some aspects of all lives which we may call universal.
With a wit and humor that could only come from Britain, Alan Bennett masterfully addresses these all too human concerns while reminding us that even with all of its pain and suffering, life is ultimately the best joke you’ve ever lived. In Talking Heads, Bennett invites us to relax from the seriousness of life and laugh at our own misconceptions about others, the world and our own imperfections – an invitation which we encourage you to accept.
by Dave Alan Thomas
I first heard about ‘ART’ in either Time, The New York Times, or American Theatre; I truly can’t recall which. However, I do remember that the idea behind the play captured my attention immediately. When the Tony Award-winning production opened with Victor Garber, Alan Alda and Alfred Molina in New York, I was in graduate school for theatre. A fellow student returned from the opening raving about the production. Soon after, the Broadway tour luckily made a stop in Ft. Lauderdale, where I first witnessed this delightfully provocative play.
Continue reading →
Following the lynching, the rope used to hang Leo Frank was cut up into small pieces and sold for souvenirs, as were pieces of Frank’s nightshirt and branches from the tree. The now famous photograph of Leo Frank’s body hanging in the Marietta field was sold for years on a dime postcard. Under the urging of Tom Watson, the self-proclaimed “Knights of Mary Phagan,” who organized the abduction and lynching (and whose ringleaders included a former Governor, a Senator’s son, a Superior Court judge and a Methodist minister), met a few months later on Georgia’s Stone Mountain. Beneath a gigantic burning cross on a Thanksgiving evening, the group “consecrated” a new Ku Klux Klan, which had been disbanded more than 40 years earlier. Continue reading 
