How does one take an old classic melodrama and mount a new production that is true to the original? That was the question I asked myself when I began the quest to director Lottie Blair Parker’s play, “Way Down East.” First, I had to find a script.
When I see the many articles listing the “Top Ten Beaches” it seemed to me that sooner later every great beach would make the list. So, I knew Ngapali Beach in Myanmar would be discovered. It finally made CNN’s list of “Best Beaches” in February 2016. John and I have been to Ngapali Beach nine times, staying each year at Amazing Resort. Ngapali Beach is truly a wonderful beach on the Bay of Bengal.
A new CD features the music of a family of composers: SUNY Oswego music faculty member Eric Schmitz, his father and his brother. Ravello Records recently published “ACE Composers: 21st Century Chamber Music by Alan, Christopher & Eric Schmitz,” a collection linked by both bloodline and connections to popular genres.
What made the play “Way Down East” so popular? Advertisements of the day boasted that it had been seen by five million people over 350 weeks of performances and taking in more than $3 million. Such a claim was backed up by the reality that it was one of the most successful plays of its day, running for 152 performances in New York City with its initial opening on Feb. 7, 1898, at the Manhattan Theater.
The SUNY Oswego theater and music departments’ spring musical “Space Pirates of Planet Penzance” will open at 7:30 p.m. Friday [April 22] in Hewitt ballroom, featuring the talents of such actors as Caren Celine Morris, who plays the communication officer in the futuristic adaptation of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera “Pirates of Penzance.”
Director Rick Sivers has been busy rehearsing the cast of the upcoming Oswego Players’ production of Oswegonian Lottie Blair Parker’s “Way Down East.” The cast, composed of both seasoned veterans of the stage in the Frances Marion Brown Theater and newcomers has been hard at work bringing the characters of the 1898 comedy melodrama to life.
John and I are not fond of tour groups but a cruise accomplishes the same thing better without changing hotels. We flew Air Asia from Bangkok to Mandalay and stayed at the Amazing Hotel Mandalay. The Pandaw people picked us up at the hotel and transported us to the Pandaw Kindat. We chose a Pandaw cruise because the ships are built by the same company, the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, which had hundreds of ships that plied the river during their British colonial days when their fleet numbered in the hundreds.
The SUNY Oswego theater and music departments’ presentation of “Space Pirates of Planet Penzance” will open at 7:30 p.m. April 22, in Hewitt ballroom, transporting its musical musings on love and duty into the future. The futuristic adaptation of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera continues its run at 7:30 p.m. April 23 and 29, with a finale at 2 p.m. May 1.
CNY Arts Center welcomes Jeff Sawyer in concert again with Rick Bush and a showcase of students from Sawyer’s music class at Cayuga Community College on April 21 at 6:30 p.m. The concert will be held onstage in the Arts Center at 11 River Glen Drive on the Cayuga College Fulton Campus.
Many retired folks head to Florida to avoid the snow without realizing there are other options some of which are exciting and no more expensive. John and I discovered that long-staying at various hotels in Southeast Asia is more interesting. Before deciding on a second home away in sunny climes, consider the expenses: initial outlay to purchase, routine bills such as water, electricity, etc., maintenance costs or association fees, taxes and other miscellaneous expenses. The benefit of long-stays is that there is none of that.
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