TIM WARD DIES

The theater community and especially those at Niagara University were deeply grieved to learn of the death of longtime NU faculty member Tim Ward on Sunday, September 3, 2006. Tim, who had been ill for a long time, passed away peacefully at home according to NU Theater Department Chair Brendan Powers. A celebration of Tim’s life is planned for Monday, September 11, 2006 at 7pm in the Niagara Falls High School Auditorium, 4455 Porter Road. This service should last about an hour and will be followed by a reception down the street at the Niagara University Theatre Annex, located in the shopping plaza with Valu Home Center, right off of exit 23 on the 190. Those who wish to contribute a one- or two-sentence remembrance for possible use in the service can email jchris427@earthlink. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Niagara University Theatre for the establishment of the Tim Ward Memorial Scholarship.

ERIC BENTLEY

CELEBRATION AT

ALLEYWAY

Alleyway Theatre will celebrate their long association with critic and playwright Eric Bentley with a production of Unholy Trinity: scenes and songs by Eric Bentley arranged by Maxim Mazumdar, September 14-30, 2006. Bentley is the world’s foremost authority on Bertolt Brecht and a highly regarded commentator on the work of George Bernard Shaw. He formerly served on the faculty at the University at Buffalo. In Unholy Trinity, Jesus, Galileo and Oscar Wilde face off in a “dramatic and musical mix of scenes and songs from some of theatre legend Eric Bentley’s most powerful works.” Unholy Trinity stars Saul Elkin, Drew Kahn and Chris J. Handley, and has been directed by Neal Radice. The piece received its United States premiere at Alleyway 20 years ago. It was in this show at Alleyway, too, that celebrated Canadian actor Mazumdar gave the final performances of his life. “Opening the show on Eric Bentley’s 90th birthday with a party in his honor, and with Saul, who knows Eric from being his colleague at UB, brings us full circle in a very nice way,” comments Alleyway director of public relations, Joyce Stilson.

A MAN OF NO

IMPORTANCE

The musical, A Man of No Importance, by playwright Terrence McNally, lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, will be brought to life by the Irish Classical Theatre Company with some of Buffalo’s most remarkable musical theater talent. Brian Riggs stars as Alfie Bryne, a stage-struck Dublin bus conductor obsessed with producing the works of Oscar Wilde. Determined to stage Wilde’s Salome, despite the vigorous moral objections of Church authorities, Alfie ultimately finds himself, like Wilde before him, forced to confront his own homosexuality and to assert his own importance as a man in the world. Other members of the impressive cast include Loraine O’Donnell, Lisa Ludwig, Guy Balotine, Joe Natale, Kelli Bocock-Natale, Tom Zindle and Maggie Zindle. Musicians Mary Ramsey and Brian Eckenrode will perform live under the direction of Nathan Matthews. Brother Augustine Towey directs. A Man of No Importance won the 2003 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical. A cast album was released later that year.

3 MO’ DIVAS

AT STUDIO ARENA

The title is short for “three Motown Divas,” and is a follow-up to another Marion J. Caffey show, Three Mo’ Tenors, which was, of course, a takeoff on the concerts by the original “Three Tenors,” Plácido Domingo, José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti, who made a fortune touring the world with a wildly popular if somewhat trashy concert of opera’s greatest hits. Caffey is best known in Buffalo for his marvelous show Cookin’ at the Cookery, which featured the story of Alberta Hunter, and memorably starred Ann Duquesnay and Debra Walton. Not really a theater piece at all, 3 Mo’ Divas is a concert of music for big female voices with selections from opera, Broadway, jazz, blues, soul, new school, spirituals and gospel. The production is double-cast to protect the performers’ voices.

NEW THEATER FOR

ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Road Less Traveled Productions will open its new performance space in Theatre 4 of the Market Arcade Film & Arts Centre, 639 Main Street, with Mayor Byron Brown cutting the ribbon at 3pm on Friday, September 8. Later that night, the first production in the new space will be Emmanuel Fried’s The Dodo Bird, at 8pm. The theater space was renovated this summer with support from the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation, and will seat 92 patrons. The stage is 30 feet wide and 22 feet deep. The theater will continue to be used as a screening room for films.

DIANE GAIDRY IN

DOGWALKER

The film The Dogwalker, which will open in Buffalo on Friday, September 15, at the Market Arcade Cinema, stars Buffalo native Diane Gaidry, who grew up in Snyder and was a student at Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts and Buffalo State College. She got her start in the live theater community in Western New York. She did a summer internship with Shakespeare in Delaware Park in which she played a lady in waiting in Richard II, directed by Derek Campbell, and in her junior year of high school played the daughter in the UB production of Homeland, directed by Ed Smith. In her senior year of high school, Diane interned at the Playhouse on Main Street, where she acted in productions of Wait Until Dark (with sound operator Anthony Chase) and The Physician in Spite of Himself in 1981. She attended Buffalo State College her freshman year, where she played Mina in Dracula. Later this season, Gaidry will return to the Buffalo stage to play Mary Cavan Tyrone in the Irish Classical Theatre production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (October 27 to November 26).