Emersonians in the News
Alumnae bring new ?Fiddler on the Roof? to Broadway
Tony winner Andrea Martin ’69 has taken over the lead role of Golde to Harvey Fierstein's Tevye in Broadway’s 2005 production of Fiddler on the Roof, producers announced last month. Martin’s most recent Broadway credit was Oklahoma!, in the role of Aunt Eller, for which she won a Tony nomination. She’s also been nominated for her work in Candide, and she won a Tony for My Favorite Year. Fierstein is also a Tony winner.
The show opened at the Minskoff Theatre on Jan. 4. Its producers include Stewart F. Lane and Emerson alumna Bonnie Comley MA ’94. Lane and Comley’s previous credits include the Tony-winning Thoroughly Modern Millie. Last year, their production of Fiddler on the Roof was nominated for a Tony in the category of Best Revival of a Musical.
Theater faculty member wins Princess Grace Award
Melia Bensussen, assistant professor of Performing Arts, has been awarded one of only three 2004 Special Project Grants in theater from the Princess Grace Foundation. The grant will enable Bensussen to collaborate with playwright Claire Chafee on a week-long workshop with actors in New York City. The actors, together with Bensussen and Chafee, will collectively explore the relationship among feminism, female identity, and the creative human spirit. The workshop will be the first step in a project that will include the staging and mounting of a play at an incipient point with an undeveloped text. The workshop will culminate with a performance of The Three Graces for an invited audience.
The Special Project Grants are awarded to help past Princess Grace Award winners in furthering their careers. Bensussen was awarded a 1990 Theater Fellowship and 1993 Statue Award. Individual projects are evaluated on the measure of artistic advancement and/or career development they may provide the artist. In 2004, the Foundation made nine special project grants, three each in the disciplines of theater, dance and film.
Emersonian named ?Teacher of the Year?
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has chosen Emerson alum and Plymouth State University Professor Patricia L. Lindberg MA ?82 as the 2004 New Hampshire Professor of the Year. The award honors teachers who influence the lives and careers of their students. Lindberg was selected for the honor from nearly 400 top professors in the United States, reported The Laconia Citizen.
At Plymouth State Lindberg teaches courses in elementary curriculum and instruction, integrated arts, educational theater and multidisciplinary arts experience for children. She is executive coordinator of Plymouths master of education program, coordinator of the M.Ed. in integrated arts and co-coordinator of the Graduate Studies and Community Outreach in arts leadership and learning. One of her most well known projects, says the Citizen, has been the award-winning Educational Theater Collaborative, which she founded. The Collaborative is a partnership between Plymouth State and Plymouth Elementary School and a local arts organization, Friends of the Arts.
Previously, she has received the 2003 Youth Theatre Director of the Year award from American Alliance for Theatre & Education (AATE), the 2003 Distinguished Teaching Award from Plymouth State University, and the 2002 Moss Hart Trophy from the New England Theatre Conference (NETC) for her theatre piece A You and Me World. Lindberg was named one of six "Remarkable Women" by the New Hampshire Magazine and won the 1999 Governors Arts Award for Arts and Education.
Alum filmmaker wins prestigious CINE Eagle Award
Holy Water-Gate: Abuse Cover-up in the Catholic Church, a documentary by Emerson alum Mary Healey-Conlon MA ?94, has been honored with a prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award. The film explores the lengths to which sexual abuse has been obscured. ?Holy Water-Gate presents startling testimony from an admitted priest perpetrator, church officials and victims, as well as the story of Father John Bambrick who was himself molested by a priest as an adolescent and continues to seek justice for fellow victims,? declares the Coolidge Corner Theater, where the film will have its Boston premiere on Jan. 10.
Michael Rabiger, author and award-winning documentary filmmaker praises the film: "With swift, deft scalpel strokes, Holy Water-Gate lays bare hypocrisy and institutionalized abuse in the Catholic Church. The film shows this graphically, but also that humble, decent priests still do Christ's work at grassroots level, and that some even risk everything to fight the snakes in their hierarchy."
The CINE Eagle award is recognized as a symbol of the highest production standards in film and video. Over 300 judges viewed and evaluated hundreds of entries for the awards. Prior recipients of CINE Golden Eagles include Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and John Lasseter.
Healey-Conlon is a lecturer at the University of Rhode Island, serving jointly in the Film Studies and Communication Studies departments. She is also owner and principle of C Videofilms, a Rhode Island based Production Company. She has produced and directed a variety of nationally launched projects, including animations, public service announcements for commercial television, music videos and interactive multimedia projects for the National Institute of Health, in conjunction with the Cancer Prevention Research Center at the URl.
