Watch: Life Among 80 Million Bombs

Posted on June 19, 2013 by admin

Local Photographer, Mike Greenlar, documents the story of Laos.

By Tom Magnarelli SYRACUSE (Cusetonight) - There is another world inside the ArtRage Gallery in the Hawley-Green district of Syracuse. It is a world where life among 80 million active bombs is normal. It’s in the Southeast Asian country of Laos where during the period of 1964 to 1973, 2 million tons of bombs were dropped by the United States according to Legacies of War, a U.S. advocacy organization that cited U.S. government records (“Indochina War Statistics – Dollars and Deaths,” Congressional Record, May 14 1975, pp.14-266).

Read: The Death of Cursive. By Stacey Considine

Posted on June 18, 2013 by admin

The Death of Cursive: A Sideshow for Those Unwilling to Accept the Inevitability of Digitization

Imagine one day a student sits down to type–“Type,” stripped of all contemporary associations with formality, now the go-to verb supplanting “write.” He or she sees the letters written–printed, rather–on the keys of one of many personal keyboards. But mechanical recreation and imitation of each letter form, the strokes and motion one must recall, are completely foreign to him or her. He or she may not even possess a writing implement that is not digitized, so recreation will pose a further challenge. A wide-tipped permanent marker, perhaps, is all that is available. Maybe this is only wishful thinking of someone from a distant past. Perhaps the “writing” world has become so digitized that instruments used for quick, material labeling are no longer needed. Or, at the very least, some kind of quick, print-version label-making technology has become unimaginably versatile and commonplace. Can we really, just for a second, actually entertain the idea that, in the future, a world without pens, pencils, styluses, markers, brushes, etc. could actually exist?

CNY Playhouse Staging 80′s Classic:

Posted on June 17, 2013 by admin

Greetings!

This weekend CNYP stages our first special production, an original adaptation of The Breakfast Club. This tribute to the John Hughes Film was adapted for the stage by Dan Rowlands and stars Jordan Glaski, Kasey McHale, Joel Miscone, Kimberly Panek, Sean Pratt, Justin Polly, & David Vickers. Running for 6 performances June 21-29, 2013. See below for details.

We are offering our opening weekend for reviewers and media wishing to report on this special event. Please email AD Dustin Czarnyad@cnyplayhouse.com or call 315-383-4318.

Visit www.cnyplayhouse.com or call 315-885-8960 for information or tickets to any of our events.

Sincerely,

The Central New York Playhouse Staff

Join us for

You can purchase tickets to all our events at

www.cnyplayhouse.com
or call 315-885-8960 for reservations.

Cooking with the Calamari Sisters

Posted on June 17, 2013 by admin

Coming in July to The Empire Theatre at the New York State Fairgrounds is the original cast, on tour, of Cooking with the Calamari Sisters, presented by the Syracuse Talent Company.

It’s about two Italian sisters putting on the final broadcast of their public access cooking show. They sing classic Italian songs like Que Sera Sera, That’s Amore and Mambo Italiano while cooking and fighting with each other.

It runs July 11 – August 11. Tickets are $32.50 and can be bought here.

Drink, Eat, Shop in Bangkok

Posted on June 15, 2013 by admin

Editor’s note: Risa Chu is a good friend of mine from college. In January 2013 she quit her jobs bartending, waitressing and bookkeeping in New York City to travel the world with her friends. These are her stories.

By Risa Chu BANGKOK (Risarenay.com) - After a night out on the town coming off a night of no sleep, I was ready to sleep in the next day but if there’s one thing I learned from traveling in Buenos Aires and not experiencing any of the nightlife and not even seeing Evita’s grave, it’s that sleeping in is a damn waste of time. You never know when you’ll have the same opportunity so spending the day in bed is likely to result in serious regrets about “shit I should’ve done.” So it was up and off to the weekend market.

Look: Pictures From Today’s CNY Regional Market

Posted on June 15, 2013 by admin

Debbie Does Damn Good

Posted on June 14, 2013 by admin

By Sean McNichol SYRACUSE (Cusetonight) - I got a call from my old friend Peter Dowling. After the introductory niceties, we got to business.

“Sean, we’d like you to review a show this weekend if you’re not busy,” he said.

“Great! What am I looking forward to?” I replied.

“Rarely Done Productions is opening Debbie Does Dallas this weekend.”

That was about all I heard of that sentence before bursting with laughter.

Remnants of A Secret War: The ArtRage Exhibition

Posted on June 14, 2013 by admin

Tonight, Mike Greenlar, the award-winning photographer for the Syracuse Post-Standard, will talk about his photography exhibition, “Remnants of a Secret War,” at the ArtRage Gallery in the Hawley-Green district, 7-9pm.

