TOP OF THE NEWS Events
Events
‘Proposals’ on stage at Country Playhouse
1 Making jam from wild
fruits: Learn how to can jams and jellies from native wild fruit in a two-hour class on Feb. 25 at the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center. Read about this and other local happenings on the Events page. 3
Schools
1 Memorial High artist aims to be fashion designer: Memorial High School junior Juliana Baik aspires to be a clothing designer and illustrator. 5
Lee Ray photo
The Country Playhouse, 12802 Queensbury in Town & Country Village, is presenting Neil Simon’s Proposals on weekends through March 10. Narrated by a ghost, the play represents a departure from Simon’s trademark quick-witted style, mixing comedy with a melancholy sense of mortality. For information, call 713-467-4497 or visit www.countryplayhouse.org.
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An Edition Of
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Send us your news 1 Got something to share?: Send your story ideas, event listings and press releases by e-mail anytime to neighborhoods@chron.com
Serving communities in the Memorial Drive corridor, Spring Branch, West Houston, Westchase and Memoral Villages Z12
| Sunday, February 26, 2012 |
LANd ORdiNANcE
Proposed Chapter 42 changes raise local concerns By Annette Baird
Cast for Houston Christian High School’s production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Houston Christian High School
THEATER
2 musicals vie for Tune awards
By Don Maines Musicals being staged this month by two local private high schools are competing in the 10th annual competition for Tommy Tune Awards. For students performing The Sound of Music at Second Baptist School, this marks the first time the school has entered the citywide contest that honors excellence in musical theater. Meanwhile, Houston Christian High School hopes to return to the winner’s circle, having tasted victory last year,
scoring best choreography among the 45 entries. This year’s production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat boasts 44 students, a sparkly coat of many colors that weighs more than 20 pounds and an imaginative setting. “Competition is a very big motivator,” Houston Christian drama director Matthew Logan said. “The benefits of the awards are numerous, especially in Texas, where athletes are celebrated in schools. The Tommy Tune Awards celebrate the artist and make our stu-
dents feel very appreciated.” “Competitions are a necessary part of life — a way to recognize our students, their efforts, time, talents and training,” said Cindy Blades, who has been directing musicals at Second Baptist for almost 30 years. “Not that this award is our focus, but our students would be thrilled to receive accolades from the Tommy Tune judges. “Working with students with resumes as stellar as these makes it hard to pull the individual out of the process,” she
ART
Woman’s brush captures color, mystery of ocean life By Tom Behrens Growing up in the Netherlands, Spring Branch artist Liduine Bekman lived within walking distance of the ocean, which made a profound impression on her. “The ocean was very much part of my childhood,” she said. “Over the years, the North Sea showed me its beauty, its fury and its bounty.” That love of the sea is reflected in her watercolors of marine life, some of which will be on display at the Spring Bayou City Art Festival on March 23-25 at Memorial Park in the picnic loop area. The show will include works from 300 artists from throughout the state, nation and from Europe. Bekman, 68, comes from a family that was immersed in the arts. Her father, Bernard Bekman, was a writer, and his brother was a painter. Liduine Bekman grew up painting, but said she didn’t get serious about it after she graduated from the Glassell School of Art in Houston. She moved to Houston in the early ‘70s. Her watercolors are displayed in the Netherlands and the Bahamas and hang
said. “It is no longer about his or her personal achievement on the stage. Is about the collective performance and requires the artistic undertaking of the actor to be one of discipline, integrity and selflessness.” Claire Westmoreland is the show’s musical director. In The Sound of Music, a family harmonizes at a singing competition that is key to their flight from the Nazis. Adam Hammer, a senior who is captain of the Second Baptist football and soccer teams, leads
Musicals continues on 10
Spring Branch community leaders have expressed concern about proposed changes to a Houston land ordinance that would pave the way for denser development in the area between Loop 610 and Beltway 8, which they fear would lead to more traffic and crime. Catherine Barchfeld-Alexander, president of Spring Branch Central Super Neighborhood, and Ed Browne, president of Spring Branch West Super Neighborhood, said the proposal to place an urban designation on the area would strain the infrastructure. The Houston Planning Commission will host a public meeting, the fourth of four, to discuss the proposed changes from 6:30-8 p.m. March 8 at Trini Mendenhall Sosa Community Center, 1414 Wirt Road. The issue is expected to come before council for a vote in the coming months. Barchfeld-Alexander said that not enough thought has gone into the proposal, and that Houston residents should have the opportunity to vote on such an important issue. The change would allow a maximum of 27 housing units per acre in the area between the loop to the beltway. Neighborhoods with deed restrictions that establish a minimum lot size, prevent subdividing lots and limit the area to singlefamily residences would not be affected by the provision in Chapter 42. Communities without deed restrictions could apply to establish a minimum lot size and special building line.
