Lauren Plaxco

Once again, the NAACP Beverly Hills/Hollywood Branch's Theatre Viewing Committee has spoken, and the nominations are in for the 28th Annual NAACP Theatre Awards. This year's pedigreed list of nominees collectively represents a rich, extensive dossier of legacies and accolades for both stage and screen. These nominees include members of a legendary 'gospel royal family' as well as a Legend whose part of an elite group of artists in the EGOT winners circle. These, along with all their fellow nominees, will be honored for their excellence on the small and large stages during our annual awards dinner, slated to be held on Monday, June 17, 2019, 6:00 p.m.at the prestigious Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

Gloria Gifford is a stage-trained actress from New York City, giving her the necessary background to understand the intricacies of people caught up in a place where the traffic is loud and people live in close proximity to each other, yet still think it's necessary to always be screaming at one another to get the upper hand. Such is the case with the five characters in Stephen Adly Guirgis' 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning THE MOTHF**CKER WITH THE HAT, an urban comedy now being presented as the inaugural production at the Gloria Gifford Conservatory for the Performing Arts new location on Theater Row in Hollywood.

Thanks to director Gloria Gifford, who retains Shakespeare's text while augmenting the proceedings with a contemporary and very soulful song score in the current production at Grey Studios in NoHo, the overall addition of the much-needed modern sensibility through music makes the complicated plot easily understood, even while adding in moments of sheer levity. Just imagine Anthony and his troops starting off the show by lining up and singing Super Freak by Rick James, as their way to describe Cleopatra and you get the idea.

Comprised of 10 short plays in 2 acts about the follies and foibles of love and lovers, LOVE ALLWAYS addresses the subjects of love and romance which have long provided great source material for comedy, created from the pens of two proven masters of American comedy. With busy careers in film, television and Broadway, Taylor and Bologna have defied the Hollywood odds with a marriage that's lasted 51 years (so far). And no doubt, many of the relationship stories shared must be of a very personal nature to them, or perhaps some of their closest friends!

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."

In this day of instant communication, how do you feel when the person you love does not answer a text or email within an hour? Makes you wonder what that person is up to and with whom, doesn't it? So image how was it in the days when the only way to reach a loved one was by sending a letter, and then having to wait for weeks or months for a response. Certainly the most outrageous scenarios would play in your head as to what was really going on.

FOOL FOR LOVE by Sam Shepard is about romantic obsession, although that may be redundant: Romance IS obsessive. It is feisty, muscular, sexually charged, and often based in fantasy, creating a dream lover where no such person exists.