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Streamlined show launches annual short play fest

 

 

Theatre Roulette has always stuck to the same template: It consists of three collections of short plays, and each collection is rotated to a different day each week, thus giving the annual festival its name.

Beyond that, MadLab has been steadily honing the Roulette format. The shows once tended to be endurance contests, slowed down by lengthy scene changes and long-winded previews of the other nights’ offerings. Recently, though, MadLab has worked to streamline the product.

Open Book, the collection that launched this year’s festival, may be the most streamlined yet. Efficiently and competently directed by Jim Azelvandre, it wraps up its seven plays in a mere 70 minutes.

Are the plays worth the modest investment in time and money? It all depends on your taste and temperament.

THE AFTERMATH OF ELECTING A BLACK PRESIDENT IN AMERICA

 

 

For those of you who don’t know it, aftermath means: result, consequences, outcome, upshot, repercussion, and the after effects of an event or action. In other words…what happens after a thing occurs.

The aftermath of electing a Black President in America should come as no surprise to anyone. At least not to those who haven’t been wearing blinders to the fact that racism is and has been alive and well in America regardless of the outward appearances to the outside world and even they aren’t fooled.

The rise in the number of different hate groups in America has risen so much that, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2012 the KKK chapters dropped from 221 to 152 in one year. Did you know that the Ohio-based Brotherhood of Klans was the second-largest Klan association in the country, with 38 chapters? And to think President Obama won Ohio electoral votes both times.

Mental Illness Advocate vs. Mental Illness Advocate

All advocacy involves a lot of debate. We live in a society that has yet to agree on whether the toilet paper goes over or under, so it isn't surprising that something as complex as mental illness advocacy brings out the claws. We only have to look to Facebook to see the anger that some folks show toward political candidates they disagree with. Democrats and Republicans will be in conflict from now until the end of time. And, without muddying the waters with political debate, that makes sense. Those two parties are on different sides, with sometimes wildly different views. But what about the massive disagreements of people that are, in theory, on the same side, who should have similar views? Mental health issues are serious. They are life-threatening. But more than anything, they are personal. The outcomes fill a spectrum from inspirational to devastating. I work in an industry where the typical advocate is either a person living with the illness or a person who has had a loved one, most often a child, die from this illness.

HEALTH INSURANCE CEO PAY SKY-ROCKETS IN 2013

Philadelphia, PA - May 1, 2014 - Chief executive officers at Fortune 500 health insurance companies, who have opposed new regulations under the Affordable Care Act, emerged this month as one of the ACA's greatest beneficiaries. Recently filed financial reports show that average compensation for these top nine health insurance CEOs rose by more than 19 percent in 2013, while several of the nation’s largest insurers more than doubled CEO pay.   The biggest winner was Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, who received a staggering $30.7 million compensation package in 2013. This marks the largest payout to any health insurance executive since passage of the ACA and exceeded the compensation of the next two highest paid health insurer CEOs combined. The Bertolini pay package, which included a large “special one-time performance-based retention award,” represented a 131 percent increase over his $13.3 million compensation in 2012. (See table below.)  

Why Increased Fracking Means More Fatal Auto Crashes

States like North Dakota, Texas and Pennsylvania are among those that have experienced the biggest fracking booms in the U.S. They also have reported more auto crashes as a result. To the supporters of oil and natural gas extraction, correlating traffic collisions with fracking will likely sound like another attempt to bash their favorite means of obtaining energy. However, The Associated Press has the numbers to back it up—there are more fatal car crashes in areas of heavy fracking. Many more. “We are just so swamped,” Sheriff Dwayne Villanueva of Karnes County, TX told the AP. “I don’t see it slowing down anytime soon.” The AP’s analysis reveals alarming figures. For instance, the average rate of deaths per 100,000 people in North Dakota drilling areas grew by an average of 148 percent from 2009 to 2013, compared to the previous five years. For the rest of the state, that measure fell by 1 percent in the same time frame. Even in drilling areas where an increase was nowhere near that dramatic, it still tells the same story. In Pennsylvania drilling areas, traffic fatalities rose by 4 percent during that time frame. They fell by 19 percent everywhere else in the state.

Global Warming and the Inevitability Trap

From the wholly updated new edition of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times, edited by Paul Loeb (Basic Books $18.99 www.theimpossible.org).  Other contributors include Maya Angelou, Diane Ackerman, Marian Wright Edelman, Wael Ghonim, Václav Havel, Seamus Heaney, Jonathan Kozol, Tony Kushner, Audre Lorde, Nelson Mandela, Bill McKibben, Bill Moyers, Pablo Neruda, Mary Pipher, Arundhati Roy, Dan Savage, Desmond Tutu, Alice Walker, Cornel West, Terry Tempest Williams, and Howard Zinn.  Global Warming and the Inevitability Trap By Paul Loeb   Is the biggest hurdle on climate change outright denial? Or is it the sense that of being overwhelmed and too late, that there’s nothing we can do?  As K.C. Golden writes in an excerpt from my newly updated political hope anthology The Impossible Will Take a Little While, defeat is certain only if we accept it as such. What we often call preordained only becomes so through our resignation. So the only way to discover what’s achievable is by taking action, trying new approaches, expanding the bounds of the possible.  

An Open Letter to Tom a Columbus Guitarist

 

 

Dear Tom:*

   I am writing you this letter on behalf of not just myself, but on behalf of several present and former bandmates and the many people within the local music scene who like and respect you. After a good deal of hint dropping and argumentative banter, we have determined that this letter is the only remaining vehicle by which we can communicate our concerns about a serious problem: to wit, your continued use of the Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal. 

   Initially, we all think you are a damn fine Guitar Player. Sometimes we actually go out to see a band you are playing in just to see you play guitar. Put aside the false modesty and accept this as truth – knowledgeable individuals actually will take an evening of their life and cough up $5.00 just to see you play guitar. Let that sink in.  OK, now hopefully you are ready for more truth…..

Woman groped by NYPD officer at protest faces seven years for flinching

 

 

On March 17, 2012 Occupy Wall Street veterans gathered in Zuccotti Park to commemorate the six month anniversary of the beginning of the Occupy movement. What followed was a mass of New York police in riot gear with batons marching in to crush the protest. Some protestors left, others sat down or linked arms. The results were extreme even for the New York Police Department (NYPD), which has acquired a reputation for brutality. Reported injuries among the protestors included a broken thumb, a broken jaw and at least one protestor struck repeatedly in the back with a nightstick as he fled the park. Multiple witness accounts claim that officers used their boots to hold protestors’ faces to the ground while handcuffed and awaiting the pre-arranged bus to jail.

In Search of a Good War

Seven percent want military options considered (poll by McClatchy-Marist, April 7-10), up from six percent a bit earlier (Pew, March 20-23), or 12 percent for U.S. ground troops and 17 percent for air strikes (CNN, March 7-9). Polling is similar on U.S. desire for a war with Iran, or for U.S. military involvement in Syria. Many more Americans believe in ghosts and UFOs, according to the polls, than believe that these would be good wars. The U.S. public never got behind the war on Libya, and for years a majority has said that the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan never should have been launched. The search for a good war is beginning to look as futile as the search for the mythical city of El Dorado. And yet that search remains our top public project. The U.S. military swallows 55.2 percent of federal discretionary spending, according to the National Priorities Project. Televised U.S. sporting events thank members of the military for watching from 175 nations. U.S. aircraft carriers patrol the world's seas. U.S. drones buzz the skies of nations thousands of miles from our shores.

Matt Bors 05052014

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