The first time Joy Spears stepped onto a stage she didn’t want to get off. She was 3 years old, her dance number at the Christmas show had finished, and although all the other kids had filed off at the end of the song, she remained standing in front of her audience in a little green tutu. “I just wasn’t ready to leave,” Spears recalled. And from 3 years old to 30, not much has changed. Now, the 2011 UA […]
On Being a Writer It takes a certain kind of bravery to be a writer. There are the obvious challenges—the sobering chance of success, the dismal publishing landscape—but also the not-so-obvious: the hard, lonely hours spent piecemealing thoughts and words, the gut-wrenching feeling of having a publication accept your work only to learn later that its editors changed their minds, the risk of investing your time and soul into something that may never be read by anyone but yourself. And […]
On Valentine’s Day, more than 200 people ushered into the Marian Gallaway Theatre to watch 19 actors and actresses turn back time to 1939, when a young wealthy perfectionist named Tracy Lord was getting married for the second time. The 150-minute production took the cast two months to prepare—from memorizing lines and blocking stage directions to learning how to walk, talk, and carry themselves like they were in the 1930s. However, their work represents just a small fraction of the […]