Scene and Heard Volume 12, Issue 5

When Tommy Tune dances onto the Majestic Theater stage Nov. 18 with his Steps in Time: A Broadway Biography in Song and Dance, the show should be swell. Tune, a Texas native and nine-time Tony award winner, and his long-time collaborators, the Manhattan Rhythm Kings, put on the quintessential Broadway spectacular, as the title suggests.

But the one-night-only performance has meaning that goes far beyond this rousing Broadway blockbuster. It’s about San Antonio’s place as a city of arts, and the future of our most creative young men and women.

That’s because Tune’s show is more than a show.

You can buy a ticket for the performance, of course. But you can also buy a menu of treats that carry through the evening, from a gala cocktail bash at Bohanan’s to dinner in the baroquely beautiful Empire Theater next door to the Majestic before Tune comes onstage, to a glitzy dessert reception after the show. Best of all, the evening is a charitable fundraiser for a cause that fits the evening—and the theater—to a T (as in Tommy, and Tune).

Money raised that night goes to the Las Casas High School Scholarship for Excellence in the Performing Arts. That means come next spring, that money will be part of the scholarship money won by talented S.A. high school students in the third annual Las Casas Scholarship Performance Competition—a prestigious boost to the next stage, as well as a financial boon to some of this city’s most brilliant young actors, dancers and singers.

When the phenomenal Joci Straus first championed restoring the Majestic Theater through the Las Casas Foundation, theater buffs applauded and others shook their heads. When S.A. started hosting heads of state and Broadway stars in the gloriously resurrected Majestic, Straus’ labor of love suddenly looked brilliant.  Pretty soon folks were lining up to help Las Casas restore what would become the Charline McCombs Empire Theater. But that wasn’t the end of Las Casas’ work.

Thanks to the foundation’s board chair Frank Ruttenberg, who came up with the idea of awarding scholarships to talented S.A. students, the Las Casas Scholarship Competition was born two years ago. If you haven’t seen either of the two finals shows so far, make a note to yourself to be there May 22, 2011, when the next crop of fabulous young finalists lights up the Majestic stage.

For students interested in competing for the scholarship dough (and it’s quite a pot of gold—more than $135,000 in the past two years)—the deadline for applying is Jan. 28, 2011 (details are at www.lascasasfoundation.org.)

Getting back to Tommy Tune—tickets for that show are at Ticketmaster or the Majestic box office, or call (210) 223-4343 to get tickets for the reception or gala.

Tune’s Broadway Biography could be just the first chapter of some S.A. student’s Broadway future. Make sure you get a good seat for both.

Dancing with the Star

Tommy Tune probably would have been a big star even without Bonnie Reed’s help. You never know, though.  Reed, a former County Court judge with the voice of an angel and acting chops to match, still treasures the memory of being swept onstage to dance with Tune at another Las Casas show at the Majestic years ago.

Today, as a Las Casas board member who also helps judge the scholarship competition, Reed can’t wait to see her long, tall Broadway idol onstage at the upcoming benefit show—whether they cut a rug together this time or not.

Miz Bonnie’s been busier than most entire families put together this fall, from advocating for Democrat candidates to the State Board of Education (and educating all her friends about the complexities of that race in the process) to working with hubby Stu Schlossberg on San Pedro playhouse projects.

Now she’s involved in a fabulous plan to help raise funds for S.A.’s stellar Gemini Ink through poetry.

Not just any poetry, mind you—but a new anthology of women’s work edited by Caroline Kennedy, a poetry-lover since her White House childhood, whose previous volumes have earned her many literary fans.

Kennedy’s upcoming anthology, titled She Walks in Beauty, will include works by San Antonio poets including Naomi Nye, Barbara Ras and Rosemary Catacalos. It’s not scheduled to be on shelves until next April, but currently Reed is working with Rosemary Catacalos— the executive director of S.A.’s Gemini Ink and an acclaimed poet herself—on a fundraiser for Gemini with Kennedy in S.A. around the time She Walks in Beauty comes out.

You heard it here first…

Stellar school

Kudos to Paula Owen and all the folks who made another big dream for S.A. come true this fall, when the historic Southwest School of Art and Craft put the final touches on a long-rumored plan for its future.

The change marks a vitally

important new mission for the venerable institution—in 2013 it will begin offering classes in the first independent art school in Texas to offer a BFA degree.

The University of Houston has had a branch of its art school here, and several institutions offer degrees in art—but there hasn’t even been a plan for a local, independent degree-granting art school here since the costly collapse of plans for an art institute at the McNay back in the ’80s.

“This is a logical next step in the school’s evolution, and is rooted in the school’s commitment to our community to offer a rich environment for the study, and the making, of art,” as founding trustee Edith McAllister puts it. So true.

The new mission means the name of the school is changing, too—to the shorter, simpler “Southwest School of Art.”

It also means S.A. will be one of the few places in the nation where a student can go for a dedicated art education.

“You can major in art a lot of places, but a pure art school, with truly impassioned people who don’t care if there’s a football team—that’s something really special,” one excited art fan enthused of the change. And as James Lifshutz reflected recently, this could be the beginning of a famed academy of art like the Rhode Island School of Design in a couple of decades.

If you’re skeptical, look at it this way: 20 years ago, who would ever have dreamt that San Antonio would have one of three U.S. campuses of the acclaimed Culinary Institute of America? Or that it would be housed in the reborn Pearl Brewery, the brightest of the many new lights illuminating the new Museum Reach of the S.A. River Walk (which now sports Panama-style ship locks)?

San Antonio today is nurturing many seeds in many fertile gardens of the future. Here’s to great growth!

Don’t Keep Us In Suspense…

And finally, from the “What Were They Thinking” department, comes my favorite political press release headline so far this fall.  The news release from the camp of GOP County Commission candidate Susan Pamerleau bears this provocative banner:

“What Do Tommy Adkisson and the HemisFair Tower Have in Common?”

I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want to. But if incumbent Democrat Adkisson finds himself out of a job post-election, we’re wondering if he’ll find a new career with Viagra ads.

Cheers!