Sabrina Won

ZHU, drops his new album GRACE, showcasing his unique blend of electronic music. The album – which is the soundtrack to a forthcoming film that ZHU created – finds him collaborating with artists as BANKS, Emotional Oranges, UPSAHL and Zero 9:36, among others, and, on his new single, “Settle for Less,” Puerto Rican/Cuban songstress Sabrina Claudio.

Here is my interview with Gloria Gifford about presenting LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS live-streamed online as well as her Gloria Gifford Conservatory and how she is managing to keep her students active during the past year.

Lovers and Other Strangers is an evening of five untitled comedic one-acts adding up to less than eighty minutes of brilliant comedy writing and wonderful relatable people seduced by love, arguing about love, marrying with love, cheating with love and confused by love. The play was turned into a hit movie starring Diane Keaton, Gig Young, Richard Castellano and Bea Arthur.

Art, as a rule, is subjective. It can be appreciated or not, liked or not. At opening weekend's Sunday performance, playwright Tina Howe's THE ART OF DINING had its own built-in laugh gallery, who loved this ART, as this one large portion of the house frequently led all others in laughter. Set in a home-converted restaurant - The Golden Carrousel - at the Jersey Shore in the late 70s, ART covers one evening of this newly opened, two-man operation fraughtly run by husband Cal and chef Ellen. Gloria Gifford directs her enthusiastic cast through slapstick, overprojecting and over-the-top acting in lightning-fast dialogue, often overlapping, often two separate monologues simultaneously.

Juicy. Delicious. Salivate your way through The Art of Dining, a hilarious exploration of tantalizing appetites and desires. Then eat with the cast. Gourmet meals at every show (for V.I.P. ticket holders).

This production of Shakespeare's popular romantic comedy is enhanced by a rock-and-roll score. Much Ado About Nothing is set in Messina, Sicily. Beatrice, niece of the local governor Leonato, and Benedick, a gentleman and friend of the powerful Prince of Aragon Don Pedro, are seeming adversaries, engaging in much verbal jousting and argument. The antagonistic remarks fool neither the men nor the women in Don Pedro's court; Beatrice and Benedick are obviously meant for each other, even if their love isn't instantly apparent. Their friends conspire to trick them into confessing their love for each other.

Director Gloria Gifford takes her job of inspiring upcoming stars in proper stage presentation, and above all, I must commend her for making sure each actor in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING at TU Studios understood exactly what they were saying so audience members could not only understand the words but also what was being said in terms of the dialogue's meaning. It is the first production of the play in which I could get the meaning of each line, even though the words as written were foreign to modern English. Some of the actors shared with me that Gloria demanded their line presentation and stage movements make perfect sense, and the actors responded with great care.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S THE TEMPEST, the last of his romantic comedies, was written in 1610 and published in 1623. This great romantic comedy has it all: danger, intrigue, politics, revenge, a mighty sorcerer, and his beautiful daughter who falls deeply in love at first sight with the handsome prince who is so conveniently shipwrecked near her island home. THE TEMPEST still exerts an influence over popular culture four centuries later, ranging from "Forbidden Planet" to "Gilligan's Island" to "Lost."