The first of three national presidential debates Monday night was observed locally at the Little Art Theatre with activities througout the day culminating in a community watch party of the historic event.

The live stream of the candidates’ debate at Long Island’s Hoftra University and the Little Art’s programming leading up to it were presented  through a partnership with ThinkTV, Channel 16, the Dayton-based PBS affiliate.

A big component of the day involved Mills Lawn students, who visited the theater with their classes and teachers to learn more about the voting process.

Greg Schell, of ThinkTV’s education team, was on hand to engage the youngsters and introduce the programming.

The youngest students, 90 kindergartners and first-graders, watched a video titled “The Neighborhood Votes,” part of the “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” series.  Later, second- through sixth-graders were introduced to a newly produced e-book titled “Your Vote Counts,” whose author and illustrator had come to town to interact with the kids and answer questions.

The students’ excitement at being in the movie theater on a school day was palpable. ThinkTV’s Schell asked the kindergarteners and first-graders if they knew what voting is, and a sea of hands flew into the air.

“Picking things.”

“Two people -— you have to vote for one, and one will be president.”

“It’s when people choose.”

“The one the most people choose wins.”

The video depicted a variety of situations in which the youngsters might have a voice in making a group decision — choosing a snack, whether to eat inside or out, picking the kind of animal to have as a class pet. The video instructed that casting a vote involves stoppping to think about the choices and learning more about each one. It also showed strategies for dealing with disappointment when your choice loses.

The importance of making informed choices was one of the main themes of the program presented to the older students in “Your Vote Counts!”

The title is part of an educational book series written by MaryTherese Grabowski and illustrated by Michelle Graham-Fricks. The series, entitled “Spirit of America,” follows a girl named America Johnson through adventures that illuminate aspects of U.S. government and history.

In “Your Vote Counts!” America is running for student council. In the process, she learns how the country votes for president — including the electoral college system — along with responses for fellow students who say their vote doesn’t matter.

The video version of the book came about through a collaboration with PBS, and Mills Lawn students were the first group of young people to view it before PBS takes it national, according to Schell.

Grabowski and Graham-Fricks said they are thrilled to see the work come alive through the animation effects and were excited to get the local students’ reactions.

A former CBS TV reporter who lives in Washington, D.C., Grabowski said the idea for the book series and the character of America Johnson was born through a conversation she had with her then 12-year-old niece after Barack Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination in 2008. She wondered aloud who he might pick for his cabinet, and her niece replied: “Why do I care who makes his furniture.”

Grabowski started thinking about when and how civics is taught. “Our kids are not learning civics until the 10th grade, and that’s scary because they’re voting in two years.”

The “Spirit of America” series introduces civics to a younger audience. Mills Lawn students, who are also getting in-class lessons with their teachers, were receptive to the message. One even remembered how many electoral votes are needed to become president — 270.

All told, more than 150 students took part in the programming Monday, arriving in shifts with their classes throughout the morning and early afternoon.

Adults got their turn later in the day, as the Little Art screened episodes from the American Experience PBS series “The Presidents” as a lead up to the evening Debate Watch Party.

Invitations for the free watch party had gone out to Little Art members, and so many reservations were made before Monday, a waiting list had been started.

Guests were waiting when the theater doors opened at 7:30 p.m. Balloons and streamers in the foyer underscored the festive atmosphere.

Among the crowd were representatives of the Plate of the Union initative, who were passing out information about food and farm-related issues, and a representative of the Greene County Democratic Party, who was handing out ballot listings of Democratic candidates.

The reasons people came and what they hoped to hear were varied.

Joshua Lustre, a college-age young adult who came with a group of friends, said he wanted the candidates to talk about “how the money will be used.” Noting that past presidents have focused on defense or infrastructure, he said, “I’m wondering what plan they have for spending money.”

Delores Adkins, from the county Democrats, said “I’d like to see Hillary wipe the floor with him.”

Laurel Finch said she considered the gathering “a debate watch support group.”

ThinkTV’s Schell stressed the historic nature of the evening, telling the crowd that “an estimated 80 million viewers are stopping what they’re doing to tune in.”

As someone engaged in educational initiatives, Schell asked the crowd if anyone else was interested in hearing about education. Sean Creighton, a member of the school board who works in higher education, raised his hand and went on record: “I’d like to hear about education.”

While the audience members at Hofstra University were instructed to remain silent through the debate — not to clap, call out, or make other audible responses to the proceedings, the Little Art crowd were encouraged to do the opposite.

“If you have an opinion, let it out,” Schell said.

And they did. Given the responses, if the gathered audience were the sole determiner of the election, Hillary Clinton would win the presidency in a landslide.

If Donald Trump supporters were in the audience, they kept their affinity to themselves.

Only once did anything Trump said get a positive response. A lone clap in the back of the theater echoed out near the beginning of the debate after the Republican candidate said the U.S. needed to stop companies from sending jobs to other countries.

Otherwise, Trump’s comments were met with derisive laughter and scorn. His assertion that gangs are made up of “illegal immigrants” and his declaration of support for so-called “stop-and-frisk” policing methods were both met with a loud “No, no, no.”

On the other hand, Clinton’s statements earned frequent applause and the occasional shouts of “amen” and “you go, sister!”

In the follow-up PBS commentary afterward, the statement from New York Times columnist David Brooks that he thought Trump dominated for the first 30 minutes received a resounding “boo” from the Yellow Springs folks still on hand.

The day’s events, from the morning’s youngest visitors to the evening’s experienced electorate, revealed a community deeply engaged in the electoral process and concerned about the future.

Our youth may not be able to vote in the presidential election, but they have a stake in its outcome, and they clearly care. They’re watching the adults — what we say, and what we do.

Considering the election’s potential results, one young Mills Lawn student offered what might have been the day’s best piece of advice: “If you can’t get what you pick -— don’t throw a fit.”

Musician and storyteller Pop Wagner makes no claim to being an actual cowboy, though he certainly looks the part, with his thick mustache, wide-brimmed hat and Western attire. Not to mention his fancy lariat work and extensive repertoire of cowboy stories and songs.

The Yellow Springs native, who has made his career since 1970 as a professional performer, is first and foremost a folk musician. He says he came to the cowboy genre through the folk songs of Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston and the calypso albums his parents, the late Paul and Betty Wagner, had in their eclectic record collection.

A member of the 1967 graduating class at YSHS, Wagner is preparing to return to his hometown next weekend for his 50th class reunion, and while he’s here, he’ll perform a concert with the regionally based Corndrinkers, a five-member old-time stringband, on Thursday, July 20, at the Little Art Theatre.

The 7 p.m. show is a reunion for Wagner and the Corndrinkers as well, he said recently by phone from his home of nearly 50 years in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. He said he’s known the Corndrinkers since shortly after they formed in the early 1970s, and he joined them in some of their early weekend contra dance performances at Carriage Hill Farm, in nearby Huber Heights.

Because of the size of the Little Art’s stage, Wagner said he didn’t plan to include his rope tricks in this appearance, but the performance will be filled with songs, stories and poems. He said he’ll start things off with a solo set; then, after an intermission, the Corndrinkers will take the stage before he eventually joins them and they close out the evening together.

The Corndrinkers feature fiddler Barb Kuhns; fiddler; multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Linda Scutt; guitarist and dobro player Doug Smith; clawhammer banjo player Tom Duffee; and Al Trumbull on the upright bass. The group specializes in “the fiddle tunes, heart songs and parlour music of the Southern mountain stringbands from … the 1920 and ‘30s,” according to its biography.

“It will be some great music, that’s for sure,” Wagner said.

Wagner said he got his first guitar as a gift when he was 14 years old. A year later, when his parents saw the love and affinity he had for playing, they bought him a better instrument, which he still has. He eventually added the fiddle, harmonica and “shingo,” a hand-made guitar-like instrument.

His road toward devoting his life to music-making was fostered further when in his freshman year of college in Ashland, Wisc., he lived off campus with three other young folk musicians. In the spring of that first year, the tumultuous 1968, he and his buddies organized a folk music festival. As a humorous note, they called it “the first annual” festival. “You know, I just played the 50th annual Ashland Folk Festival,” he said with a chuckle. The event has continued every year, still under student leadership, he said.

Those first few festivals during his own student years also brought him in contact with performers who became mentors and friends.

“I met Utah Phillips at one of those,” he said. Known as “The Golden Voice of the Great Southwest,” Phillips helped Wagner and his brother, Bodie, who also has pursued a musical career, get playing opportunities at the 1974 World’s Fair in Spokane, Wash., and the 1976 Smithsonian Folk Festival in Washington, D.C.

