New Buffalo school board approves merging middle school football with River Valley

SPORTS

From the Bleachers

COLUMN BY KURT MARGGRAF IN CHICAGO

Even though the Bulls got

blown out by the Milwaukee Bucks for the second straight game and third time in four games, the Cubs lost 4-3 after destroying the Pittsburgh Pirates 21-0 the day before, and the White Sox lost their seventh straight game, this time to the Twins, 6-4 in ten innings. To top off the White Sox woes, they lost yet another key contributor, losing Eloy Jimenez for six to eight weeks with a torn hamstring injury. Hopefully, the Gods will look more kindly on the Bears when the college draft begins on Thursday.

As we know, sports teams and players go through good times and bad, and while my teams are currently in slumps, my sports world is still shining brightly. I have a new baseball hero who plays for the Tampa Bay Rays. I don’t use the word hero for athletes very often, but outfielder Maverick Phillips certainly deserves it. I first heard about Maverick while watching a national newscast. The story started out to be about Chloe Grimes, an eight year old young lady who is battling cancer for the second time. Chloe’s softball team went to a Rays game and she got to throw out the first pitch to her favorite player, Maverick Phillips. Chloe then gave Maverick a bracelet she had made that said “Rally for Chloe, our princess warrior “and Maverick wore it during the game to bring him luck. In the third inning, while Chloe was being interviewed, Maverick hit a ball harder than he had all year for a home run. After the game, the same lady interviewed Maverick and he was so emotional that he struggled to finish the interview. Later he tweeted“ Chloe, you’ve touched my heart and have impacted me! I feel so blessed that God gave me the opportunity to meet you!.”

The story keeps getting better. They retrieved the ball, Maverick signed it, then personally delivered it to Chloe. Then his organization donated some money to help defray the costs of her medical care. Through go fund me, more than twenty five thousand dollars have been raised. After researching Maverick, I found out he’s this kind of guy that runs the bases with the kids when they get to run the bases for free after a Sunday game. He’s also the kind of guy who comes out of the dressing room early to sign autographs for the kids and ask them how they’re doing in school. He’s the kind of man who bought an enormous amount of Girl Scout cookies. He’s the kind of man that has an organization that is titled Baseball is fun. In short, he’s the kind of man we should all try to emulate.

I’m going to close with a couple of quotes this week. On twitter, Dallas Braden said, “I’m gonna need a bigger heart so there’s room for all the love I have for Brett.”

Finally, Brett Maverick Phillips said of Chloe, “She IS the hero. This is her story, not mine. I was just glad to be a small part of it.”

Humble and kind. Baseball is fun. Let’s all pray for Chloe, our princess warrior. Talk to you next week. Peace, love, and happiness.

New Buffalo school board approves merging middle school football with River Valley

BY FRANCESCA SAGALA

Members of the New Buffalo Area Schools Board of Education room and go from there.” There will be a combined meeting with River Valley schools, Monday, May 2nd at 7:30pm at River Valley Schools. approved a cooperative sports program with River Valley Schools for middle school football at their Monday, April 25, meeting.

At the board’s April 11 meeting, New Buffalo Area Schools Superintendent Dr. Jeff Leslie said that the board would probably vote on the matter at their April 25 meeting and “go from there.”

He added that he would “ideally like to get everyone in a In March, meetings were held at both New Buffalo High School and River Valley High School with regards to gaining public input on whether the two school districts should combine more of their school sports programs. Both school districts have already merged their high school football and wrestling programs, with the Red Arrow Raiders having just completed their football season last fall.

Tomato Soup Can 1969 painted by James Warhola at age 15, Andy Warhol’s nephew. Ukrainian Museum. Photo By Alexander Fatouros

Utilizing downtown Manhattan’s East Village and NoHo as a set, Bated Breath Theatre Company’s “Chasing Andy Warhol” immerses audiences into the glamorous world of one of the most important artists of all time, Andy Warhol. His works of modern art continue to sell for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The audience yields to art in transit as scenes derived from Warhol’s mysterious life spring up on the streets and in secret spaces. In the spirit of creatives shaking up the art scene, Executive Artistic Director and lead writer, Mara Lieberman comments on what the audience can expect from the moment they arrive:

“They can expect the unexpected. They can expect to be surprised and they can expect to have moments of wonder and wondering who is in the show and who is not in the show. One of the most exciting things that happens is watching New York interact with the show and the audience being

Pop Art of “Chasing Andy Warhol”

BY ALEXANDER FATOUROS IN NEW YORK CITY like: ‘oh, is that a character or a paid actor or is that New York or is that a spectator?’ So the blurring of the boundaries of what is performance and what is everyday life Is something that happens in this form and in this structure,” said Lieberman.

Amid a community of pioneering artists and innovators, the opening scene begins at 26 Astor Place at the Cube below the offices of social technology and artificial intelligence companies Meta and IBM Watson. Timelines converge as distinctions between audience, performer, and location blur. Edie Sedgwick, one of Andy Warhol’s superstars, and a myriad of other characters emerge in full 1960s 1970s and 1980s regalia. The effect is mesmerizing.