Chair of CSD publishes new text on aging
Chair of the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department Daniel Kemplerhas published a new book called Neurocognitive Disorders in Aging (Sage). The book is intended as an introduction for students and professionals with no prior background in gerontology, medicine, or related fields, as well as those who have general knowledge of these topics but wish to learn more about specific disorders. Chapters include topics like aphasia, dementia, amnesia, and other communication deficits. In the text Kempler emphasizes the links between brain dysfunction, cognitive impairment, diagnosis, and treatment. Kempler haspreviously written or co-authored more than 100 journal articles and book chapters
Alumna Leary publishes comic memoir
Alumna Ann (Lembeck) Leary ’85 has published her first memoir, An Innocent, a Broad (William Morrow). The book recalls the difficult pregnancy with her son that kept her in England just as her comedian husband’s career took off. (She is married to actor-comedian Denis Leary, also an Emerson alum). Ann Leary “turns out to be as funny as her husband” writes a reviewer in the New York Times. Elle magazine calls the book “Witty, engaging ...a poignant story with sprinklings of good old American neuroticism.” Kirkus Reviews says, “Leary is one of those rare chroniclers of motherhood able to find middle ground between sentimentality and science as she records both her joys as well as fears.” Author Ben Sherwood declares Leary’s book "belongs next to David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day and even Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.”
The book’s publisher calls An Innocent, A Broad “at once an intimate family memoir, a lively travelogue, a touching love story, an inside look at the entertainment industry, and a side-splitting comedy of errors.” Leary has also has written for television and film.
Alum Wittman works on ?Hairspray? film
Variety magazine announced late last year that Emerson alumnus Scott Wittman will be co-lyricist, along with his partner Marc Shaiman, for the film version of the Tony Award-winning musical Hairspray. Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, who were behind the Oscar-winning Chicago, have signed on as producers for the New Line Cinema production. The film is scheduled for wide release in 2006.
Variety also reports that Wittman will be directing actor-comedian Martin Short in Short’s one-man musical show on Broadway. Playbill.com has reported the show, titled If I’d Saved, I Wouldn’t Be Here, will open this year. (Short's last Broadway performance was in Little Me, which brought him a Tony in 1999).
More news from Hollywood ? projects and promotions
Alum Harlan Gulko ?95 was recently named the director of national publicity (West Coast) at Focus Features in Los Angeles. Focus is the independent film division of NBC Universal. Harlan has worked on the publicity campaigns for films like Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (starring Jim Carrey), The Motorcycle Diaries and Ang Lee?s highly anticipated Brokeback Mountain, which premieres this year.
Alumna Dorothea Coelho ?91 will host Animal Planet?s new show, Who Gets The Dog?, which is scheduled to air this year on the cable channel. Who Gets The Dog? is a reality series about dog adoption told from the dog?s point of view, reports Variety. The weekly show will follow three adoptive families as they compete for the affections of a rescued dog. The dog, with the help of a team of pet experts, decides which family it would like to live with. The cable channel has ordered production of 15 one-hour episodes.
David Cohen ?91, who is married to Coelho, is a screenwriter who has enjoyed recent successes. Last year, Cohen and co-writer Tony Lord, sold their script Head Games to Universal Pictures. The film is slated to be produced by Mandalay Pictures. Prior to that sale, the writing duo sold their screenplay Black Sabbath to Summit Entertainment.
Two one-of-a-kind books published by grads
Scott Von Doviak ?89 has published a groundbreaking new text called Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema (McFarland & Company). The book is the first comprehensive study of the ?hixploitation? film genre, according to its publisher.
The book?s chapters are divided into three major topics. The first deals with "good ol' boys," from redneck sheriffs, to moonshiners, to ?honky-tonk heroes.? Von Doviak then explores road movies, featuring back-road racers, truckers and others. And lastly, he covers movies about ?beasts??some of them human?populating the swamps and woodlands of rural America. The book boasts film stills from hixploitation movies and an afterword that examines both the decline and metamorphosis of the genre. The foreword was written by Independent Film Channel?s Ultimate Film Fanatic host and Film Threat creator and editor Chris Gore.
?I was inspired to write this book when I went to see a special screening of Deliverance in the backwoods of the Central Texas hill country a couple of years ago,? said Von Doviak. ?It hit me that there were hundreds of these rural, Southern-flavored movies in the 1970s, from little-known drive-in flicks to popular hits like Smokey and the Bandit.?
Von Doviak is a film critic for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and a freelance writer focusing on the film industry. His articles have appeared in the Hollywood Reporter, Dallas Morning News and many other publications.
Josh Pahigian?s (MFA ?01) newest book, The Spring Training Handbook is now available from McFarland & Co. Pahigian?s first book, The Ultimate Baseball Road-Trip, was published in March of 2004 with friend Kevin O?Connell MFA ?00. The Spring Training Handbook is a spin-off on the same idea and is based on the author?s visits to each of the current 26 spring training ballparks across the country. The book provides a description of the ballpark as well as information on its history.
His first book, The Ultimate Baseball Road-Trip (Lyons Press), is a 531-page paperback described as "part travel manual, part ballpark atlas, part baseball history book, part epic narrative and part restaurant and city guide, all rolled into one handy volume,? according to an Associated Press book review.