In the meantime, Wagner had decided to make Minnesota his home base. The location proved fruitful in bringing him in contact with Garrison Keillor in the early years of the entertainer and writer’s program, “A Prairie Home Companion.” Wagner performed frequently with Keillor before the popular show went national, but less so after it got bigger. He also appeared in the Robert Altman movie that was based on the program.

It was backstage at “A Prairie Home Companion” that he learned how to use a lariat. He said cowboy entertainer Glenn Orhlin, a National Heritage Fellow, gave him and folk musician Sean Blackburn their first lessons in trick roping there.

Over the years, Wagner has traveled to 44 states and 11 foreign countries playing traditional and some original cowboy songs, with a blend of country blues, oldtime and Cajun in the mix.

“It struck a chord with me,” he said of the cowboy repertoire. “I never got tired of it. I always loved the music and the scene that surrounds it and the people you meet.”

Being a folk musician supports “a simple approach to life,” he said, adding that he appreciates “the idea that people can make this music themselves with instruments you don’t have to plug in.”

“Old-time music has a floating repertoire,” in that many songs are widely known, he noted. “You can sit down with people you never met before and play. It’s a great way to share time together.”

Tickets for the July 20 performance are available through the Little Art Theatre’s website, http://www.littleart.com. Cost is $15. For more information, call the theater at 767-7671.

Acclaimed tenor Martin Bakari still calls Yellow Springs home, though he’s lived in New York for the past five years, and Boston for six years before that. The 2005 Yellow Springs High School graduate grew up in the village, and remains rooted here through family and friends in the area, including his mother, father and sister, Maria, Iddi and Zyna, and the memory of his older brother, Umoja Iddi.

Those roots are especially important because Bakari spends about nine months of every year rehearsing and performing on the road.

“When I come back to Yellow Springs, it always feels like home,” he said in a recent interview.

Bakari, 30, is an opera singer, a rising star in a competitive and demanding artistic field. He favors the term “theater artist” to capture the range of what a singer does to physically and emotively embody an operatic role. 

“Opera is theatrical, it tells a story,” he said.

A graduate of both the Juilliard School and Boston University, Bakari has performed in over 100 different operas, musicals, oratorios and concerts at venues including Tanglewood Music Center, Kennedy Center, Los Angeles Opera and many more. Next month, he’ll begin rehearsals for the lead role, Tamino, in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at Opéra Louisiane in Baton Rouge. 

But meanwhile, the singer Opera News calls a “golden tenor” is making a different kind of appearance in Yellow Springs. 

On Friday, Sept. 29, Bakari will be featured at the Little Art Theatre in conversation with John Fleming, founder of Yellow Springs Kids Playhouse. The event is part of the Little Art’s new “Homecoming” series, which welcomes back successful Yellow Springers for an evening of conversation and celebration. Young adult author Chris Tebbetts kicked off the series last spring.

The Sept. 29 event opens at 7 p.m. with a reception in the Little Art lobby, catered by Wheat Penny Oven and Bar. In the main portion of the evening, Fleming, an early mentor, will interview Bakari about his life and career, followed by audience questions. Bakari will then sing two short selections from his new album, released by Naxos Records and currently under Grammy consideration. 

Tickets are $30, and can be purchased in advance at the Little Art box office.

As it happens, the event falls on the date of the fourth anniversary of the Little Art’s reopening, after its half-million dollar renovation in 2013. Bakari said he’s pleased to “come home” to celebrate the theater and Yellow Springs.

The evening is not a performance, he emphasized, with a smile. He’s performed in Yellow Springs previously, but the Little Art event has a different purpose: to give hometown audiences a chance to hear about the artistic path and growth of one of their own.

“I love the aspect of hearing how people got from here to there,” Little Art Executive Director Jenny Cowperthwaite said.

In Bakari’s case, a few factors stand out. He grew up in a family that sang and played piano together, and he developed his own musical passions at a young age. Still in elementary school, he saw a group of young jazz musicians, Serious Young Musicians, led by Daytonian Tumust Allison, perform at Antioch College.

“I thought, I want to do that,” he recalled. 

“That” meant play the trumpet, and he did, playing both trumpet and clarinet in school band from fifth through 12th grades. Former Yellow Springs schools band director Michael Ruddell was a dedicated mentor and key influence, according to Bakari.

Also crucial to his early artistic development was his participation in Yellow Springs Kids Playhouse, or YSKP. That came about quite casually, with founder Fleming encouraging Bakari’s mother to bring her son to audition. Six-year-old Bakari was cast in YSKP’s first-ever show, “Dick Tracy: the Musical,” in 1995, and performed with YSKP for the next six years.

“If there wasn’t a kids theater in town, theater likely wouldn’t have gained my interest,” Bakari said, crediting Fleming with exposing many young villagers to the art form.

At 15, Bakari saw his first opera, Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” at Dayton Opera. Playing in the title role was Lester Lynch, an African-American baritone from Ohio. The experience was riveting.

“I thought, ‘people like me do this,’” Bakari recalled, adding that he has since sung with Lynch.

Yet it was not — quite — a “eureka” moment. Bakari’s future still seemed wide open in high school. He loved sports, especially football and soccer; he performed in high school musicals; he played, with increasing seriousness, the clarinet. He deepened his musical skills at Friends Music Camp, as well as camps at the College of Wooster and Indiana University.

As a high school junior, he began thinking about auditioning to play clarinet in college. Then his piano teacher Karen Gorden, a renowned conductor and musical director, made a quiet suggestion.

“I would consider going for voice,” she told him. She had seen him in high school musicals and believed he had serious talent, according to Bakari.

The suggestion took him by surprise. “It wasn’t something I knew I wanted,” he said, adding that Yellow Springs did not then have a school choir.

Local resident Bev Logan introduced him to Rebecca Helm, then-registrar at Antioch College, who had training in opera and voice. Though Helm stayed in Yellow Springs for just a year, her influence was decisive.

“She was an angel dropped down to teach me how to sing,” Bakari said, with a laugh.

He got into several college voice programs, choosing Boston University, where he graduated in 2009 with a bachelor’s in music education. A master’s in vocal performance at Juilliard followed in 2013, then an unfolding career that’s already taken some startling leaps into major classical and contemporary opera roles. 

As a singer, Bakari is particularly drawn to new music. Contrary to popular perceptions of opera as static and antiquated, the art form is thriving, he said. The United States is second only to Germany in the world for numbers of opera performances, according to Bakari. New operas are written all the time, with fresh stories and innovative music.

“So many operas are telling new stories about people who haven’t traditionally been written about,” he said. 

That opens doors for him and other singers of color. “I feel grateful composers today are writing operas for people who look like me,” Bakari, who is of Tanzanian and Filipino heritage, said. At the same time, music directors are casting singers of color in classical roles — witness Bakari’s forthcoming appearance as the prince in “The Magic Flute.” 

The role of race and racism in opera is a “complex and divisive and nuanced issue,” he said, citing mostly positive personal experiences and wide opportunities in the field.

Earlier this year, he sang in “The Long Walk,” a new opera about a U.S. soldier returning from Iraq. He will be singing in another production of “The Long Walk” in 2018, at the Pittsburgh Opera. Even more personally meaningful is his starring role in “Charlie Parker’s Yardbird,” upcoming at the Arizona Opera in the fall of 2018. 

That opera tells the story of Parker’s life and artistic vision in an unconventional and deeply moving way, Bakari said. 

“To perform as Charlie, in a role written for tenor — it’s a dream come true,” he said.

As a professional singer, Bakari spends much of his time on the road. Though he lives in Harlem, he’s rarely home. He auditions frequently, and when he’s hired by an opera company, typically for a month at a time, he goes where the work is — whether that’s Pittsburgh or Portland, Germany, Italy or Israel. Bakari also teaches voice, both in New York and while traveling.

While Bakari didn’t always know he would end up as a theater artist, he now can’t imagine life any other way. 

“I don’t like using the word ‘work’ to describe what I do,” he said. “Creating art in this way is so extraordinarily enjoyable for me.”

Even as a child, he remembers being affected by music in a particularly intense and personal way. “I felt the music more deeply,” he recalled. 

It is that feeling that makes him an artist, he believes.

“An artist is somebody who communicates his or her thoughts, feelings and perceptions — and the thoughts, feelings and perceptions of humanity — through an artistic medium,” Bakari said.

Being an artist, even at a high level, is not about being “the best” technically and aesthetically, but about something deeper and more valuable, he reflected. 

“We’re communicating our humanity. As artists, we need to be in touch with that.”

Contact: ahackett@ysnews.com

Addiction, poverty, sexual abuse. 

The themes that run through the five short films created by incarcerated women through the Pens to Pictures project — which is coming to the Little Art Theatre on Thursday evening, Nov. 2 — are difficult topics.

