Hard on the heels of Rogue Machine’s winning the Best Season Ovation Awards El Niño - the indie theatre company’s first offering of 2018 - has blown into The Met. Playwright Justin Tanner’s dramedy takes place inside a Highland Park home, where 48-year-old daughter Colleen (Emmy winner Maile Flanagan) has taken up residence on her parents’ living room couch. As her mom June (stage and big and little screen actress Danielle Kennedy) and dad Harvey (theatre thesp Nick Ullett, who has performed on Broadway) try to show her the door, Colleen comes across as a Minnie quality moocher worthy of a Cab Calloway croon.

Tuesday, March 13, 7pm
Northwood-High building, 2231 N. High St., rooom 100
Parking in rear - "R" spots only
Join the Franklin Green Party at 6:00 PM for the open meeting of the Central Committee followed at 7:00 PM by a screening of Winona LaDuke's documentary First Daughter and the Black Snake. The Prequel to Standing Rock. (94 min. 2017). Winona LaDuke believes Big Oil is the black snake predicted in indigenous prophecy to bring the earth's destruction. When proposed new oil pipelines threaten sacred wild rice lakes, Winona dreams of organizing a spiritual ride, riding her horse against the current of oil "because a horse can kill a snake. fcgreenparty@gmail.com.facebook.com/FCgreenparty. 

March 14, 2018 marks one month since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which left 14 students and 3 staff members killed and many others wounded or injured. Women’s March Youth EMPOWER is calling for students, teachers, school administrators, parents and allies to take part in a #NationalSchoolWalkout for 17 minutes (in honor of the 17 lives taken in the tragedy in Parkland) at 10am across every time zone on March 14, 2018 to protest Congress’ inaction to do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to the gun violence plaguing our schools and neighborhoods.  

How ironic that Orpheus and Eurydice, an opera about hell, has one of the most exquisite expressions of paradise ever to grace the stage. According to The Victor Book of Operas by Louis Biancolli and Robert Bagar, O&E has “the classic, serene beauty that one associates with Grecian art.” That’s largely because composer Christoph Willibald von Gluck and librettist Pierre-Louis Moline derived the storyline for their 1774 opera from the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus’ (Russian tenor Maxim Mironov) descent into the Underworld to rescue his deceased beloved, Eurydice (Louisianan soprano Lisette Oropesa) and attempt to bring her back to life. Orpheus, but of course, was the son of Apollo and Calliope, the gods of music and poetry, and a chip off the ol’ Olympian block, he was antiquity’s peerless musician.

Daniel Ellsberg has a message that managers of the warfare state don’t want people to hear.

“If you have information that bears on deception or illegality in pursuing wrongful policies or an aggressive war,” he said in a statement released last week, “don't wait to put that out and think about it, consider acting in a timely way at whatever cost to yourself…. Do what Katharine Gun did.”

If you don’t know what Katharine Gun did, chalk that up to the media power of the war system.