Watch: Stephen Svoboda, executive director at The Redhouse, talks ‘Macbeth’

Posted on June 14, 2013 by admin

Every June, The Redhouse Theater takes one of its plays out of its downtown building and into Central New York. This year, it’s Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” The cast will put on 47 free performances between CNY and the Adirondacks. Tonight, check out a free performance on the lawn of The MOST in Armory Square, 7pm. It will be moved to The Redhouse if there is bad weather.

Watch: IMAX opens at Destiny USA Friday June 14

Posted on June 13, 2013 by admin

First showing of the new Superman, “Man of Steel,” movie starts at 1:30pm.

Watch: Tech Garden Exhibition Focuses on the Finnish Migration

Posted on June 7, 2013 by admin

Syracuse’s connection with Finland began almost 30 years ago

By Tom Magnarelli SYRACUSE (Cusetonight) - A small intimate crowd gathered in the cavernous hallways of The Tech Garden last Thursday. Lining the walls were photographs, blown up and printed on canvas, of ordinary things. People, buildings, nature: nothing too striking or spectacular. But the magic of the exhibit comes from the locations where some of the pictures were taken: like Jarvenpaa, Jyvaskyla, and Helsinki, Finland.

Where Fantasy Meets Reality

Posted on May 24, 2013 by admin

: “Creepy Boy”

By Tom Magnarelli SYRACUSE (Syracuse New Times) - Abandoned prisons, biblical battles on Route 481 and infrared orange groves are among the pictures that line the hallways of The Tech Garden on Harrison Street in downtown Syracuse. They are a part of the surreal and haunting exhibition of four Syracuse-based photographers called, “Dreamt Realities,” on display until Friday, May 24, 9am-4pm. It is the second exhibition organized by the curator of The Gallery at the Tech Garden, Maria Rizzo.

Review: Hamlet, Cha-Cha-Cha

Posted on May 21, 2013 by admin

By Sean McNichol SYRACUSE (Cusetonight) - There’s a special providence in the satire of a play. Hamlet, Cha-Cha-Cha, written by visionary madman Monk Ferris in 1987 and directed by Jenn DeCook, is a satire the likes of which this amateur reviewer has never experienced before.

To put a working theater in a mall is an endeavor challenging enough. But The Central New York Playhouse truly had their work cut out for them in pursuing this show, their first musical. Most of us, I’m sure, are at least somewhat familiar with the tragedy of Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s best surviving plays. There’s something rotten in Denmark, the trappings of madness, poor Yorick I knew him, to be or not to be, and then everyone dies, right? Of course this isn’t Hamlet. It’s a parallel universe presented in musical form where something similar to Hamlet takes place: complete with tap numbers, fat jokes, and some really bad wigs.

Thousands Join to Fight Breast Cancer

Posted on May 17, 2013 by admin

By Tom Magnarelli SYRACUSE (Syracuse New Times) - Five women volunteers were needed to calibrate a new bilateral breast MRI at St. Joseph’s Imaging back in 2008. Peg Kunz was the first in the machine. The radiologist told her there was something in her left breast but it could just be artifact or a glitch.

“I didn’t think anything of it because I was the first volunteer,” Kunz said.

She said they needed at least five people to accurately test the equipment. She was told to return in six months. When she did, her husband, a radiologist at St. Joseph’s Imaging, was on-call and monitoring her.

“When I came out of the machine I just knew by the look in his eyes, ‘Honey, I can’t send you home. I need to get you into having a stereotactic biopsy.’ Three days later I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” Kunz said.

Local farmers sell organic produce year-round at the CNY Regional Market

Posted on May 7, 2013 by admin

By Tom Magnarelli SYRACUSE (Cusetonight) - Fresh. Local. Organic. On any given Saturday, shoppers at the Central New York Regional Market are looking for these words when buying food. They insist on purity and that what they are eating be produced close to home. Some farmers feel the same way. Jamie O’Hern is one of them.

Watch our video on the CNY Regional Market here.

O’Hern, 25, is the founder of Refresh Farms in Syracuse. Recently located in a warehouse off of Bridge Street, Refresh Farms uses aquaponics to grow green butterhead lettuce, basil, and to raise White Nile tilapia and a White/Blue Nile hybrid.

It all started on a whim.

She was working at Sunset Hydroponics on Erie Blvd and people kept coming in and asking her about organic hydroponics.

“There isn’t anything that fits that, aquaponics is the closest thing,” O’Hern said. “I started researching and set up a system in my father’s basement, it was a lot of trial and error but we figured it out.”

Marriage, Madness, Mozart

Posted on May 4, 2013 by admin

“The Marriage of Figaro” By Peter Dowling SYRACUSE (Cusetonight) - Gold ribbons of cascading champagne, the hearty laughter of loved ones and two beautifully dressed families uniting through matrimony manifest the universal images which race through the mind during wedding season. Plus or minus a heavily intoxicated uncle. Two lovers’ day of bliss occasionally can offer a plethora of opportunity for outbreaks of madness and mayhem. When such events take place, all spectators can do is hope for the best or ease their tension through a new camaraderie with that beloved drunken uncle.