Aspects of the stories can be rough, agreed project founder, Wright State University Assistant Professor Chinonye Chukwu, but the overarching quality that weaves them together — and ultimately transcends the subject matter — is their humanity.

“These are all human stories,” Chukwu said in a recent phone interview. “You don’t have to be incarcerated to relate.” 

An award-winning filmmaker who teaches in WSU’s motion pictures department, Chukwu said the primary experience of the women’s stories is one of isolation.

“Bang” depicts a woman with two starving children and no job who has been rejected by nearly everyone.

“The Devastating Game” confronts sexual abuse.

“Love or Loyalty” explores the relationship of cellmates as one prepares for release.

“For They Know Not” follows a young woman battling heroin addiction.

“Trans-Parent” is seen through the eyes of a child who has been left to care for her two younger siblings.

“They figure out how to survive,” Chukwu said of the films’ protagonists.

Each of the five women whose films will be screened Nov. 2 at the Little Art were inmates at Dayton Correctional Institution when they signed up for a screenwriting class initiated by Chukwu in 2016.

The participants started by writing a short story, which they then turned into a screenplay. Each was then paired with a Wright State film student or alumna who worked closely with her partner to complete tasks that couldn’t be done inside the prison walls, particularly the filming, which Chuckwa said was completed in 10 days in the Dayton area. Nevertheless, the incarcerated women created the story-boards, oversaw actor auditions and then edited the footage to produce the final films. 

Jaimie Ochs, the creator of “Trans-Parent,” who was released this past March after serving 10 years in prison, said that the only writing she had ever done before Chukwu’s class was “just for fun,” and the filmmaking that followed was a whole new world.

Speaking by phone from her home in Dayton, where she is working and going to school full-time in computer engineering, Ochs said that she wanted to make her film from a child’s point of view, because she wanted “to give voice” to a someone who doesn’t “always get to tell their side of the story.” Like many of the women in DCI, she said. “The women there don’t always have a platform to share their voices,” Och said. 

Often unheard and unseen by the outside world, it’s possible to “lose sight of their humanity,” she said. “They’re stigmatized for being criminals, for being cruel.” Yet her experience behind bars revealed that many are “humble, caring, spiritual people who just want an opportunity to have a better life.”

The Pens to Pictures program not only gave her a way to share her creative voice while in prison, but also gave her a “network and support system” that has helped her in transitioning to life outside.

Chukwu said that everyone involved found the project transformative. “I think we all grew. We all were empowered,” she said. Most significant was the lesson that everyone has the “potential to be change agents in the world.”

Co-hosting the Little Art screening Nov. 2 are Antioch College’s Prison Justice Initiative and the Hope Thru Harmony Women’s Choir at Dayton Correctional Institution, founded and directed by Yellow Springs resident Catherine Roma.

Emily Steinmetz, an assistant professor of anthropology at Antioch College, is part of the Prison Justice Initiative there, which she said includes several projects.

Books to Prisons is one that was started by students a couple of years ago, she said. What began as an effort to send packages of used books to prisoners in Ohio has expanded to facilities across the country.

Patrons of the Little Art screening are asked to donate books to the project. Steinmetz said that all genres are welcome. “The only thing [the recipients have] in common is that they’re in prison,” she said. That said, the most frequent request is for dictionaries,” she added.

Another piece of Antioch’s prison initiative is an “inside-outside” class, which is taught once a year by Steinmetz and comprised of undergraduates and incarcerated women who meet together once a week. Other projects include working with the DCI residents to produce a periodic newspaper and a program last year that paired students with women serving life sentences to build and maintain a vegetable garden and a pollinator garden.

Steinmetz said that as an educator she feels it’s important “for students to actually see what it’s like” for those in prison. The Pens to Pictures project helps extend some of those lessons into the wider community.

Choir director Roma said she was eager to bring the films to Yellow Springs for several reasons.

“Number one, I think the films are quite amazing,” she said.

They share stories that have not been told, and they give voice to women who are often unheard and forgotten.

What’s more, she said she admires Chukwu’s work “using her gifts as a film director and as a teacher … to teach women who are inside how they can learn to use their talents.”

“Programming in our prisons is so invaluable,” Roma added. “Education is so invaluable, arts education is so invaluable [in] training women in terms of restorative justice, in terms of returning women to the community.”

“I want the world to know that this is happening, and it is happening locally.”

In her own work in prisons, including leading choirs in two other Ohio facilities, Roma said she has “learned there are reasons we need to be critical and learn as much as we can about our prisons — because they are our prisons.”

She noted that “90 percent of those who are incarcerated are going to get out.” They may well be our neighbors, co-workers and family members. Giving them skills and tools to help them be successful benefits the whole community.

“These women are real to me,” she said, adding that Beverly Fears, the creator of “The Devastating Game,” who has also since been released, was a member of Roma’s prison choir, and Aimee Wissman, who made “For They Know Not,” was in a reading-writing group Roma helped facilitate. “I’ve met her mother and her daughter,” she said.

“When we say in Yellow Springs ‘our community,’ I just want to be cognizant of the fact that our community is a a little bit bigger than that. … Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of our ‘network of mutuality.’ Our network of mutuality is not just 3,700 people in Yellow Springs.”

Contact: csimmons@ysnews.com

In the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the first time that Jesus meets the Roman procurator who will sentence him to death is during a song called “Pilate and Christ.” For Ted Neeley, who returns to the Little Art Theatre for special viewings of the film on Nov. 10 and 11 at 7 p.m., and a sing-along on Nov. 12 at 2 p.m., this scene was shared for decades by his dear friend, Barry Dennen. Just a few days before Neeley and I recently spoke, Barry had died suddenly. 

Neeley has now lost his two best friends in the world; Carl Anderson played Judas until his death from cancer in 2004. For a man who has sung the rock opera thousands upon thousands of times, who is generous beyond measure to those who think of him as a living avatar of Christ, these events post-Barry are a chance for Neeley to talk about the significant influence of his dear friends. 

On the News website at ysnews.com, you’ll find a piece about the conversation Neeley and I had regarding God and Christ. Here, though, I want to share a story Neeley related, often peppering it with “a long story gettin’ longer” as he added new details, about his friends. 

Years ago, Neeley was starring in a production of “Tommy” in Los Angeles. They were in the final week of rehearsals when Neeley heard that acclaimed director Norman Jewison was in town casting for the upcoming film version of “Superstar.” Neeley, who had first been an understudy and then starred as Jesus in the Broadway production, wanted to get word to Jewison that “a bowlegged, screaming drummer from Texas” wanted to be part of the film, even if it was to sweep up on the set. 

Neeley reached out to his agent, asking that the latter invite Jewison to a performance of “Tommy.” Neeley insisted, however, that the agent not tell him when Jewison was coming, for fear nerves would get the better of him. “Tommy” is a very physical show, and Neeley is not a dancer. He was, however, pitched and tossed between muscular dancers as a pinball during the “Underscore.” One dancer responsible for catching him was out during the first Sunday performance, and the understudy stepped in. Both Neeley and the understudy misjudged a toss, falling onto the set and were knocked out cold. 

Norman Jewison came to the next show, in which Neeley was replaced by his understudy.  

Neeley’s agent was apoplectic, but after hearing the reasons, arranged for Neeley to meet Jewison at a hotel before the latter returned to London. He advised Neeley, though, that the show was already cast. Ever an honest and genuine soul, Neeley replied that he just wanted to thank the esteemed director for making a film version of the rock opera. 

Neeley went to the hotel, had a quick conversation with Jewison through his room door, and was directed to the coffee shop in the lobby. Not a regular coffee drinker, Neeley consumed an entire pot before concluding that Jewison was not coming, a gentle rebuke for the previous night. Paying for the check, Neeley felt a tap on his shoulder. There stood Norman Jewison. 

A conversation unfolded in which Jewison made it clear that the principals were cast; when Neeley offered to pay for a screen test, which he couldn’t afford and didn’t know what it entailed, Jewison laughed heartily. Neeley left thinking all was settled, and he was not to be part of the film.

Several months later, Neeley and Carl Anderson were rehearsing for the first ever national tour of “Superstar.” Neeley received a call from “Norman,” whom Neeley thought was his uncle. Identities confirmed, Jewison said that “many people” were telling him to give Neeley a screen test, which he was going to do. However, Neeley couldn’t tell anyone. When he learned that he was being tested for Jesus, Neeley asked that Carl be tested with him. Jewison agreed. 

The pair was flown to London. Carl performed “Heaven on Their Minds.” Neeley, “Gethsemane.” The crew burst into applause, and Jewison requested they do “The Argument,” which Carl and Neeley had just been rehearsing. As they flew back, the friends marveled at how they had just undergone the experience of a lifetime.

