Chestnut Hill Local

Hill painter/author a 'goddess to be worshipped'

By MARIE FOWLER

"I grew up at the foot of an easel," confesses artist, author and educator Susan Rodriguez. "I have been an artist my entire life. There was never a question about it. It's a genetic mutation," laughs the Chestnut Hill resident (since 1976), a third-generation painter. And if the dramatic, demonstrative Rodriguez weren't an artist, she would surely be an actress, a diva! From the silk fringe sweeping through the air at her wrists to the sparkling chandelier earrings that are constantly in motion, her very presence is performance art.

Rodriguez's current one-man show, Stealing Water from the Moon, is an intriguing selection of pastel collages, prints, scrolls and ceramics, on view at the Indigo Arts Gallery in Old City through October 31. The artist took the show's title from a "Zen saying about the quest for the unattainable - which I believe essential to the creation of one's art."

"I was born over a dress shop on Ogontz Avenue," Rodriguez says. "I went to a Quaker school, but I never knew what to put in the box where you check off your religion. Undecided? I was raised in a very Socialist...

William Shakespeare, comparing life to the stage, wrote in Macbeth that actors strut and fret their way across a stage, telling an idiot's tale and signifying nothing. A pretty harsh criticism - but nothing compared to what Chestnut Hill playwright Alex Dremann thought of the actors and directors who put on a show of his at the University of Southern California (USC).

Dremann, a full time data analyst, is nervous about giving up control of his plays to directors. "It can go either way," Dremann said, sitting in Starbucks on a Monday night. In three days, his latest play and first full length one to appear in Philadelphia would debut. Postcoital Variations, a romantic comedy about people in a "very non-traditional relationship" took him 20 minutes to write the structure for - and four years to finish the rest.

The play is also the Philadelphia Theatre Workshop's first production of their first season. "Our production of Postcoital Variations is the culmination of years of developing this new theater," said Carol Murray, managing director. The stakes were high, and though Dremann has had plays performed in Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia, he still gets nervous when it comes to opening night.

"You can have a mediocre play and the actors are great. And everyone thinks you're...

An intriguing concert will take place at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, 8855 Germantown Ave., this Saturday, October 23, at 8 p.m. The locally based yet internationally acclaimed Renaissance wind band, Piffaro, will perform a program entitled "The French Connection: Northern Composers at the Courts of Rome." The ensemble will be joined by vielle player Shira Kammen and the group Trefoil, which includes vocalists and instrumentalists Drew Minter, Mark Rimple and Marcia Young.

Piffaro's Joan Kimball explained the program's genesis by pointing out that most of the scores in the group's repertoire date from the 16th century and onward. "We've not programmed that much music from the 15th century," she said, "and the chance to work with Shira and Trefoil gave us the opportunity to do so.

"Drew Minter is a world-class countertenor," Kimball continued, "and we've known Mark Rimple (a composer and countertenor who teaches at West Chester University) for years, so that connection brought us together with Trefoil. We've known Shira for the excellence of her playing the vielle - an early, plucked string instrument - and so we thought that bringing her into the program would make for beautiful colors between the voices, the recorders and shawms, and the plucked strings."

Kimball explained that the Papal court in Rome during the late 14th and 15th centuries, by hiring musicians from northern France and Flanders, helped give rise to the new international style of composition that dominated the music of Europe for the next century...

'Trumbo' a performance and play to be treasured

by CLARK GROOME

What a joy it is to listen to elegant writing, especially in letters written with a style that has become all but extinct in our modern, e-mail brisk society.

Such writing is on glorious display in the Philadelphia Theatre Company's production of Christopher Trumbo's epistolary play Trumbo. The play chronicles life and legacy of Dalton Trumbo, the author's father.

A well-known war correspondent and screenwriter, D.T., as he signed his letters, was the victim of the 1947 scourge by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He spent time in jail for contempt of Congress and later was blacklisted with many others by the powers that ran Hollywood in the 1950s.

It was a fascinating and frightening time, one which is well documented in the biographical information imparted by Christopher Trumbo (William Zielinski) and in the letters read by D.T. himself (Bill Irwin), all of it set against the periodic film clips or photos from the HUAC hearings themselves, a background that gives the live action an eerie realism.

Trumbo was a major Hollywood figure, one who was not a Communist but...

'Apprentice': true picture of corporate America?

By JIMMY J. PACK JR.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I am addicted to "The Donald." Yes, I am a fan of The Apprentice. Why? Because it has taught me a very valuable lesson: in order to be successful on a corporate level you must do two things: empty out your soul in the ashtray in the foyer of every office building, and make sure you can always find the pulse of pop culture so that you are able to decide how much consumers will pay for certain products in the marketplace.

The Apprentice actually calls a few questions to mind, the most important being how valid are these 'challenges" that Mr. Trump issues to measure a person's value to a corporate structure? Is being able to reasonably price a set of woman's dresses an accurate guage of a person's ability to lead a team of workers? Does a familiar smile and a clean set of sponges priced at over $20 on QVC mean that a team of women are failures because their male counterparts were able to sell fewer grilling machines at almost twice the price?

For Mr, Trump it all seems to boil down to how much money can a person make? Is this what corporate America is about? Is Kmart not worried about the safety of a beach chair as long as it can sell over a million dollars worth in one year? Does Wal-Mart price their bed sheets at a lower price...

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