Pahigian also has a third book forthcoming. Why I Hate the Yankees, from Lyons Press, will be published later this year. Pahigian is an adjunct professor at the University of New England English Department.
Young alumni perform in musical shows
Betsy Morgan ’03 is literally a “Dancing Queen.” Morgan recently joined the national touring company of the ABBA-inspired musical Mamma Mia! as part of the ensemble cast. The Chicago Sun Times says Morgan wasn’t planning on trying out for the musical, but when the opportunity presented itself she went for it. Morgan, a marathon runner, says being in the musical is even a more strenuous workout than running 26 miles, “When we’re on stage, we’re pretty much always moving and singing. We do a lot of jumping in heels. You have to keep your adrenaline up.”
Chris Janssen ‘03 was part of the 80-member star-studded choir that produced a benefit concert version of Pippin to commemorate Worlds AIDS Day. The show was performed in November in Manhattan Center's Grand Ballroom. The concert featured Ben Vereen as the Leading Player, which was the same role he had in the original production in 1974. Also in the company were The Wild Party’s Julia Murney, Avenue Q’s Jennifer Barnhart, and Hairspray’s Michael Longoria, according to Playbill.com.
Recent WLP grad publishes poetry chapbook
Beth Royer ’01 has had her poetry chapbook Radio Dreams published as the 2004 winner of Slipstream Press’s annual chapbook contest. “Beth Royer writes like a master model-maker assembling snowstorm paperweights full of quirky domestic detail—a malfunctioning strip-tease platform, a dream-enhancing radio, golf clubs at the bottom of a parched lake,” says acclaimed poet Campbell McGrath. “Her poems spin quixotic mirco-narratives into lyrical dream-shapes, like the stories of John Cheever run through a cotton candy machine,” he adds.
Royer was a Bucknell Younger Poet fellow. She also received an honorable mention for the Academy of American Poets Prize at Florida International University, and won high distinction in poetry from the writing department while at Emerson.
Alums promoted to top media positions
Emerson alum Dan Bigman ’92 was recently hired as managing editor of Forbes.com. Bigman was previously at NYTimes.com for six years where he was an associate editor, business editor and producer. At Forbes.com, Bigman will continue to expand the website and their editorial offerings, says the magazine.
Mike Kirby ’79 has been named editor of The Sun Chronicle (Attleboro, Mass.). Kirby who was working as managing editor at the paper, joined the Sun Chronicle as a fulltime news reporter after graduating from Emerson. He was named local news editor in 1986 and assistant managing editor in 1987 and became managing editor in 1998. Kirby has won numerous journalism awards, including a first place for investigative reporting and another first place for column writing. He was the Sunday editor when The Sun Chronicle won Sunday Newspaper of the Year in 1994 and the managing editor when the New England Newspaper Association named the paper Newspaper of the Year two of the last four years. Outgoing editor Ned Bristol said that Kirby has the skills “both journalistic and managerial to further the Sun Chronicle’s community newspaper mission.”
Alumnus named to ?Barrons? top 100 list
Raj Sharma, who earned his graduate degree from Emerson in 1983, has been named one of America’s top 100 advisors by Barrons magazine. He is a private wealth advisor and senior vice president of Merrill Lynch’s Boston operations. “[The award] is a terrific recognition that validates our investment philosophy,” Sharma told the News India Times.
Alum hosts popular web radio show
Emersonian John O’Neill '85 hosts the web radio show “Forever 80’s,” which has become extremely popular, according to a Sun Chronicle (Attleboro, Mass.) profile on O’Neill. Averaging more than 25,000 hits a week, O’Neill’s show gets hundred of emails a day from all over the world requesting songs. O’Neill told the Sun Chronicle that the site has become popular with soldiers in Iraq and in England where the nostalgia for 80’s rock is prevalent.
Leary, Mutchnick nominated for Golden Globe awards
Denis Leary ’79 has been nominated for a Golden Globe in the category of Best Actor in a TV Drama series, for his role on the highly acclaimed FX cable show Rescue Me. Leary, who created and executive produces the show, plays the lead role of Tommy Gavin, a veteran member of the New York City Fire Department.
Max Mutchnick’s sitcom Will & Grace (NBC), received a nod in the category of Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy. Mutchnick ’87, who created and executive produces the show, has previously won an Emmy for Will & Grace.
ABC's breakout hit Lost, which boasts two Emersonians on its writing team (Emmy-winner Paul Dini ’79 and Dawn Lambertsen-Kelly ’93), was also nominated for Best Television Drama Series.
Also, the Ray Charles biopic Ray, starring Jaime Foxx and Emerson alum Clifton Powell ’78, has been nominated for Best Motion Picture. And the NBC comedy Joey, which is produced by alum Kevin Bright, snagged a nod for its lead actor, Matt LeBlanc.
The 62nd Annual Golden Globe Awards will be held Sunday, January 16, 2005. It is telecast live on NBC (8-11 pm EST).