A week later, a 3 a.m. phone call from Jewison informed them that they were his Jesus and Judas. 

While in London, pre-recording before going to film on location in Israel, Neeley, Carl, Barry and Norman went to dinner together. Jewison said, “I told you that many people had spoken to me about needing to give you a screen test. What made me make my final decision to call Neeley, who then recommended Carl, was Barry Dennen.”

Neeley says they toasted Barry that night with fine Italian wine, and that he has been toasting him ever since.  

**This post has been updated to reflect Carl Anderson’s death in 2004, not 2005 as originally reported. 

After collecting $75,000 in a single day last November, an effort to raise money for local nonprofit groups is returning to the village for a second year this holiday season.

The local initiative is affiliated with the global #GivingTuesday movement, an online campaign that falls on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving — Nov. 28 this year — and which was founded to counter the commercialism of the season’s more consumer-oriented “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday.”

The focus is on giving, rather than buying, and nonprofit organizations and charitable causes are the beneficiaries.

Participating groups solicit contributions through such social media sites as Facebook and Twitter, which link potential givers to online donation sites.

In Yellow Springs, where local groups are allied under the umbrella of #YSGivingTuesday, the site is http://www.ysgivingtuesday.org.

Locally organizers were thrilled with the $75,000 — which included a $10,000 matching grant from the Yellow Springs Community Foundation — raised last year among 16 participating local groups.

“That’s huge,” said Dawn Boyer, the director of advancement for Yellow Springs schools, who is a member of the #YSGivingTuesday planning committee.

“That was definitely beyond our expectations” for the local effort’s first year, Boyer said in a recent interview.

Created in 2012 by the New York City-based Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact and the United Nations Foundation, the #GivingTuesday campaign has continued to grow each subsequent year as more organizations and municipalities participate. Globally, last year, the movement raised $177 million, through 1,640,000 individual gifts, in more than 98 countries.

In Yellow Springs, the average amount received by each local organization was $3,700, with Antioch College raising the most at $27,000, according to Boyer.

Also important for the nonprofits, “most organizations reported they got new donors” through the 2016 campaign, Boyer said. The average number of new donors per group was six, which for small organizations is significant, she said.

Chuck Taylor, president of Chamber Music in Yellow Springs, reported that his organization “ended up with 18 donors, including five completely new to CMYS,” according to a posting on last year’s #YSGivingTuesday website.

Krista Magaw, executive director of Tecumseh Land Trust, said this week that the land preservation group had 37 donors, with seven who “were brand new to us.”

Attracting new donors, particularly younger people who are plugged into social media and who turn to online sources not only for information, but also to conduct their business, is an important part of the initiative, said Jeannamarie Cox, the executive director of the Yellow Springs Community Foundation.

Cox, who had just come on board at the Community Foundation when last year’s campaign was launched, joined the #YSGivingTuesday planning committee this year. Also on the committee are Ara Beal, the managing artistic director of YS Kids Playhouse, and Kathryn Hitchcock, representing the local chapter of the National Alliance for Mental Illness, or NAMI.

“It’s not so much about big donations,” Cox said of the online day of giving. It’s more about “connecting through social media and building donor bases.”

The Community Foundation serves as a hub for contributions and oversees the financial distribution.

The Foundation also is again providing a $10,000 grant, although this year’s distribution will be different. In 2016, the grant was divided by a formula based on funds raised. This year, “the $10,000 will be split equally among participating groups who complete key steps in getting ready,” Cox said. Those steps include having a plan and setting goals for the contributions. Participating groups also must be tax-exempt and be able to accept online donations.

Boyer said the Community Foundation grant provided an important boost to last year’s fledgling local effort. The grant’s focus this year, said Cox, is helping groups improve their fundraising profile “and to work together.”

The number of local groups participating in this year’s #YSGivingTuesday ucampaign has grown to 24. Only one of the original 16 — the Antioch Writer’s Workshop — is no longer part of the local effort, and that’s because the organization moved out of town, Boyer said.

Each of the participating organizations are identified on the ysgivingtuesday.org website with their logos. A visitor to the site can click on the individual logos to learn more about the group or contribute to its cause.

The website also offers a one-stop-giving experience, Boyer said. Donors may go to the site wanting to contribute to a particular nonprofit and then see listed one or more other groups they want to support.

Cox noted that giving to multiple organizations is made simpler in that donors will only need to enter their payment information once.

And while the website is up, the actual giving will take place from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28, Boyer said. A bar graph on the site will reflect the level of contributions “in real time,” she added.

As the head of a small nonprofit, Tecumseh Land Trust’s Krista Magaw said she appreciates #YSGivingTuesday’s efforts toward building the donor lists and extending the networks of participating groups.

“For a lot of our organizations, it’s really an easy vehicle to plug into and get access to a new audience,” she said this week.

In particular, it helps “reach out to more young people who are used to getting their information electronically, using social media. … It’s a way for a young person who has not been giving to go to this one place and choose one or two things they care about,” Magaw said.

While the giving focus is online, local organizers recognize that some donors prefer to give the old-fashioned way — in person or with a check. To accommodate those contributors, a #YSGivingTuesday “headquarters” will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Yellow Springs Senior Center. Representatives of participating nonprofits will be on hand to accept personal donations. Of course, contributions are welcome any day or time of year, but in order to count as part of #YSGivingTuesday, Boyer said that donations must be made during the designated 24 hours.

Organizers agree that the effort not only supports the participating organizations, but also strengthens the community,

“It’s much more of a collaboration,” Community Foundation’s Cox said, noting that Bing Design, among others, “has been absolutely terrific in helping us” with such tasks as website support and promotional materials.

And the collaboration among the nonprofits “has just been great,” she said. That connection “is fundamental for the long haul and more sustainable beyond the one-day event.”

Contact: csimmons@ysnews.com

The 2017 #YSGiving Tuesday participating organizations are:

• The 365 Project
• The Antioch School
• Antioch College
• Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions
• Chamber Music Yellow Springs
• Feminist Health Fund
• Glen Helen
• James A. McKee Association
• John Bryan Community Pottery
• Little Art Theatre
• NAMI of Clark, Greene and Madison Counties
• The Riding Centre
• Tecumseh Land Trust
• World House Choir
• Yellow Springs Arts Council
• Yellow Springs Community Children’s Center
• The Yellow Springs Community Foundation
• Yellow Springs Home, Inc.
• Yellow Springs Library Association
• Yellow Springs Schools
• Yellow Springs Senior Center
• Yellow Springs Youth Baseball
• YS Kids Playhouse
• YS PetNet

Obama Farewell, by Tom Bachtell

“Yellow Springs was in full flower,” Bachtell said in a recent interview. “And I was taking it all in.”

Bachtell, who now lives in Chicago, will speak about how spending his teenage years in the village has influenced his arts-rich life at the upcoming “Homecoming” event at the Little Art Theatre on Friday, April 13. The event begins at 7 p.m. with a reception hosted by the Wheat Penny Oven and Bar, followed by a welcome at 7:45 and presentation by Bachtell, along with a Q & A, at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $25, and can be reserved online at http://www.littleart.com/homecoming or at the theater.

An artist, musician and dancer, Bachtell plans to incorporate all the art forms he loves into the program, he said recently. He’ll show many of his own drawings and illustrations from The New Yorker magazine — where he’s illustrated the “Talk of the Town” section for the past 20 years — along with the work of those who have influenced him. A classically trained pianist who performs with chamber music groups in Chicago, he’ll also include music in the program.

And he’ll perform several swing dances with Nicole Woods, a friend and dancing partner who will accompany him on the trip.

How do all of these artistic pursuits relate to Yellow Springs?

“It was a nurturing environment. The adults around me were nurturing,” Bachtell said. “I was folk dancing, making music, doing theater. I gained a lot of confidence from that time.”

One of those adults was music teacher Shirley Mullins, with whom Bachtell has stayed in close touch. He’s also still close to his high school friends Polly Case and Wendy Champney, who both went on to become professional musicians in Europe.

Bachtell initially traveled the music route too, training as a pianist at the Cleveland Institute of Music. And while he continues to perform in chamber music groups, he veered toward art as a profession.

Making art, too, was connected with his Yellow Springs years. The vitality of the village and its many interesting people helped foster his lifelong love of people-watching and observing human behavior, according to Bachtell, an interest directly linked to his current work as a caricaturist.

Bachtell was just starting out as an illustrator in Chicago when he created a caricature of writer Tom Wolfe for the publication “Advertising Age.” The drawing caught the eye of New Yorker art editors, who were trying to beef up the magazine’s art. They contacted Bachtell to do an illustration, beginning an association that’s lasted more than 25 years.

