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Triple play--All three Mount Holyoke entrants in the first Five College multicultural theatre playwriting competition had their applications accepted. MHC was the only college of the five to have all its applications considered for the competition, which is named for former Five College professor and noted writer James Baldwin. Ji Lee '98 entered Silent Love, Cheryl Gittens FP submitted Shaduhs uh Voodoo, and Elizabeth "Simon" Ruchti '97 entered Not So Simple. Readings and presentations of the plays will take place in March, and $100 awards will be given to playwrights chosen for the James Baldwin Award. This good news came to the CSJ by intercontinental email from assistant professor of theatre arts Awam Amkpa, who is in Africa for the premiere of his documentary The Other Day, We All Went to the Movies at the fifteenth annual African Film Festival.

His tricks are a treat--MHC custodian J. B. Nelson, who moonlights as a professional magician, performed his act for a packed house at Hadley's Peking Garden on February 22. The forty-minute show made extensive use of Nelson's trained doves, which he makes appear and disappear as part of the act. "Ice Bird" Nelson's show was so popular that he's been asked to return to Peking Garden; he's also planning a March 7 show here on campus. (See the calendar listings for details.)

Introducing "unnatural history"--Paul Staiti, professor of art, has written the introduction to Emilio Cruz: The Homo Sapiens Series, an exhibition opening in March at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine

Arts in Philadelphia. Cruz, a Latino artist living in New York, created sixty eight-foot-tall pictures between 1990 and 1996 as part of his imaginary "Museum of Unnatural History," which he describes as a "Nietzschean meditation on extinction." The exhibition runs from March 8 to April 20.

Helping the show go on--Holyoke Catholic High School students wrote A Dream of Me, an original play about a high school junior who contracts AIDS, but they needed just a little help to make sure the show would go on. A relay of goodwill among MHC staff and students is making sure they get that assistance.

Cast member and cowriter Stacey Ferguson's mother knows Eileen Rakouskas, administrative assistant in student activities. She put Ferguson in touch with Barbara Bunyan, senior administrative assistant in theatre arts, who gave her advice on how to arrange publicity for the show. Bunyan also rounded up Rose Pawlikowski '98 and Laurie Mead '98, who went to the high school to give students technical advice about doing scene changes and creating sets and props. Pawlikowski said they were helping students make a three-dimensional section of a locker room that could open to reveal something underneath. Carol Gesell FP spent two hours watching the students rehearse at Holyoke Catholic and gave them tips on acting and blocking, using her own experience as a theatre major. The play will be performed March 14 and 15; call 533-0347 for details.

What's new with you?--Send news for New & Notable to Emily Weir, Office of Communications, or email eweir@mtholyoke.edu.