Meeting Great Minds

Meeting Great Minds has traditionally been a speakers' series created by LCCC's University Partnership and presented at the Stocker Arts Center. This program of outstanding speakers cultivates interaction and collaboration for area students, faculty, staff, and community members. This year, we have something a little different for this series!

For more information about the University Partnership Program, the Meeting Great Minds Series or events, please contact the University Partnership at (440) 366-4949 or (800) 995-5222 ext. 4949 or by email at nleary@lorainccc.edu.

Sorry you missed these great 2009-2010 events:

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Cameron Johnson

You Call the Shots

At only 24, Cameron Johnson is recognized as one of the most successful young entrepreneurs in the world. Starting at the age of nine, he's founded more than a dozen successful businesses, many of which he's sold. Johnson consults with Fortune 500 companies and garners extensive media coverage from CNN, The New York Times, CNBC and hundreds of other outlets. He was runner-up on Oprah Winfrey's first prime time series, The Big Give, and even hosted Beat the Boss, the wildly popular entrepreneurial show on the BBC.  
 

A Residency with
LYNNE TAYLOR-CORBETT & JOANNA RUSH

including two plays written by Joanna Rush

Friday and Saturday, January 22 & 23, 2010 – 7:30pm each evening

Asking For It

Stocker Studio Theatre

Written and Performed by Joanna Rush
Directed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett

Asking For It follows the evolution of Bernadette O’Connell, “Outstanding Catholic Youth of the Year,” as she puddle-jumps through the primordial slime of American culture to personhood. Possessed of a religious fervor surpassed only by a fierce libido, she passes on life with the nuns and joins 35 sisters at Radio City Music Hall…as a “Rockette.” But her sexual mis-education leaves her wide open and vulnerable to the twisted testosterone-filled world permeating her new life in the Big Apple. As directed by Tony nominee Lynne Taylor-Corbett, Asking For It is a zestful kaleidoscope of faith and femininity, repression and redemption, humor and humility, joy and terror, spiced with song and dance. Joanna Rush peoples the stage with an eccentric cast of characters that range from uptight clerics to sexy chorines, to growing boys of all ages. Hilarious, irreverent and moving, Rush’s Asking For It leaves audiences, male and female and of all ages, invigorated, inspired, and, strangely, healed. 4 Stars! Time Out New York. Please note, this show contains some material that may not be appropriate for children under 13.   www.askingforitonline.com   

LYNNE TAYLOR-CORBETT & JOANNA RUSH

Public Talk
Monday, January 25, 2010 - FREE!
6:00pm Meet and Greet; 6:30pm Talk

Making A Life's Profession Working In The Arts

Meeting Great Minds proudly co-presents a Residency, Performances, Master Classes and Talks featuring Tony-nominated Director/Choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett (Broadway - Swing!, film - Footloose) and Writer/Actor Joanna Rush, two professionals working in the Arts. The events will be bookended by two plays written by Ms. Rush and directed by Ms. Taylor-Corbett. Their bios are below, as are the descriptions of the plays, which will be performed in the Studio Theatre of the Stocker Arts Center. This 10-day residency will include Master Classes, Workshops and a Public Lecture. Watch the website for date and time announcements. The Meeting Great Minds and residency activities are FREE. The performances are ticketed and the prices are indicated below.

Friday and Saturday, January 29 & 30, 2010 – 7:30pm each evening
Studio Theatre

Directed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett

Tickets: $7/Adults; $6/LCCC Students, Faculty, Staff & Seniors 65+; $5/Groups of 15 or more

Home Sweet Homeland follows five neighbors through the events of September 11th, 2001, from the attack, to their evacuation and eventual return to or abandonment of their Ground Zero homes. All are devastated and full of doubt about the world and about each other. What is the truth? At what cost will the truth be uncovered? What is “safe?” Will we ever laugh again? Life is forever changed. Together, a young boy, a musician, a financial analyst and a couple of comediennes stumble through the pathways of mind and heart to seek the truth and find their way back to trust and laughter. Please Note: This play contains realistic adult language.