That partnership can be seen each week in the magazine’s “Talk of the Town” section, where Bachtell contributes three caricatures of individuals spotlighted by the “Talk of the Town” vignettes. The process is intense, he said. Each week he’s given a heads-up on subjects to draw, and “I’ll get some copy if I’m lucky,” he said. He next dives into research on the individuals, studying photos and film clips.

“I see it as a way of getting to know my subject,” Bachtell said.

Then he starts sketching, trying different ideas. Often, he spends about a day researching and sketching each subject, after which “I send a lot of different versions, there’s a lot of back and forth” to the magazine. After three days, that week’s process is over.

Along with the New Yorker, Bachtell has seen his work published in many national and international publications, including Newsweek, Mother Jones, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Poetry and the Evening Standard in London.
He’s also illustrated books, including creating the cover of “Trump and Me,” by Mark Singer, and “When I Knew,” edited by Robert Trachtenberg. He’s created ad campaigns for Land’s End, the late department store Marshall Field’s and the University of Chicago chamber music series, and exhibited his work in a range of places, including the offices of The New Yorker in New York City, the Bedford Arts Center and the historic Water Tower Gallery in Chicago.

Bachtell’s talk will include his reflections of growing up in a town inspired by utopians, including the Owenites, who settled in Glen Helen for a period in the early 1800s.

That vision of utopia had something to do with the Bachtell family’s arrival here. His father, Sam, was an aerospace engineer working for Goodyear in Hudson, Ohio, when he became disenchanted with the military nature of his work due to his opposition to the Vietnam War. Sam Bachtell was a friend and colleague of longtime villager Chuck Colbert, who invited Bachtell to come work for him in Yellow Springs. Sam Bachtell and his late wife, Mary Jane, decided to take a chance on a new job and a new town. It was a good fit, and Sam Bachtell still lives here.

As well as bringing his family to town, that utopian vision has inspired his own connection to humanity, leading to his life in the arts, Tom Bachtell said.

“Very few places are founded on an idea,” Bachtell said, stating that the founding idea of Yellow Springs had to do with “finding commonality, of loving the other, embracing the unknown. It was about being able to live together.”

Physicist and author Patrick Johnson, who grew up in Yellow Springs, will speak at the Little Art Theatre this Sunday, May 27, at 1 p.m. (photo by Phil Humnicky, Georgetown Univ.)

“Star Wars” fans who have mused about whether or not working light sabers and blasters will ever be available for purchase on Amazon are in luck: Patrick Johnson, author of “The Physics of Star Wars,” will be at the Little Art Theatre on Sunday, May 27, to talk about his book and the possibility of the seemingly impossible portrayed on-screen in the “Star Wars” films. 

Johnson, a physics professor at Georgetown University, grew up in Yellow Springs; his parents, Patricia Hart and Eric Johnson, are still residents. He said this week that he’s been a “Star Wars” fan since childhood, and that writing the book was something of a dream come true for him — though it was one that came true sooner than he thought: “This was something I thought I might do later in my career, when I’m more established as a physicist,” he said, “but when the opportunity arose, I had to take it.”

That opportunity came just a few years after Johnson obtained his Ph.D. at Washington University in 2012. Johnson produced a series of videos through Georgetown University in 2015 talking about the science of “Star Wars” leading up to the release of “The Force Awakens” in December of that year. Publishing house Simon and Schuster contacted Johnson in the wake of these videos and asked him to write a full book on the subject — and the rest is galactic history.

Johnson clarified that he wouldn’t consider himself a “super-fan” — such fans are notorious for lovingly nitpicking the intergalactic intellectual property to the bone; a quick Google search will yield hundreds of articles and videos meticulously documenting any inconsistencies in the nine “Star Wars” films that have been released so far. From his perspective, however, Johnson said it’s not his job to critique the science that appears on-screen in a “Star Wars” film. 

“Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “Let’s assume that what is shown on screen is perfectly legiti

The Physics of Star Wars

mate.” This mindset was, ultimately, his guiding force when writing the book: “What can I do, as a scientist, to show how [what’s on screen] can be legitimized? Let’s figure out how to explain what’s on screen — even if no thought was put into the science when the film was being made.”

Understanding, as previously mentioned, the tendency of fans to point out factual disparities, Johnson did employ a “Star Wars” fact checker before the book went to print: his partner, Susan Tyler, whom he did describe as a “super-fan,” helped keep him on track when it came to the lore of the famous galaxy far, far away. 

“I feel pretty good about the physics, but I know for a fact that I messed up a couple of ‘Star Wars’ facts in the book,” he said. “I would be more embarrassed about the physics, though, since that’s where I have my degrees.” 

On the topics of these known errors — which this writer was too polite to ask him to pinpoint — Johnson said he’s fine with critical feedback.

“If I’m being 100 percent honest, there are lots of people who know ‘Star Wars’ much, much better than I do, and I welcome people offering their thoughts.”

Johnson said it’s these people he encourages to read his book — even if they don’t have a background in physics. “Obviously if you like physics, that’s a plus,” he said, “but I didn’t want the book to be inaccessible to people who don’t. You do have to be a ‘Star Wars’ fan, though — otherwise you’re just not going to get much out of it.”

The book is structured to make the concepts Johnson outlines as easy to follow as possible: each chapter tackles a different subject, such as space travel, handheld weaponry and robotics, and each chapter is broken down into subsections that deal with the background on, for example, hyperspace, blasters and droid mobility. Johnson writes about how each of these things might be achieved using his knowledge of physics in their on-screen world — then tackles how possible they are in the real world.

“There are things on screen that we can actually do right now,” he said. “In physics labs, we have things like beams of plasma, like the Large Hadron Collider, that can send a beam of plasma out” much in the way the Death Star or Starkiller Base did in the films.

Technology naturally takes precedence in the book, but Johnson also makes time to ponder the supernatural by dedicating an entire chapter to The Force, a spiritual telekinesis employed by some “Star Wars” characters.

“I acknowledge that magic brain powers don’t exist in our universe,” he said. “But if you could manipulate electromagnetic fields with your mind, you could do something like what is depicted in the films — and I acknowledge that’s a big ‘if.’”

Magic brain powers notwithstanding, Johnson concedes that most of what appears in the “Star Wars” films is light years — parsecs? — away for Earth, but that he’s not giving up hope.

“I’m not saying any of it can truly be done — the engineering challenges would be beyond the scope of human study. But in 200 years — who knows?”

Patrick Johnson will present “The Physics of Star Wars” at the Little Art Theatre on Sunday, May 27, beginning at 1:30 p.m., and will include a question and answer session moderated by YSHS students, followed by an open question and answer session. 

The event is free, but those interested are encouraged to reserve a free ticket in advance via email at littlearttheatre@gmail.com. When requesting, be sure to mention the name of the event and how many tickets should be reserved. Following the event, Johnson will head to Dark Star for a book signing. 

(Robert Hasek contributed the source material for this article.)

Actor Janina Gavankar visited Yellow Springs on Thursday, July, 19 for a screening of her new feature film “Blindspotting,” a timely comedy-drama written, produced by and starring Rafael Casal and “Hamilton” veteran Daveed Diggs. 

Local resident Dave Chappelle hosted the sold out event at the Little Art Theatre, where villagers and guests stayed late into the night and partook of an informal question and answer session after the movie.

Chappelle and Gavankar engaged the audience in a discussion of several riveting scenes and the movie’s realistic portrayal of interpersonal struggles and changing community dynamics that can both empower and destabilize.

Gavankar said she had done a lot of movies but that this was “the first one I’ve ever been this moved by.” She said that the film portrays a cultural moment, and provides “a look at an America we all know.” Even though the filmmakers began writing the script ten years ago, the material they address is “unfortunately even more so at the forefront of our conversations” today. 

Though the themes in the movie deal with race, class and gentrification, it is a comedy-drama, and it was noted that laughter and crying have similar physiological roles in helping balance our emotions. “Blindspotting” gives viewers the opportunity for both.

The movie’s title is a reference to the “psychological blind spot”, a term coined by Princeton University social psychologist Emily Pronin, who noted in a 2002 study that, while most people recognize the biases of others, they often fail to recognize their own.

In addition to Yellow Springs, the movie has a limited release in New York and Los Angeles on July 20, and will be released nationally in select theaters July 27.

“Blindspotting” is directed by Carlos López Estrada, and stars Gavankar, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Ethan Embry, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Wayne Knight. Gavankar has also appeared in Star Wars Battlefront II, True Blood and The League.

Actor Janina Gavankar visited Yellow Springs last Thursday, July 19, for a special preview screening of her new feature film “Blindspotting.” Local resident Dave Chappelle hosted the sold-out event at the Little Art Theatre, where villagers and guests stayed late into the night and partook of an informal question and answer session after the movie.

