Word: lazebnik
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...anxious to get off the beaten path, you should be following the Harvard Premiere Society--that's its specialty. The Premiere Society was originally founded as a vehicle for the talented Philip LaZebnik '76, who was having trouble getting his new musical Mad About Mintz produced by Radcliffe Grant-in-Aid. Under the society's auspices, Mintz finally made it onto the Agassiz stage, and the rest is Harvard theater history. Last year the Premiere Society sponsored what turned out to be the hottest show in town: Do It Yourself, a collage of skits and songs written by Harvard students...
...producer arranges in a small, plastic carousel. "AAAaaah, Ooooh, la-la-la-la-la-ne-ne-ne-t-t-t-;" gregarious gobs gather in garious groups." The cast hopped and stomped, up and down, practicing diction and singing scales, up and down. The man who paced was Kenneth LaZebnik, director-cum-ringmaster and coach now warming (or frenzying) up his actors in the few minutes before curtain...
...been too good, too real, I won't get mushy. Let's get 'em" LaZebnik said, hugging in a semicircle, the actors chanting their ritual send-off; behinds wriggling, they sang "pop, pop, pop, pop you all night." Some exchanged lipstick-red carnations. Randy Howze, who played the whining Ronald, kissed the producer leaving a sticky red mouth on her cheek. "Are we ready to go--let's get this show off the road--this is the last time--I'm getting so sad" and they filed backstage to the dark cramped wings. A nightly Hulaballoo frug to the overture...
...screams and popping balloons and hugs and pats on the back and the show closes. The audience, full of Loeb big-timers, streams into the greenroom after curtain calls and a crew of T-shirted techies replaces the actors on stage to tear down the set. Author Philip LaZebnik stands out in the greenroom, partially because of his lanky height, partially because of the flock of people who rush to shake his hand. But each actor is surrounded by his own crowd; they smile in a daze, drained and wet. Some of them are on the verge of tears, others...
...this latest venture, LaZebnik envisions purgatory as a vast, bug-infested wasteland, where decision-making has degenerated into the acceptance of "viable alternatives, second choices, trial balloons." Built upon repetition--for where there are no choices, there is no real escape from the past--it is a vision which, hopefully, does not augur a similar fate for LaZebnik: being condemned to write the same show over and over again...