Blending the boundaries among high art, commercial art, and low culture, the multimedia experience embraces the authentic character of the iconic artist. “We think it’s really important to try to capture pieces of Andy Warhol that are not as well-publicized. Not always in the canned interview. You have to turn over a few more rocks. You have to try to understand about the human being and what motivated his iconic work that influences us every single day,” noted Lieberman. The chase leads to all sorts of places by way of a curated selection of immersive theatre, dance, film, art, and puppetry. Working in partnership with those who complimented his own, Warhol envisioned New York City as a playground and canvas. Much like Warhol himself, the actors who portray the raw-edged models, artists, socialites, and movie stars stand out, emanate a presence and really make an impression. In transporting audiences to the intimate universe of the most influential artist of the 20th century—Andy Warhol—courageous choices were necessary. “I always say that everything is a theatrical problem. So, I am trying to find the best or one of the best answers to solve a theatrical problem at all times. And I don’t stop if the answer is good or good enough. I keep going until if feel like yes, this is the answer that feels alive. Sometimes that answer means dancing, sometimes it means film, sometimes it means puppetry. Sometimes it means props flying through the air and transforming into things that are not originally intended for use. Andy really looked at every day life and wanted to shake up the mundane. Shake up the things like the soup can that you see in front of you all the time and make you go: “is this soup, is this art?’ And I think there is a way in which we try to do that with the City and wake up your experience of being in the City with other human beings,” said Lieberman.

Canvasses of Campbell’s soup and other recognizable styles from the world of advertising and popular culture connect spectators to realms of yesteryear. The “Glorify your hair with Halo” campaign emanating from a store window was particularly exhilarating to experience. The most fascinating characters in the cast are played by Annika Rudolf and Brandon P. Rains.

A stroll along the Bowery alongside Warhol’s entourage of rock stars, outcasts, Hollywood celebs, aristocrats, and intellectuals, the audience attains a prime spot on Great Jones Street. Legendary histories and branded personalities are explored by means of performance and dance near the studio loft where Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat painted.

Warhol’s excellent foresight into society’s aspiration for recognition and distinction is In full view. Across the storied thoroughfare on East 3rd Street, The Bowery Hotel is abuzz with paparazzi, image-makers, and bohemian denizens snapping photos. Others surf the web, swipe, scroll through social media feeds, and stream quirky content on their smartphones. The lure of celebrity and fame is evident.

Holding up a mirror to contemporary society, Lieberman illustrates why “Chasing Andy Warhol” is significant in the 21st century: “I think that [Andy Warhol] was the forefather of social media. And there’s something that happens in social media that you know in our pic or profile picture we frame up the self in a certain way that which we want to brand. We brand ourselves in the same way Andy very consciously branded himself and knew how to make the brand, sell the brand, create the allure, the appetite, and continue to sell. We do the same thing with ourselves. We keep out of the frame the uglies, the things we don’t want everyone else to see, which is really where the juicy parts are and probably the truth. And Andy did this as well. It was very important for him to keep the frame around himself very tight and very select so that people didn’t know some of the darkness and unrest in his soul. And he deflected a lot of that pain into his artwork. So I feel like now the way we relate to technology we are all so branded.”

When it comes to stagecraft and striking an artistic conversation with the audience, the production is groundbreaking. The techniques employed merge the elements of popular culture, consumerism, and materialism seamlessly. “We are a brand. We are a product. I feel like Andy was this soothsayer of this so many years ago. It is just mind boggling to me. And that’s what the last scene is really all about. He dined out on us so to speak. And yeah, I think that it’s really relevant because he could sniff this in the air. There’s a part of me that’s wanting a little bit of a healing journey. One wonders whether he would have expanded his frame to include a little bit more of the parts that he wanted to hide from people then maybe his life would’ve been more fulfilling to him. But, I wonder about ourselves as well, you know? in our lust for renown and celebrity and recognition what parts of ourselves that we’re not showing and cutting off and what does that do to ourselves?” affirmed Lieberman.

At its core, emerging technologies are fundamental in telling this story. “Technologies are used in order to support experiential transportation. If we want to create a feeling of change in time and space or going on some kind of journey to the past. Technologies can be really useful in doing that. The history of technology is really embedded in the story of Andy Warhol. He was the first person I think that took a technological device, which was his tape recorder, he called it his wife Sony. And brought it into a place of intimacy in his life. So if you think about how we are with our cell phones we are probably sometimes more intimate with our cell phones than we are with our partner laying right next to us. And what’s really interesting to me is the way he brought technology and humanity together or he viewed technological objects with a lot of humanity. And we try to do that as well with some of the stuff that you see—the projections and the TV screens in the window and the live-feed camera where the audience gets to see themselves. And hopefully we bring this kind of curiosity and love for pushing technology with some of the thematic elements about people being famous for 15 minutes and the narcissism that these technological objects have brought about or that they have invented in the way they function so it’s all in service though to the theatrical journey. The technology should serve the art,” said Lieberman.

Witty and powerful, the play much like Warhol’s art embodies an enterprising ingenuity highlighting the need for joint endeavors to achieve goals. The expression of the human spirit ascribed to Warhol continues to invigorate our senses on a global scale. Warhol’s legacy endures.

“We see the residue and inspiration of Andy everywhere in the East Village. The desire to create something new.

Chasing Andy Warhol on Astor Place in New York City. Photo By Jenny Anderson

The desire to activate your environment in a way that makes it feel alive and cutting edge and dangerous. And the way the audience felt as part of something bigger than themselves when they were with Andy whether they were at The Factory or Studio 54 or you know just filming a film. Andy really opened up the frame and the lens to include lots of different people and lots of different pieces of life,” expounded Lieberman.

Fun, hugely powerful, and sure to amass a cult following, “Chasing Andy Warhol” not only hits the mark but also boosts the Big Apple’s standing as the capital of the art world. For all the delicious details drop by https://www. batedbreaththeatre.org/.

This article was first published by in The Theatre Times on April 17. 2022 and has been printed with permission. To read the original review by Alexander Fatouros drop by: https://thetheatretimes.com/ oracle-of-pop-art-affirmed-inchasing-andy-warhol/