Before the screening, Gavankar and Chappelle hung out in front of a mural of the musician Prince in Kieth’s alley by local artist Sarah Dickens. In a follow-up email interview with the News, Gavankar, an Illinois native, wrote, “I had one of the best days of my 2018 in Yellow Springs … It was a combination of being back in the Midwest, the openness of the community, and the spring water!”

She added that the film, which deals with race, class and gentrification, addresses issues in Yellow Springs. “They’re dealing with some of their [own] questions about policing and it was a very quiet, very intrsopective conversation that a community clearly needed to be having with itself,” Gavankar later told the Hollywood Reporter about the Q&A session.

The local screening was followed by a limited release in New York and Los Angeles the following day. “Blindspotting” is being released nationally in select theaters on Friday, July 27.

Several hundred villagers enjoyed a Hollywood moment last Friday, Oct. 5, when actor, director and co-writer Bradley Cooper of the just-released “A Star is Born” appeared with local celebrity and film supporting actor Dave Chappelle at two private screenings of the film at the Little Art Theatre. The two appeared after the 2 p.m. showing of the film to speak about its production and answer questions. 

The film tells the classic Hollywood story of Jackson Maine, a rock-and-roll star in decline as he struggles with addiction, who falls in love with an unknown singer with a huge talent, played by Lady Gaga. Chappelle’s role is of Maine’s close friend, Noodles, who advises his friend of the wisdom of settling down and enjoying the ordinary pleasures of life, rather than always pursuing the next big thing.

In his talk, Cooper said he wrote the friend role specifically for Chappelle, whom he had met and bonded with in 2015 in London. Cooper said he made two trips to Yellow Springs to persuade Chappelle to take the role, and wasn’t sure until the last minute that Chappelle would do the part. 

Cooper also said that the speech he wrote for Noodles to deliver to Maine in the film was based on what he sees as Chappelle’s own wisdom. “The character [of Noodles] is talking from a deep place that originates in Dave,” Cooper said, also stating that “everyone [in the film] gave all of themselves.” 

Chappelle’s daughter, Sanaa, also appears in the film, as the daughter of Noodles.

On the day after Thanksgiving — Black Friday — all Americans have been asked to sign a pledge of loyalty to the United States. 

This is the central conceit of “The Oath,” a dark comedy/horror/political satire film starring Ike and Jon Barinholtz, and written and directed by Ike.

Ike Barinholtz, writer, director and star of dark comedy/horror/political satire film “The Oath,” will present the film at the Little Art Theatre on Oct. 24, with his brother, Jon Barinholtz, who also stars in the film. The two will present a Q&A to accompany the screening, preceded by a wine and hors d’oeuvres hour at the Mills Park Hotel. The event is a fundraiser for the Little Art. (Photo submitted by Dominick Dusseault)

The brothers Barinholtz, whose parents live in the area, are bringing the film to the Little Art Theatre on Wednesday, Oct. 24. A pre-screening reception with the stars is from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Mills Park Hotel and a Q&A follows the film. Tickets are limited, and the proceeds benefit the Little Art Theatre.

“The Oath” takes place during the Thanksgiving holiday, with the liberal Chris (Ike Barinholtz) and his wife, Kai (Tiffany Haddish), hosting his family for the festivities. Pat (Jon Barinholtz) is Chris’ brother, and he and his wife, Abbie (Meredith Hagner), lean to the right in their political sensibilities. The brothers disagree over the signing of The Oath, which is touted by the fictional administration as being non-compulsory, though some detractors have mysteriously gone missing — and Chris is certainly vocal in his opposition. As more family arrive — and the deadline for signing The Oath approaches — the arguments ramp up, until they’re punctuated by the arrival of two federal agents, who show up to put pressure on Chris.

Sibling and actor Jon Barinholtz. (Submitted photo by Dominick Dusseault)

Ike Barinholtz said in an interview with the News last week that the film was inspired by his family’s own Thanksgiving holiday in 2016, right after the presidential election. After Thanksgiving dinner — and some wine — the family’s political talk turned more heated. 

“It was really my mom, my brother and I, who I think are the loudest people in our family,” said Barinholtz. “It was getting to that weird place where we were saying things like, ‘It’s your fault!’ Which is a ridiculous thing to say to someone about a presidential election.”

Jon Barinholtz added that their family, on paper, shouldn’t have disagreed in the first place — they all voted for the same person in the 2016 election.

“So we were all on the same side,” said Jon. “We all just had different takes on what had gone wrong.”

Ike said that realizing even his politically aligned family was feeling the heat of discord was a creative epiphany. 

“It just kind of put it under the microscope a little bit that the holiday table in America was just blown up … and I just wanted to explore it,” he said. “I just found it odd [that we were arguing] and I knew that it was indicative of other tables, where people were maybe not so aligned — it must have been nuclear.”

The Barinholtzes are familiar with Yellow Springs and its environs — their parents, Alan and Peggy Barinholtz, live on a family farm outside Cedarville, and they’ve been coming to the village since they were kids. Both cited Dark Star Books and Comics as a favorite store — and resident feline, Mr. Eko, as a favorite cat. Jon canvassed for the Democratic Party in Yellow Springs in 2016 — though he noted that “it wasn’t hard convincing people to vote Democrat in Yellow Springs.” 

Because of the family’s ties to the area, Alan Barinholtz called up Ike and asked if it might be possible to have a screening at the Little Art.

“I think that’s one of the perks of being a director, especially of an independent film,” said Ike. “If it was, I don’t know, ‘Suicide Squad 2,’ and I had to call Warner Brothers and say like, ‘Hey, a week before it opens it needs to screen in Yellow Springs,’ they might say, ‘Well, that’s not exactly the biggest market.’” Making an independent film means Ike is able to, in his words, “make some of the rules.”

The brothers both attested that, although the film’s subject matter was based on their holiday squabble, their family loved the film and were happy to see them on screen together. 

“Although my mom said to me, ‘I know that there were scenes where you were really being mean to Jonny.’ And I’d go, ‘Yeah, but we were acting, you know?’” said Ike. “But like with everything in our careers, they’ve been very, very supportive.”

This isn’t the first time Jon Barinholtz has been directed by his older brother — though “The Oath” marks Ike Barinholtz’s big screen directorial debut, he had previously directed for TV and web series, including one starring his younger brother.

“[The film] was on a whole different scale,” Jon said. “And having him be the director, there was already 35 years of built-in trust. So it was a short cut, it was almost like a cheat — it was a great experience.”

Though “The Oath” does make very opaque allusions to the current presidential administration, Ike stressed that he doesn’t consider the film to be partisan — it’s a satire, and takes pains to show the ways that both liberals and conservatives can fall prey to the 24-hour news cycle and fail to listen to their loved ones. To that end, Ike thinks that folks of all political stripes should commit to continuing to engage in conversation with their families and friends if it’s safe for them to do so, even when it might be difficult.

“A lot of people say, ‘Don’t talk about politics.’ But I think we should! We have to now,” he said. “If we simply refuse to have these conversations … what happens is — we’re all in a bubble now, and that’s not going to change — but we’ll make the bubble smaller and harder to penetrate. … [Y}ou don’t have to do a whole lot of reading of history to realize that’s when really bad things start to happen.”

Jon hopes that movie-goers will feel emboldened to have these conversations after seeing the movie.

“If people are able to go in and maybe be seated by someone on the other side of the aisle, and see that some of the things we’re saying may be different — but the attitude and the anger behind it is very similar,” he said.

Ike agrees: “My ideal person who sees this movie walks out and says, ‘Oh man, that was funny. And it was kind of scary. And I should call my brother.’”

“The Oath” will screen at the Little Art Theatre on Wednesday, Oct. 24. The evening will begin with hors d’oeuvres from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Mills Park Hotel, followed by a screening and Q&A with Ike and Jon Barinholtz. Tickets are limited — the cost for the event is $40, with proceeds to benefit the Little Art. Visit http://www.littleart.com for more information. 

Last month, Villager Paul Beck came to the screening of “Weed the People” to learn more about medical marijuana.

Fifteen years ago, Beck was seeking a diagnosis for pain in his feet and hands. His neurologist identified the source as peripheral neuropathy.

“I said ‘Hallelujah, now what do you do about it?’ [My doctor] didn’t have the slightest idea,” Beck recalled.

So Beck was prescribed pain pills, and while they helped with his pain, he found they left him unable to feel anything. 

“That’s not what I want,” he said.

Hearing Beck relate his experience before the film screening, Teaera Roland, owner of Lotus Health in Mason, told him that cannabis may be an option for his ailment. 

