Two Trenton Thunder prospects endure the daily rigors and curveballs of minor league life with one goal in mind: playing ball in the Bronx

By Nick Klopsis

Myron Leslie is trying to make it in the difficult world of minor league baseball. (Credit: Dave Schofield/Trenton Thunder)

Catcher Myron Leslie calmly stood at his locker in the messy minor league clubhouse at Trenton’s Waterfront Park. About 90 minutes before game time, Leslie’s Trenton Thunder teammates were grabbing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sitting on the blue clubhouse sofa watching ESPN, or telling jokes. A few ducked out of the room for quick phone calls to their friends and family. Extra jerseys were crammed inside tiny lockers, leaving little space for anything else. Clubhouse attendants walked around armed with bags of ice, plopping them down next to players who were listening to their iPods and stretching. The atmosphere was relaxed, but everyone was still focused on the game against the Richmond Flying Squirrels.

On the surface, tonight’s game may seem like any other. The team will take the field at 7:00 p.m., play nine innings of baseball, and then call it a day. But for Leslie, it’s much more than just another game. It’s another chance for him to show that he has what it takes to crack a major league roster. Yet, as a backup catcher, the 29-year-old Leslie is also just one hot prospect away from being cut from the team, ending his professional baseball career. Read more

A brief look into the extensive history of busking.

By Krista Golia

Courtesy of Gabriel Aldort

Historically, street performing, traditionally known as busking, dates back to the old days of Ancient Rome, according to David Cohen and Ben Greenwood, authors of “The Buskers: A History of Street Entertainment.” Cohen and Greenwood chronicle street performing as it continued through the Middle Ages with traveling and singing clergymen, and later troubadours, entertaining royal courts with poetry and music. Bouts of street performing, which consisted of minstrels and other traveling artists, spread throughout Europe and eventually found its way to America, even though there were laws and other stipulations in place against performing. Eventually the more populated cities like New York City, and Chicago and outdoor venues like Venice Beach, California, have also developed their own counterculture of sorts in the form of the street performer or busker. Nowadays street performers have morphed from the simple dress and performances of the past to the often elaborate acts of present day ranging from the animal-costume-wearing musicians, the masked Velociraptor t-shirt wearing heavy-metal guitarists, and the every-so-often shirtless fire blower.

By Lana Lee

Photo Credit: Leia Jospe

The year was circa 2006: the era of MySpace and the “scene” culture of snake bite piercings, local shows, studded belts, bright hair bows and black eyeliner. The School of Rock was putting on a show in a tiny New Jersey venue stuffed with sweaty bodies, bass strums and drum beats. A single fan circulated the thick air around the dark room as a handful of photographers and masses of fans pushed and gathered around the stage. I was a high school sophomore who managed to force my way to the front, clutching a tiny point-and-shoot. However, most of the show, I was clearly outdone, as I stood next to a 14-year-old girl with braces and a huge digital SLR camera that was constantly clicking and nudging against me. Who does she think she is? I was affronted. Maybe I was envious. But as the night wore on, we reached a silent understanding – we were short girls at a crowded show. We needed to be at the front. It was a small space and we had pictures to take.

At the end of the set, instead of melting away with the crowds, she started throwing small, rectangular cards all over the sticky floor and the stage of the venue. I watched for a few minutes as she pulled them from her bag and tossed them around like confetti. I couldn’t help but ask her what she was doing. She handed me one of the tiny business cards – “Leia Jospé Photography” – and she said, “I want to get my name out there.”
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Rising tuition costs and the bleak job market raise questions about college’s worth as the only way to make it in the “real world.”

By Karina Grudnikov

After graduating from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas, Olivia Kaufman followed the same track as thousands of others: She went right to college, despite her sense that it wasn’t the right place for her. In 2006, she enrolled in St. John’s University at Queens, NY.  A year later, she dropped out.

“I went there and didn’t do well,” says Kaufman. “I’ve never been good at sitting down and doing homework.”

Kaufman, 23, returned to her parents’ home in Texas, where she enrolled in the University of Houston, in the hope that living with her parents would force her to focus on her studies. It didn’t. She left college again, only to attempt it one last time at a community college.  But there, the classes were too easy and Kaufman found herself gaining credits but little knowledge. She finally called it quits on school after three years at three different universities.

Like many who leave college, Kaufman worked a variety of jobs as she attempted to find her true calling. She first went into the Navy, from which she was shortly discharged due to medical reasons, and then worked at Starbucks. “I started to wonder what I was going to do with my life,” Kaufman said, “and if I’d spend my whole life being a barista, making $7.80 an hour.”  One day, her mother asked if she had ever considered becoming an emergency medical technician, or EMT.  Kaufman had been a lifeguard for several summers, and her mother knew she loved helping people. “I didn’t even think that would be an option without a college degree,” said Kaufman. But, as it turned out, there was a certificate program at Houston Community College where she could get her basic EMT certification. She enrolled in January 2010. Read more

A Brief Look at How Contemporary Experimental Theater Came to Be

By: Ariana DiLorenzo

To give a truly comprehensive history of the avant-garde theater movement in America, would take a book, and there are several. So, for the purposes of contextualizing the current “avant-garde” scene, here is a brief overview of how it all started and how this type of theater is having a resurgence in popularity today.

European theater had experienced waves of avant-garde activity since the 1880’s but it didn’t reach the United States until the 40’s, according to “American Avant-Garde

The Wooster Group's "Booty Call-Arama!"

Theater: a history,” by Arnold Aronson.  The book sites a production at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, in 1948, as the first American avant-garde performance.

“In the roughly thirty-year period from the mid-1950’s to the mid 1980’s there was an eruption of theatrical activity in the United States that would ultimately reshape every aspect of performance and have significant influences both at home and abroad,” Aronson writes. This explosion continued to grow throughout the 60s and 70s as several theater spaces popped up, including the now iconic La Mama, providing venues for artists to develop this new type of theater. Read more