Hershey Felder becomes George Gershwin; more

book.com/events/323349778901650 for September 23; both stream online at https://us02web.zoom. us/j/8010350269 followed by a talkback with Giron and the actors. For the Poe story readings and to view a recording of The Better Half, visit Giron’s YouTube channel by searching “Edward Giron” on www.youtube.com.)

Rubicon’s ‘September Blitz’

Since the pandemic forced its doors to close in March, Rubicon Theatre rose to the challenge by quickly pivoting in creating digital content, including taking its summer youth programs online, but also launched the nation’s first theatrical drive-in concert series. Now, as its Rubicon Goes Retro Drivein Concert Series comes to a close this week, the Ventura company’s strategy for coping with COVID has returned to the virtual world.

Over the 30 days of September, RTC is presenting more than 30 events, including live-streamed full productions of its award-winning plays, a brand new live-streamed one-act with music, re-streaming of its summer youth shows as both live streams and on demand, and a rebroadcast of its Independence Day Black Lives Matter-themed special Voices of America. The events are all part of “Rise to the Challenge,” a fundraising effort to help RTC continue through the pandemic. While the viewing window for some events have already elapsed, the Youth Theatre production of Annie, with a cast of more than two dozen, can be downloaded on demand through September 13 for $18, while free digital performances of Gulf View Drive, the final episode in the Arlene Hutton’s multi-awardwinning The Nibroc Trilogy that ran at RTC and premiered on its streaming platform from London in late spring, take place September 12-13.

On September 19-20, Rubicon will present the world premiere of A Song, a one-act play with music that serves as a conversation about race, responsibility, hope, and belonging in these new and uncertain times. Emerging young playwright Taylor Fagins takes the audience inside the life of Gill, an artist, a son, a lover, and a young Black man in America as he fights to find his footing in society and to create his own song in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and a world wracked with civil unrest, racial injustice, and a public health crisis. Admission is free but requires reservations.

After rebroadcasts of RTC’s Summer Youth Shakespeare program’s Macbeth on September 19 ($18), and Voices of America (September 16-19; free), Rubicon’s September Blitz winds up its month of online offerings with a blowout evening on Facebook Live, featuring guest appearances and giveaways every half-hour from 5 pm to after midnight. Visit www.rubicontheatre.org/allrise or call (805) 667-2900 for details and registration.

He’s Got Rhythm, He’s Got Music

For nearly 20 years, Hershey Felder has made a career out of creating oneman shows in which he portrays and plays famous artists from recent and centuries-old history, and the novel coronavirus hasn’t caused him to slow down much at all. Ensemble Theatre Company got in the mix when it presented his Hershey Felder: Beethoven in July, and now the star is back again, virtually, for George Gershwin Alone presented live from Florence. The work tells the story of America’s great composer who bridged the divide between jazz, pop, and classical music with the groundbreaking “A Rhapsody in Blue.” The show incorporates Gershwin’s best-known songs such as “The Man I Love” and “Someone to Watch Over Me,” selections from his theatrical-opera productions of An American In Paris and Porgy and Bess, and a complete performance of “Rhapsody In Blue.”

Felder is the only actor-musician to create the role of George Gershwin on the stage, and the self-created solo production George Gershwin Alone has had more than 3,000 performances worldwide, including on Broadway and in London’s West End, Los Angeles, Chicago, and many more. The upcoming show – slated to stream live at 5 pm on Sunday, September 13 – is being performed for the first time at Florence’s Teatro Della Pergola, one of Europe’s oldest and most famous theaters.

Felder relayed his enthusiasm in a letter to listeners that notes that the theater was constructed in 1657 and has

Hershey Felder has made a career out of incarnating famous artists in a one-man show. His latest act: George Gershwin. run nearly continuously for more than 360 years. The Teatro saw the world premiere of Verdi’s Macbeth among many other historic performances and is considered one of the most visually and acoustically glorious theaters in the world. The live broadcast of the Gershwin show will be the first time the theater is operating again since the beginning of the COVID-induced Italian lockdown six months ago, although still without an audience. But those who purchase tickets around the world can view the live show virtually on computers, iPads, iPhones and smart TVs, and/or revisit the work for extended “on-demand” viewing access of the recording of the performance for a full week. Felder is also recording videos and posting blog entries leading up to the performance, covering such areas as the very first box seats created in the world of theater.