Roland indicated that while peripheral neuropathy is not included as a condition that would qualify a patient for medical marijuana in Ohio, the fact that Beck has had long-term pain may be a route to a recommendation. 

“Cannabis, while treating your pain, will actually increase brain function and help with focus,” Roland explained.

“My brain is 85 years old, but it still works” Beck replied. 

Roland, a nurse practitioner, is one of several Ohio medical professionals who have examined the benefits of medical marijuana, and believe doctors should move past the stigma and stereotypes and start taking it seriously as a beneficial medication.

Lotus Health has been sponsoring screenings of “Weed the People” in the area to promote the legitimacy of medical marijuana, along with their office practice — a full-service clinic offering medical marijuana evaluation and consulting based on Roland’s 13 years of experience and education.

“It’s something I have been passionate about for quite a while,” said Roland, who has so far seen about 400 patients interested in medical marijuana.A serious documentary that chronicles five families fighting childhood cancer, “Weed the People” looks at how each family used medical marijuana as part of their treatment regimen and their outcomes. 

In Ohio, medical marijuana is approved for patients who have a variety of conditions, including cancer, AIDS/HIV, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease,  epilepsy and seizure disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, fibromyalgia and others, including chronic pain. One role it plays is as a palliative measure to mitigate nausea, appetite loss and other side effects of treatments such as chemotherapy, according to doctors.

Proponents like Roland argue that it’s effective for a far wider variety of health problems, such as diabetes, depression, anorexia, endometriosis and many others.

“Nobody ever just has pain. They may also have diabetes for example, so there are certain [medical marijuana] regimens for diabetes,” she said. 

Roland relishes the success her patients have experienced using cannabis.

“My high is when we get people free of their pills. Tumors go away or shrink. Or all of a sudden they don’t need their walkers anymore,” she said.

Overcoming the marijuana stigma

Ohio’s medical marijuana program is finally off the ground, but there’s still much work to be done to bring it into the mainstream of medical treatment options, according to the medical professionals interviewed for this story.

Village resident Dr. F. Stuart Leeds feels now is the time to act.

“From my perspective, this is a great opportunity to get cannabis on a rational and legitimate footing, so that doctors take it seriously as medicine,” Leeds said recently. “Right now, the problem is, that a lot of them don’t.”

Leeds is an assistant professor of family medicine at the Wright State Boonshoft School of Medicine, as well as a researcher and a doctor at Wright State Physicians Family Medicine, and is certified to make medical marijuana recommendations.

Leeds is currently working to address the skepticism many doctors have toward medical marijuana. He is heading up a project called “Rational Cannabis Prescribing” to provide doctors with objective scientific information on how to best use medical marijuana in treating patient health conditions.

According to Leeds, since marijuana is still federally classified as a Schedule I drug, the strictest classification (the same as heroin), there are limited opportunities for research. Also, most previous studies have set out to demonstrate harmful effects rather than find beneficial uses, according to Leeds.

In September 2016, when the Ohio law was passed legalizing medical marijuana, Leeds immediately began looking for all the data and information available.

“I started reading the ‘classics’ in the field, like ‘Cannabis Pharmacy’ by Michael Backus,” Leeds recalled. But in reading the books, he was unable to find citations, reference or sources for most of the assertions.

“A lot of it turned out to be lore, all anecdotal,” Leeds said. “It’s the kind of thing, in medicine, that would be considered the bottom of the basement lowest level evidence.”

“The plural of anecdote is not data,” he said, citing a widely used aphorism.

One of the problems Leeds has seen in other states that have medical marijuana is that the vital job of recommending specific forms, strains, potency and dosages falls to dispensary agents known as “budtenders.”

There is no state-approved certification for budtenders in any state yet, as medical marijuana is still federally illegal, according to Hempstaff.com. There is no medical education required to be a budtender, just a high school diploma. Dispensary companies offer in-house training and there are various unofficial “budtender certification” programs.  

Leeds feels that until specific chemical make-ups of various cannabis strains, known as chemoprints, have been identified and tested, the budtender’s job is basically guesswork.

“The truth really is that the patients know more about this stuff than most doctors do,” Leeds said. “That’s the whole basis of the Leafly and Potbotics websites, they’re based on patient reports.”

Those websites allow individuals to provide reviews and anecdotal information about how certain types, forms or doses of cannabis worked with their medical conditions. Leeds sees this “crowdsourced” research as both problematic and -promising.

“That’s problematic when it comes to the quality of data, but I still think there’s something in there,” Leeds said. 

As part of his project, Leeds has a statistician working with him to analyze the information on various marijuana-related websites. He is also working to design studies that make medical marijuana “a more rational, legitimate enterprise,” he said. 

Despite his advocacy, Leeds has issued very few medical marijuana cards — under 20, with no recommendations. He has told patients that he’s not going to write recommendations until local dispensaries open and he knows what products they’re offering.

Ohio currently has eight dispensaries open for business, all in the eastern part of the state. Over 50 have been licensed statewide. The distribution is based on population, with 15 allocated to the Southwest region of the program. Locally, Montgomery County will have three. Greene, Madison and Fayette counties will share just one, Harvest of Ohio, in Beavercreek, near The Greene. 

Cannabis vs. opioids

Ohio’s opioid crisis continues, but Leeds is among the doctors advocating a possible solution with medical marijuana. 

Leeds sees “Opioid Use Disorder” as a strong candidate to be a qualifying condition for medical marijuana. In fact, Leeds successfully petitioned the state to consider adding opioid use disorder to the approved list in its next session.

One reason Leeds favors cannabis is its “benefit to risk” profile. Potentially great benefits with virtually no risk, he said. 

“Now here’s a drug that may be our best shot at replacing opioids for pain management, and it kills nobody,” he said. “You can’t really die from a cannabis overdose.”

According to Leeds, there is a lot of promising preliminary data that cannabis does benefit opioid-dependent patients, both in terms of preventing opioid-use disorder and treating withdrawal, as well as in helping with abstinence from opioids. 

Leeds referred to a 2014 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicating that states that have legalized medical marijuana have statistically fewer opioid overdose deaths, and the longer the states had allowed it, the fewer deaths there were. 

According to the study, there were fewer hospital admissions for opioid abuse in medical marijuana states, and fewer automobile fatalities involving opioids.

“And this may be the most exciting thing — just fewer opioid prescriptions,”  Leeds said.

“It was clear that cannabis had an opioid-sparing effect,” Leeds added, referring to the study. “On an individual basis, patients were reporting that when they were using cannabis they were able to get by using less opioids, and in some cases getting off opioids all together.”

The opioid problem in Ohio has gained widespread attention, blamed for 4,293 overdose deaths in Ohio in 2018, the second highest rate per capita after West Virginia, according to a recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Josh Short of Stillwater Medicine in Mason agrees that marijuana could play a role in preventing opioid deaths. Short, who works in conjunction with Roland’s clinic advising patients about medical marijuana, took part in the Q&A session after the “Weed the People” screening.

At the screening, Short said he has worked as an ER doctor and has seen first-hand the damage opioids can cause, and sees the potential for medical marijuana to help.

“The leading cause of nontraumatic death in the United States under the age of 50 is currently prescription narcotics — not heroin,” Short said.

Short recalled a patient who wanted to stop taking OxyContin by using marijuana. The patient had asked his regular doctor, who said that he was not comfortable with the idea. Short says this is a common reaction and is understandable among doctors who have no experience with cannabis.  

“It amazes me to see, study after study, that states with medical marijuana programs have 25 percent fewer deaths from prescription narcotics, and still we have this culture within Western medicine that believes if it’s not a pill manufactured in a factory, we can’t really suggest that you do it,” Short said at the screening.

According to Short, cannabinoids are better for chronic pain management than any other drug. 

“If you’re going to be treating pain for a long time, I don’t know that anything else will be as effective and as safe,” he said.

The longer someone uses narcotics, the more they require to achieve the same effect over time, according to Short. Cannabis does not require increasing doses to remain effective, he added.

“That’s where the dangers of narcotics come in. If you fill all your pain receptors with a narcotic, your body makes more pain receptors,” Short said. “That means you need more and more narcotics to prevent pain. Cannabinoids are different.”

During the Q&A, Roland said that with cannabis, pain relief is just the beginning.

“There’s all these other benefits of all these other cannabinoids that we don’t fully understand,” Roland said. 

“The full plant, that’s really the medicine,” she said. In addition to cannabinoids, the full plant offers natural antiviral, antibacterial and antifungal properties, she explained.

“It’s extremely complex, and different types of marijuana are going to help different things,” she continued. 

With more dispensaries opening around the state in the coming weeks, and a wider variety of product forms available, it remains to be seen how much the list of recommending Ohio doctors will expand beyond its current level of about 400. 