Although this past Friday was a meticulously structured “Day of Madness”, Opera fans were delighted with Syracuse Opera’s spectacular comedy-of-errors style production, “The Marriage of Figaro” by Mozart presented in the John H. Mulroy Civic Center’s Crouse-Hinds Theatre at the Oncenter. Mozart’s masterpiece welcomed Syracuse to the spring wedding season with exquisite musicality, dedication to production quality and brilliant staging.

Brighton Beach Memoirs: Review

Posted on April 23, 2013 by admin

By Peter Dowling SYRACUSE (CUSETONIGHT) - Spring has finally sprung, and what better place to shake off those winter blues than at Brighton Beach? Relax, stick your toes in the sand and unwind to some great local theatre at the CNY Playhouse, which is currently presenting Neil Simon’s classic “Brighton Beach Memoirs” in their new theatre at Shopping Town Mall.

Traditionally, this drama is part one of Simon’s autobiographical trilogy, which captures the reality of growing up in a lower-middle class family in 1937 Brooklyn. Although this play is set decades in the past, it stands the test of time by giving perspective to many social questions found commonly within modern society. Today’s economy has led college grads, friends and family to rethink living situations because of the decline in the housing and job markets. This truth has resulted in non-traditional families making ends meet by living under one roof. The relationships that develop throughout the play hit close to home because the economy, views on responsibility and the struggle of growing up are closely paralleled in “Brighton Beach Memoirs”. Due to the prevalence of Simon’s well-developed motifs, one can only applaud Artistic Director Dustin Czarny for his clever choice of adding this classic piece of drama to CNY Playhouse’s season. Read More →

Profile: Nathan Faudree

Posted on April 17, 2013 by admin

The star of King Leetalks about his rise, fall and redemption.

A stage combat accident during a rehearsal for Red House’s Noises Off left Nathan Faudree with a broken knee. Technically, he split his tibial plateau and doctors had to operate and put three screws in his leg. Faudree had to drop out of the show but he is looking forward to a movie premiere.

Faudree plays former mayor of Syracuse, Lee Alexander, in a fictional account of his reign in office in the 1970’s. King Lee is done in a grindhouse, blaxploitation style and will premiere at The Palace Theater, Saturday, April 27^th at 7:30pm.

Faudree recalls the day he met with the writer and producer, Tim Ferlito.

“I could just feel my eyes glazing over. Oh God, this sounds like it’s going to be so dull, a bio-pic,” Faudree said.

“He started to tell me some of the stories of Lee Alexander himself. And then he told me how in the beginning, in the very first scene of the movie there’s a kung fu fight between me and Ringo Starr,” Faudree said. “Realistic? No, not at all. Over the top. Funny. He’s a complete badass. I got to do all of the things I really like to do as an actor. But also there are a couple of speeches that are just these wonderful, inspirational speeches. That was really, at the end of the day, what sold me on it.”

Restoration planned for Stickley House

Posted on April 3, 2013 by admin

A $500,000 New York State Historic Preservation grant was awarded to the Everson Museum to restore the Gustav Stickley House in Syracuse. Those involved with the restoration are hoping it will attract fans of the Arts and Crafts Movement to the area.

On Christmas Eve 1901, a fire broke out in the brand-new Queen Anne style home that furniture maker Gustav Stickley purchased for his family. It gutted the interior from the roof down to the first floor. Stickley had to redesign the inside of his house and he did it in the same style as the furnishings he had been building.

It would become known as the first craftsman interior in the United States, making Syracuse a center for the American Arts and Crafts Movement.

Now with the help of the state grant, the Everson Museum will begin the process of preserving the home. Read More →

Lax Focus

Posted on April 3, 2013 by admin

Professional lacrosse returns to Syracuse Thursday after a 13-year hiatus. The Syracuse Stingers will take on the NY Lax All-Stars at 7 p.m. at the War Memorial in the team’s first home game.

It all started with a phone call to Neal Powless from the Professional Lacrosse League. Powless, 38, of the Onondaga Nation, is a former All-American and professional lacrosse player. He plays offensive forward for the Stingers and played for the Syracuse Smash in 1999 and 2000. The PLL had a couple of teams fold operations and needed a replacement to fill those dates. They asked Powless if he could put together a team, and he agreed.
“That turned into buying jerseys and creating a logo,” Powless said.

After a few scrimmages and tournaments, the team wanted to schedule a home game to check the market and see if professional lacrosse is a viable product.

“My hope is that there has got to be a good amount of people that are going to want to check that out, just for nostalgia’s sake, to see a game played at the professional level in the War Memorial,” Powless said. Read More →