Both Ensemble and Rubicon Theatre companies are part of the network presenting the Gershwin broadcast, for which a portion of proceeds benefits the venues, so you can choose which you’d most like to support. Tickets are $55 per household and are available at www.etcsb.org or 805-965-5400 for ETC, or www.rubicontheatre.org/allrise or 805-667-2900 for Rubicon.

Lights Up!: Auditions are Due

Lights Up!, Santa Barbara’s newest teen theater company that serves as a professional, yet inclusive and creative home for the youngsters, is currently auditioning for its 2020- 21 company membership. Interested actors, singers, and dancers aged 12-19 are invited to audition for admission and the opportunity to attend callbacks for specific shows with the rest of the company. Company members also get access to Lights Up! workshops, special events, and learning/performance opportunities, and become part of our community. Once accepted, members choose between acting, musical, or combo programs based on age and experience.

To audition, take a video of yourself singing a song that is in a comfortable range and shows your abilities, and also record a short monologue, either dramatic or comedic of 30-60 seconds. (Ideas for monologues are available.) Submit the video to info@lightsupsb.com by September 13, and then respond to a short questionnaire that will be sent to you.

Lights Up! is aiming to produce two full-length musicals live, but also has the ability to pivot to a filmed format if necessary. Musical track rehearsals resume on Sunday afternoons beginning late September, either in an outdoor location or on Zoom, in keeping with county guidelines for safety. Email info@lightsupsb.com with questions, or visit www.lightsupsb. com. •MJ

Perspectives neighbor comb. Think of each of those local combs as self-sufficient Direct Energy Resource (“DER”) generators and users of electricity. My home is a specially by Rinaldo S. Brutoco initely “island” itself off grid power. My monthly energy bill for a property with Rinaldo S. Brutoco is the Founding President and CEO of the Santa Barbara-based World Business Academy and a co-founder of JUST Capital. multiple structures and extensive gardens is only 39 cents per month. The World Business Academy also designed a microgrid that would span from Ventura to He’s a serial entrepreneur, executive, author, radio host, and futurist Goleta, a significant population area that requires up to 300 megawatts. The syswho’s published on the role of business in relation to pressing moral, tem it presented to the California Public Utilities Commission identified every environmental, and social concerns for over 35 years solar cell we would use and the precise location of each of those cells to collectively Wind, Wires, and Fire T he devastating Paradise Fire of 2018 was caused by sparking from Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E’s) high-voltage transmission lines that run through all sorts of back country and forests in Northern California. create a microgrid of 350 megawatt capacity. More recently, we designed a smaller one that would connect the fire and water departments of Montecito, California, a local school, and as many homes as Edison would allow. Unfortunately, Edison is doing everything it can to stop that microgrid from being built even though it would have dramatically reduced the death and destruction of the infamous Unfortunately, that tragedy is but one of dozens of fires started from high-voltage Montecito mudslide of 2018. transmission lines which, by definition, often run through forests and remote back country terrain. According to Cal Fire, in recent years electrical lines were responsible for 40 percent of all acreage destroyed. They also calculated that more than Just like Bell’s copper telephone wire, the wire Tesla 2,000 electrically caused fires were started between 2015 and 2019. Every informed government official knows there is no way to stop these fires from emerging created became the limiting factor in getting electrical as long as we cling to a statewide grid as our means of providing electricity to energy widely disbursed around the globe California’s 40 million residents.