Ohio already has over 17,000 approved medical marijuana patients, or cardholders, with the number predicted to eventually reach as many as 300,000. 

By Alan Barinholtz

An unhinged general with his finger on the button, ordering a nuclear strike on Eastern Europe? In 2019?

Wait a minute. Let’s go back to 1964, when “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb” premiered. The film, which will screen on Saturday, July 27, at the Little Art Theatre as part of its 90th anniversary celebration, is a classic. It’s listed as the #3 comedy in the American Film Institute’s “100 Years, 100 Laughs” compendium, and was among the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. 

The film, a political satire and black comedy harping on Cold War fears and shot in black and white, features its cast — including Peter Sellars in three roles — playing straight against increasingly farcical attempts to avoid nuclear destruction. Quips like “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here — this is The War Room!” have long since entered the collective pop culture consciousness, and according to critics, the film remains as funny and razor sharp today as it was in 1964.

“Dr. Strangelove” earned four Oscar nominations: best picture, best screenplay, best direction for Stanley Kubrick and best actor for Peter Sellars. The film actually brought about policy changes in the U.S. to ensure that events depicted in the film could not occur in real life.

“Dr. Strangelove” will be screened at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 27, at the Little Art Theatre. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Yellow Springs Mayor Pam Conine. Tickets are $7. For more information, visit http://www.littleart.com.

The year was 1976. Fifty people pitched in $1,200 each to purchase a former ranch in southwestern New Mexico. In the language of the age, they sought to go “back to the land” — to create an intentional community centered on consensus decision-making and stewardship of land and water.

More than 40 years later, that community, known as the Ranch, still exists. Over the years, members have come and gone. Children have been born on the Ranch, and those children have grown up to birth their own children within the community. Ranch members and their extended family have died there. Today, a multigenerational group of about 20 continues to make their home at the Ranch. Most members commute out for jobs, but find ways to remain deeply connected to the land and to each other.

And now a new documentary film that honors and evokes life at the Ranch, titled “Hippie Family Values,” is coming to the Little Art Theatre for one screening only, Monday, July 29, at 6 p.m. There will be a post-screening Q&A with the film’s director, Tucson, Ariz.-based filmmaker and film professor Bev Seckinger, and its editor, longtime villager and filmmaker Jim Klein.

Filmmakers Bev Seckinger and Jim Klein at the Bisbee Film Festival in Arizona. Klein, a longtime villager, collaborated with Seckinger to edit her film “Hippie Family Values.” (Submitted photo by Leslie Yerman)

By phone this week, Seckinger explained that she first visited the Ranch in 2005 to play a gig there with her band, the Wayback Machine. She was already interested in intentional communities, but this particular one struck a chord.

“I found the place intriguing and beautiful,” she said. “The people were very interesting — the women especially were the engine of the place. They were, and are, role models to me.”

Three woman feature especially prominently in the film: Kate and Sally, members of the founding generation, and Sally’s daughter, Dulcie.

After her initial visit, Seckinger came back annually with her band, as well as returning on her own to shoot footage of the Ranch and interview its residents. As her visits and footage accrued — and her intimacy with the community members grew — a documentary film project took shape.

“It is really a love letter to the Ranch from me,” she said of the finished film.

Thirteen years in the making, “Hippie Family Values” premiered at the Santa Fe Film Festival in 2018. It has been shown at independent theaters, colleges and universities and other community-based venues around the country. The film spans the period from the Ranch’s 30th anniversary gathering in 2006 to its 40th celebration 10 years later. It also incorporates older footage from the community’s early days.

“Documentary filmmaking is more like cooking in the crock pot instead of the microwave,” Seckinger explained with a laugh. “It takes time to build relationships, trust and access.”

She worked closely with the film’s subjects on what material could and should be included, even down to the wording used in the film’s on-screen text. Her relationships with individuals at the Ranch have continued beyond the making of the film, according to Seckinger.

“In some ways, I feel like I’m part of the Ranch,” she said.

Editor Klein described the film’s intimacy as one of its strengths.

“It’s such an intimate portrait. Bev knew the people over a long period of time, and she really liked them,” he said by phone last week.

The intimacy of filmmaker and subjects is also reflected in the relationships between the subjects themselves, the Ranch’s members, Klein added. These human relationships are at the heart of the film’s story.

“The film is really grounded in the theme that trying to live in connection to people makes life more joyous,” he said.

Having been a member of a collective in Dayton for eight years in the 1970s and ’80s, Klein said he felt especially drawn to the film’s subject and themes.

Yet “Hippie Family Values” doesn’t sugar-coat the real challenges involved in communal life. For example, one of the Ranch’s younger members expresses frustration with the slow pace of communal decision-making, while an older member laments that the community has left behind the “very cooperative” spirit of its early years. While Ranch members initially shared communal meals, the community moved away from that arrangement over time, with the common kitchen now reserved for special occasions.

Still, the Ranch continues to hold communal meetings; the film shows members being summoned together by a blast from a conch shell.

“There is a degree of intentionality and thoughtfulness there. I really admire that,” Seckinger said.

One of her motivations in making the film was “stereotype busting,” she added. Born a little too late to be a hippie herself, she said she has long looked up to her hippie elders, activists and idealists 10 to 20 years older than she.

“There are all these disparaging stereotypes of hippies as lazy and shiftless. But no one could be more industrious than Kate,” Seckinger reflected, referring to a long-term member of the Ranch who is a successful potter. “These are people working really hard to create alternatives to [mainstream] living arrangements, health care, food and our relationship to the environment,” she added.

While many communes that started in the 1960s and ’70s folded long ago, the Ranch has changed but endured. Close bonds among members and a healthy balance between individual freedom and communal responsibility may be factors in the Ranch’s longevity, Seckinger speculated.

Although the film explores a long-term experiment in alternative living, it illuminates the life experiences and rites of passage common to people everywhere, she believes.

“It ended up being, at its core, about the phases of life, about the complexities of relationships and aging and death,” she said. “I think people respond on a visceral level to that.”

Klein, too, underscored the appeal of the film’s broader themes.

“It’s hopeful material. They’re finding ways to be in the latter parts of life with pleasure and meaning,” he said of older Ranch members. “Having just turned 70, it feels very close to my heart.”

Klein and Seckinger collaborated for two years to edit footage from a decade of intermittent shooting into a cohesive film.

“We worked as a team to find the film’s story. As an editor, I play a strong role,” Klein said.

He got his start in filmmaking at Antioch College, where he and his then-partner Julia Reichert created the film “Growing Up Female,” widely considered the first film of the modern women’s movement. They also formed a distribution company, New Day Films, now a flourishing filmmaker-run distributor for socially conscious documentary films. It was through New Day that Klein became friends with Seckinger; New Day distributed her 2004 film, “Laramie Inside Out,” about the aftermath of the murder of gay youth Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo., Seckinger’s hometown.

Klein has previously produced seven independent feature films, as well as serving as post-production editor for many more. He’s garnered two Academy Award nominations for his documentaries, which in addition to “Growing Up Female,” include “Letter to the Next Generation,” a film exploring apathy versus activism at Kent State at the dawn of the Reagan era.

That film caught Seckinger’s eye.

“I loved the film. He’d thought through deeply” the issues of whether and how counter-culture values could survive, she said.

“I didn’t know someone of Jim’s stature would work with me,” she added.

The pair clicked from the start, according to Seckinger.

“As soon as we got started, it was obvious we shared totally the same sensibility,” she said. “I learned tons from working with him.”

By mutual decision, “Hippie Family Values” relies on the voices of Ranch residents, with minimal exposition from the filmmaker. Voice, music and image, rather than tight narrative, propel the film, according to Klein.

“We were thinking about, ‘How can we make this place come alive for the audience?’” he explained.

After short stints collaborating in both Tucson and Yellow Springs, Seckinger came to the village during the summer of 2016 for two months of focused editing.

“I had already fallen in love with Yellow Springs” on previous visits, she said. “It was the perfect place for cutting this film.”

She wove herself into village life, harvesting garlic at the Antioch Farm, riding a borrowed bike on the bike path and enjoying wine and meals at the Winds and Sunrise Café, all while staying at Klein’s home. The communal feeling in Yellow Springs reflected and reinforced the film’s atmosphere, she observed.

“There was just so much resonance” between Yellow Springs and the ethos of the Ranch, she said.

“We were living the life of the film every day in making it,” Klein recalled. “There  was no disconnect.”

Seckinger said she is looking forward to coming back to Yellow Springs for the July 29 screening at the Little Art. A rough cut of the film was screened in 2016 in Klein’s living room, with feedback from friends, family and fellow locally based filmmakers.

“I’m just super-excited for this film to be shown here,” Seckinger said. “In a way, this community helped make it.”