Joanna Rush along with professional actors, Robert Cuciolli (Tony nominee for Jekyll and Hyde) and Erin Leigh Peck (just finished the run of the Off-Broadway hit The Toxic Avengers) have joined with local northeast Ohio actors David Arredondo, Meryem Errouiam, Shenal Hathurusinghe, Kaitlin LaVella Kelly, Timothy Kinzel, Colin McCauley, Lisa Palinkas, Sara Rhodes, David Shimotakahara, Joey Stefanko and Aidan Wilson to bring this new work to life!

Joanna Rush	Robert Cuccioli	Erin Leigh Peck

THE BIOS

Lynne Taylor-Corbett    

Lynne Taylor-Corbett is known for her work in theatre, dance and film. She was nominated for two Tony Awards and a Drama Desk for direction and choreography of Broadway’s Swing! and for two American Theatre Wing Star Awards for its National Tour. She also choreographed Broadway’s Chess and Titanic. This season, her production of My Vaudeville Man was nominated for two Lucille Lortel Awards and two Drama Desk Awards. She has also directed many Off-Broadway productions, and was the original director of the Korean import Cookin’ at The Minetta Lane. She directed Boxes and Asking For It at the New York Fringe Festival and Girl’s Room starring Donna McKechnie and Carol Lawrence in New York and Los Angeles. Her production of Wanda’s World (Lortel and Drama Desk nominations) is coming to New World Stages. Ms. Taylor-Corbett’s films include Footloose, My Blue Heaven, Vanilla Sky and Bewitched. Her dance works have been commissioned by New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, locally by GroundWorks Dancetheater and numerous companies throughout the world. Recent projects include My Vaudeville Man at The York Theatre, and a dance work about Dust Bowl women in Pittsburgh. Upcoming projects include the return of Wanda’s World and Creature of the Black Lagoon for Universal Hollywood. She is a proud member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers and even prouder to be the mom of actor Shaun Taylor-Corbett who appeared on Broadway in the Tony Award winning In the Heights and is now appearing in the national tour of the show.


Joanna Rush

Joanna Rush has appeared in numerous Broadway and off-Broadway productions including Pousse Cafe with Charles Durning, Daughters with Marisa Tomei, Inside Out, the original Grandma Sylvia's Funeral, Broadway Scandals of 1928 and Options at Circle Rep. Regionally she has been seen in such plays as Beyond Therapy, Fifth of July, Great White Hope, concert versions of Two by Two and Minnie's Boys at the Jewish Rep. Film: The Luckiest Man in the World, Sunburn with Farrah Fawcett and Joan Collins, On the Cliffs, winner Best Short Comedy 2004, Ohio Independent Film Festival, and the soon to be released Saying Goodbye. TV: Shannon, Archie Bunker's Place, A Killing Affair, Cagney & Lacey and the pilot Straight no Chaser as the inappropriate mother of Bronson Pinchot. She has recently performed her solo play Asking For It at the New York Fringe Festival, the New York Society for Ethical Culture, The Kirk Theater on Theater Row, Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons and in the New York International Theater Festival at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Most recently, Joanna was chosen to perform sections of Asking For It on “International Women’s Day” sponsored by the United Nations Counsel on the Empowerment of Women and the Hunger Project. As a writer, Joanna Rush co-wrote Irish Whiskey, an independent feature and "Best Screenplay" winner at the Temecula Valley Film Festival and a screenplay entitled Mothers Day based on the life of Julia Ward Howe, the first woman admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters who, in spite of wars being waged in her own home, created the holiday "Mothers Day" in 1873, as a time for women throughout the world to come together each year in the name of peace. Joanna lived in downtown Manhattan, across the street from the World Trade Center. Her newest play Home Sweet Homeland takes a look at the 9/11 experience from the perspective of the people who experienced it that day and the effects on their relationships and on the neighborhood. Joanna is a member of Actors Equity, The Dramatists Guild, SAG.

The residency with Lynne Taylor-Corbett and Joanna Rush was funded by the Beth K. Stocker Trust, the LCCC Foundation, Stocker Arts Center and Meeting Great Minds.

A Residency with
The Mayhem Poets

February 2-7, 2010

In residence at LCCC

FREE Performance:
Sunday, February 7, 2010 -
3:00pm