UA freshmen arrive early to help community
Tuscaloosa News – Aug. 14
More than 115 University of Alabama freshmen arrived in Tuscaloosa a week early. Their mission: to do some good. The Alabama Action and Outdoor Action service learning projects offered through UA’s Honors College are designed to give students, many of them from out of state, a chance to get involved in the community before they start college…Founded in 2000, the weeklong Alabama Action program gives UA students the chance to mentor students at Matthews Elementary and Echols Middle schools and take part in effort to improve the schools’ campuses. UA students spent hours this week painting murals inside the stairways, classrooms, libraries and along school hallways…they spend their afternoons serving as mentors to their younger ‘buddies.’ For David Worley, 18, and Lauren Marsh, 19, the mentoring component of the program is the most rewarding…Worley said. ‘I really didn’t realize the impact it would have on them until I asked my buddy who his role model was, and he told me that his brother and me were his two role models. I guess I’m already making a difference.’…In the Outdoor Action program, UA students’ volunteer opportunities focused on environmental awareness, said Fran O’Neal, the program’s director. The major projects in the two-day program were in Perry County, extending a new hiking trail in Perry Lakes Park and creating better access to Secret Lake, O’Neal said.
Havana: Cuban and American Actors Stage Shakespeare Play
Political Affairs Magazine – Aug. 14
A group of Cuban and American theater actors will premiere “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” by William Shakespeare, on Friday night at the Bertolt Brecht cultural complex in Havana. The event is the result of a cultural exchange project between the University of Alabama in the United States and the Cuban National Council of Performing Arts (CNAE) that started last year with the staging of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in Cuba and later in the United States….Both representations were directed by Shakespeare’s work expert Seth Panitch, actor, director and professor of the University of Alabama, who is taking advantage of agreements between this US higher studies institution and the University of Havana in several fields to develop his students’ performing skills…Seth Panitch told the press that he is carrying out research about acting studies and the training of actors and noted that what he has learned from this exchange is the huge sacrifice that Cuban students, unlike Americans, have to make in their training…
U.S. easing the Cuba travel ban
CubaHeadlines.com – Aug. 14
…More Cubans, from actors to academics, are being allowed into the United States as well. A group of 12 Cuban actors presented a Spanish-language version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the University of Alabama this month. “This is beyond uncommon. No musician or performing group has been allowed in this country like this from Cuba since 2003,” said Ned Sublette, a performer and composer from New York who has studied and written about Cuban music…