Urban continues on 10
GATED COMMUNITY LOCATED IN ENERGY CORRIDOR
“Painting is my soul, what I do, who I am,” said Liduine Bekman, whose watercolors will be shown at the Spring Bayou City Art Festival.
in galleries in Rockport and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. In 1990, her paintings were featured a part of an exhibit sponsored by the Netherlands government in New Orleans to mark the 175th anniversary of relations between that city and the Netherlands. A member of the National Watercolor Society in the United States and Pulcri Studio Artist Guild of the Netherlands, Bekman has won more than 30 major awards since 1977 and her paintings have been featured in more than 70 group exhibitions and 10 solo exhibitions. Bekman, who is married and has two adult sons, is a diver, but didn’t dive when she was growing up in the cold waters off the Netherlands. Living in the Caribbean and along the Texas Gulf coast has given her a chance to continue Artist continues on 9
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Z12: Page 10 | Week of February 23-29, 2012 |
Houston Chronicle | chron.com x x x
FROM THE COVER
Five seamstresses worked 70 hours to make ‘Joseph’ coat
Second Baptist School
The cast of Second Baptist School’s production of The Sound of Music includes: bottom row: Morgan LePori and Meagan Maloney; middle row: Katherine Herrington, Sophie Adickes, Audrey Bishop and Alli Motley; top row: Kyle Hendrick and Corbin Schwinger. Musicals from page 1
the cast as the family’s father, Captain von Trapp. Sophie Adickes, a senior who’s also a cheerleader and president of the choir, plays governess Maria, while her brother, sophomore Micah Adickes, is Rolf Gruber, the strapping 17-year-old who’s in love with 16-year-old Liesl von Trapp. As Mother Abbess, senior Kendall Looney is entrusted with singing the stirring Rodgers and Hammerstein anthem, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.” The Sound of Music will be performed at
Zilkha Hall at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, 800 Bagby St., at 7:30 p.m. ThursdaySaturday, March 1-3, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 4. Tickets can be purchased online at www. thehobbycenter.com. or calling 713-315-2525. Seats are $20 and $28 each. HCHS is also performing off-campus, presenting Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Dunham Theater at Houston Baptist University, 7502 Fondren Road. In Joseph, the youngest son alienates his brothers when he describes a dream in which they
bowed to him. “His dad did favor him, but he let it go to his head,” Logan said. “His brothers sell him into slavery and he goes through a humbling process.” Eventually, he faces the choice of enacting revenge on his brother or forgiving them and returning to his place in the family. “It’s a great show to perform for families and little children, and we’re doing it in a very different way than other Josephs,” Logan said, explaining that, without changing a jot or a tittle in the script, the show
Planning official: Proposal would boost city’s tax base Urban from page 1
“We don’t have the infrastructure to support this,” Barchfeld-Alexander said. “People want their yards. The city is so park poor-already, especially on the west side.” “Flight to suburbs has more to do with better schools, better drainage, more property at a lower cost, and the perception that neighborhoods are more stable,” Browne said. “By contrast, city neighborhoods are always under attack. Homeowners who have spent years paying off their mortgage find their neighborhoods inundated by additional traffic and more crime.” Details of the proposed changes to the city’s Land Development Ordinance,
known as Chapter 42, are available at www.houstonplanning.com, under “Development Regulations.” The primary reasons for an urban designation, currently assigned to the area inside Loop 610, are to allow for old commercial and apartment buildings to be redeveloped, to provide a variety of housing and to increase the tax base, Houston Planning and Development Department spokeswoman Suzy Hartgrove said. If the area between Loop 610 and the beltway gets an urban designation, the minimum lot size, now 5,000 square feet, could shrink to 1,400 square feet, but developers would have to provide compensating open green
space and meet other regulatory requirements, Hartgrove said. She said demand for housing in Houston continues to increase and that the proposed changes pave the way for developers to build more varied housing within the city. Among other issues to addressed under the proposed changes to the land ordinance are creation of guest parking, changes to the length and width of shared driveway developments, building-line overhangs and establishment of a protocol on naming of partial replats. Annette Baird is a freelance writer who can be reached at anbaird@sbcglobal.net
AREA NEWS
Little League facility breaks ground Bellaire Little League broke ground Jan. 26 on a new youth athletic complex it will be sharing with Horn Academy and the surrounding community. The complex will be constructed on the green space adjacent to Horn Academy at Pine Street and Avenue B in Bellaire. When it’s completed this spring, the facility will include two regulation Little
League baseball fields and a tee-ball field. Also planned are permanent restrooms, covered bleachers, onsite storage and capacity for a concessions area. The community will have access to it after school and on weekends. “Children can come out there and fly kites, pitch and catch with their dads, play lacrosse — there’s so much more to this than to
say it’s a baseball field,” said Tanya Gee, a Bellaire Little League board member. Construction, which is expected to take about 90 days, will begin in late February, said Donnie Karkowsky, Bellaire Little League’s president. “The parents are very excited,” Karkowski said. “We really scraped in the past few seasons for field space.”
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includes “a story within a story” that’s set in a juvenile detention center. James Whitcomb, 17, the senior who portrays Joseph, was initially skeptical about the revisionist approach, as the show is often set in Biblical times. Whitcomb previously played Joseph when he was in the eighth grade. “It’s the exact same show, but this way makes more sense,” he said. “It’s a change for the better.” He explained that Houston Christian’s “post-modern” version sets a tone that is consistent with the way the Andrew Lloyd WebberTim Rice score plays with different musical styles, from a French calypso to a cowboy hoedown. About the coat of many colors he wears, Whitcomb said, “It’s very soft and very heavy. I guess it’s like dancing in a dress.” Houston Christian science teacher Linda
Oldham began creating the coat last summer by experimenting with patterns for Cabbage Patch dolls. She and four fellow seamstresses spent about 70 hours sewing the final product from nine yards of cotton fabrics. “It was the biggest
challenge for the show,” she said, explaining that additional strips will be unfurled across the Dunham Theater stage in the show’s finale. Don Maines is a freelance writer who can be reached at donmaines@att.net
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