Moving up to directing after 15 years experience working on the production side of countless films and television series, Rhode Islander (and occasional Motif contributor) Jonathon Schermerhorn released his first feature, The Manor, on May 15. Distributed by Lionsgate, the film is available (under its original working title, Anders Manor) from Amazon and other major vendors via […]
Although three of its four characters are mathematicians, you don’t need to know any math to appreciate Proof, but it doesn’t hurt. Nearly all of the math in the play is in the form of “easter eggs” that will gratify anyone who notices them, but none of it is essential to understanding the plot or […]
RI General Treasurer Seth Magaziner well understands that what banks and credit unions do is accept money in from depositors and lend it out to borrowers, charging interest from borrowers and paying interest to depositors, and the amount of money they can lend is limited by the amount deposited with them. In a healthy economy, […]
The Play The quality of poetry is not strained. We first meet 16-year-old Isabella (Victoria Ezikovich) scribbling in a notebook, living homeless in an alley. Her mother Karen (Jenn Shammas) sleeps nearby, a junkie whose criminal boyfriend Eddie (Rudy Rudacious) soon arrives. In due course, the poems in Isabella’s notebooks become her lifeline to her […]
[Because of the length of this review, this is the second of two parts: the first part, Eyeless in Gaza, provides an overview of the Wilbury Group production and the second part, Brainless in Gaza, provides some additional detailed historical analysis of the script.] Another objection is that the central action of the play, Hannah’s […]
[Because of the length of this review, this is the first of two parts: the first part, Eyeless in Gaza provides an overview of the Wilbury Group production and the second part, Brainless in Gaza, provides some additional detailed historical analysis of the script.] Part of Wilbury Group’s 2018 Festival of New Work, Heresy, by […]
The commission created last year by the Rhode Island General Assembly to study legalizing recreational cannabis has missed its reporting deadline of March 1, 2018, and a possible extension remains mired in disagreement between the two legislative chambers. Proponents want to regulate and tax cannabis for recreational purposes similarly to alcohol. Although the study commission […]
Broadcast radio underwent changes in the 1990s that had consequences impossible to foresee. As the first stirrings of what would become internet radio appeared – RealAudio in 1995, SHOUTcast in 1998, Napster in 1999, iTunes in 2001 – Congress enacted the Telecommunications Act of 1996, removing most anti-monopoly limits on corporate ownership, ushering in a […]
Providence considered a number of solutions to its scourge of potholes. According to Mayor Jorge Elorza, rejected proposals included filling several million potholes with helium and releasing them to the winds, but when Cleveland tried something similar, damages had to be paid for an injured horse and a wrongful death. The Oregon Highway Department recommended […]
A surprising amount of common ground underlies the positions of opposing stakeholders on proposed legislation that would create an “Extreme Risk Protection Order” (ERPO) (“red flag”) law, but the devil is in the details. A bill proposed in the RI General Assembly (House 7688 and Senate 2492) would allow family members and law enforcement to […]