We can’t stop lightning strikes, although they would be less frequent and less severe if and when we get climate change reversed, but knowing that high-powered transmission lines crisscrossing the state will cause many more fires in the You often hear the question: “What do you do when the sun doesn’t shine and future is simply unacceptable. Fires occur when the wind blows and lines bang the wind doesn’t blow?” The answer is you electrolyze cheap “green” energy into into each other, or when spontaneous combustion of line transformers and various hydrogen, with on-site storage, and run it through fuel cells as needed to create other components occurs. Having high-voltage transmission lines means we will supplemental power for the microgrids. And, in those rare instances where one inevitably be plagued with continuing forest fires every year. That’s unacceptable. microgrid goes down, neighbor microgrids would be able to “port” power from

On top of those incredible liabilities, California is now suffering through a one microgrid to another. With rural microgrids where there are no contiguous series of rolling black outs called Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) which are microgrids to draw power from, plenty of hydrogen will be available from on-site unilaterally ordered by PG&E and Southern California Edison (Edison) whenever storage and be supplemented by centrally stored hydrogen. the temperature rises high enough, an increasingly frequent event in this climate Microgrids are the answer to electrical resilience. They are the way to stop forest change era. Governor Gavin Newsom says we can expect these PSPS events to fires and free ourselves of the PG&E and Edison monopolies that keep our prices continue for nine years or longer. Is that acceptable on any level? Are we willing to high and our forests on fire, and block the full deployment of green energy sources suffer all that social and economic disruption? Look also at the billions in damages even as we mothball one fossil fuel plant after another.. •MJ we have to pay to all the unfortunate residents who sustain the loss of life and property from these constant fires.

Finally, we learned the hard way in 2003 that a single squirrel could bring the power down for 50 million people in the Northeast and Midwest by triggering a spontaneous circuit overload condition that “trips” circuit breakers up and down the line. Enough is enough. We need a new system that: 1) won’t catch fire, 2) is not subject to terrorist acts, 3) can’t ever be hacked, 4) won’t require us to ever have a PSPS event, and 5) can’t fail even if a squirrel goes crazy again! This new system has an additional hidden benefit: the new system will cost less to create and maintain than merely maintaining the existing system! What is this miracle solution called? It’s called an interconnected microgrid network. It requires no transmission lines FIRE SAFETY P to operate.

Looking back to the 1880s in Manhattan, Alexander Graham Bell famously made the world’s first telephone call over a single copper wire. Universally “accepted wisdom” was that you had to connect telephones by wire. In 1970 only 25 percent of the global population had telephone service. That jumped to 98 percent (805) 684-0805 global telephone coverage today because we discovered a new system called cell phones. Cell phone technology has revolutionized communications and human civilization itself. We just had to realize that the copper wire that started it all had YOUR FIRE PROTECTION CONNECTION to be replaced by electromagnetic radiation passing through the air. You see, that original copper wire that was essential for the first phone call to occur became the SINCE 1978 SERVING SANTA BARBARA enemy of widespread telephone service. Also in the 1880s in the same city of Manhattan, there was a vigorous dispute PRIVATE RESIDENCES • COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Edison wanted to power the emerging electrical market using direct current with small power plants located close togethINSPECTION REPORTS FOR er within urban areas. Tesla wanted to build a massive power plant in Brooklyn where he assumed no one would ever see it and bring the power to Manhattan NEW HOME BUYERS AND REALTORS with high-voltage alternating transmission lines. Tesla won the battle and centralized power with high voltage lines was created. Just like Bell’s copper telephone ASK ABOUT OUR POOL FIRE PUMPS WITH FIRE HOSE wire, the wire Tesla created became the limiting factor in getting electrical energy widely disbursed around the globe. The Indian farmer still waiting to get an elec$250 COMPLETE TESTING AND CERTIFICATION trical wire to his village never will. It makes no practical, engineering, or economic sense to bring that wire to every place of human habitation. The transmission CA LICENSE C16-741286 wire has become the limiting. The high-voltage transmission line is the enemy. Particularly because continued reliance on distant massive power generating units (805) 684-0805 • INFO@JOYEQUIPMENT.COM is so uneconomical, and is cent “green” economy. the biggest single factor slowing our transition to a 100 per5690 CASITAS PASS ROAD, CARPINTERIA, CA 93013

Interconnected microgrids are like a honeycomb where each side is attached to a

designed solar-driven, freestanding household microgrid which is able to indef10 – 17 September 2020 • The Voice of the Village • MONTECITO JOURNAL 27