| Laurie Metcalf
Right out of college, she and a group of Chicago friends started Steppenwolf Theatre, which grew into one of America's most distinguished companies. (Her 20-minute monologue in Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead is an off-Broadway legend.) Later, she picked up a little sitcom called Roseanne, which rewrote the rules of television comedy with its unblinking look at blue collar life. Now Metcalf is exercising her gift for being up to the minute on Broadway, co-starring in David Mamet's new comedy November. It's a Mamet play unlike any other, with the structure of a classic comedy in the Kaufman & Hart vein but filled with scabrous jokes on such hot-button topics as the torture of prisoners, campaign fundraising, the Middle East and gay marriage. Nathan Lane stars as a U.S. President willing to shake down the national turkey lobby to save his faltering re-election campaign, with Metcalf as his lesbian speechwriter, who's not above a little blackmail to get married on national television.
BEST Robotics Competition to be Held Saturday at MSCC
Seven area schools will participate Saturday in the Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology robotics competition at Mid-South Community College. Opening ceremonies will begin at 9 a.m. at the college's Workforce Technology Center on the North Campus. “The BEST robotics competition combines the best aspects of a sporting event, a chess game, and a science fair," says Dianne Langford, director of the Arkansas Delta Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Talent Expansion Project at MSCC. “The competition allows our students - our future technology specialists - to participate in a fun event that we hope will motivate them to become catalysts for significant inventions of the 21st century." Schools registered to compete include West Memphis East Junior High School, West Memphis West Junior High School, West Memphis High School, West Memphis Christian, Benton High School, Marvell Middle School, and the Home School Association.
Advertising giant Grey Global re-launches in Cairo by op...
Born in Aswan, Abdel Dhaher has both Nubian and Saeedi roots. Although he left Aswan as a child and came to settle in Cairo, Abdel Dhaher never really left Egypt's most magical city. “My painting style is social realism. I paint the reality of life in the South. I've loved to paint the daily life or the environment in the South ever since I was a student of Fine Arts," he says. Armed with a sketch pad at all times, Abdel Dhaher quickly draws everything he sees, a zir (water jar), a cousin feeding the chickens, another cousin feeding the ducks, his nephews' double wedding, or the belly dancer and zammar (flute player) at a wedding. Few people have heard of a Saeedi painter. It's not that Upper Egyptians aren't blessed with artistic talent. They are. It is just that those painters who originally come from Upper Egypt more often than not tend to stray away from their roots and try to become urbanized.
Kara Walker pushes boundaries
New York — It's the day before Kara Walker's solo show opens at her gallery in the heart of Chelsea's art district. Passers-by hoping for a sneak peek stoop to peer beneath the half-lowered shades. Callers inquire whether she will be present at the reception — people who want to meet her, or even, the gallery owner suggests, touch her, as groupies would a rock star. The 37-year-old Walker is not just a star. In today's art world, she is a supernova. And this is the former Atlantan's moment: A triumphant retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, one of three exhibits in New York alone. She's on magazine covers, in bookstores. Critics suggest comparisons to Goya, the venerated Spanish Old Master. .
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