Entertainment

Get ‘On Your Feet’ at Century II with Estefan musical production

ELLY GRIMM

• Leader & Times

The American Theatre Guild wants audiences to get on their feet with its next production.

“On Your Feet! The Story Of Emilio & Gloria Estefan” will take the Century II Concert Hall stage March 15 through 17, with performances taking place at 8 p.m. Friday, March 15, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, March 16, and the final show at 1 p.m. Sunday, March 17. The show is a jukebox musical based on the lives and music of 26- time Grammy Award-winning husband-and-wife team Gloria and Emilio Estefan and features several of the Estefans' songs including 'Rhythm Is Gonna Get You,' 'Conga' and 'Get On Your Feet,' among others. As cast member Kristen Tarragó tells it, there is a lot of excitement surrounding taking the show to Wichita.

American Theatre Guild wants to help stage the future for young artists

ELLY GRIMM

• Leader & Times

There are many young people interested in the performing arts in some capacity, and the American Theatre Guild has a program to help further that interest.

“The American Theater Guild is in 13 markets, including in Wichita, and our Broadway touring shows all take place at the Century II Concert Hall. We're a non-profit organization presenter for the Broadway in Wichita series. We started an education/outreach program called Staging The Future, and it's really about working to put our mission into practice and implemented across our different communities,” Elaine Stolze, senior director of development and community relations for the American Theatre Guild said. “This program, at least in the Wichita area, has been in place for about six years, and across all of our markets, we started out with providing opportunities for underserved students and organizations that support underserved community members so they can have access to our Broadway shows, these high-caliber productions, and learn about the performing arts. We also provide educational opportunities that include master classes and talks so these people can engage with the cast members and others associated with the shows. We are absolutely thrilled to have been able to grow that program to almost 13,000 students, and those students are from communities from all across our markets.”

‘American Fiction’ blends humor and heart to nab Oscar nominations

ELLY GRIMM

• Leader & Times

The annual Oscars ceremony is coming up soon, and in a somewhat odd turn of events, I’ve actually been able to watch several of the movies that happen to be up for Best Picture this time around, with my most recent viewing being for “American Fiction.”

I’d sort of heard of the film through the grapevine for the past couple months and had heard a fair amount of praise for it, so I recently decided to give it a view of my own. Based on the 2001 novel “Erasure” by author Percival Everett, it follows novelist/professor Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) who, frustrated by a lack of more mainstream success, ends up writing an outlandish satire of stereotypical "black" books as more of a gag, only for it to be taken as a serious piece of literature and published to high sales and critical praise, with rather interesting results for everyone involved.

Sheppard shares music, history at SCCC

ELLY GRIMM

Leader & Times

There are many activities scheduled throughout February to commemorate Black History Month and earlier this week, Seward County Community College joined in on that.

Monday, SCCC hosted “African American Musicians in Kansas 1860-1920” presented by musician Lem Sheppard. During the show, he shared some of his own story of getting into music as well as some history of Kansas music. As Sheppard tells it, music had been part of his life for a long time.

Keeping students’ musical dreams alive a labor of love in Oscar-nominated ‘The Last Repair Shop’

ELLY GRIMM

• Leader & Times

I’ve made no secret here of my time being involved in band and music while I was in school and recently while I was searching for something to watch on Disney+, I came across a documentary that brought back some of those memories.

“The Last Repair Shop,” which clocks in at 40 minutes, focuses on a downtown Los Angeles shop where a handful of devoted craftspeople keep more than 80,000 student instruments in repair, which has been open for more than 60 years. I initially thought it would be more of a “day in the life” sort of feature and show the employees actually working on repairs and showing what a regular day in the shop looks like, but this was one of the times I was actually kind of happy to be proven wrong, because it’s SO much more than that.