Daily Archives: 06/26/2008

(Community Matters)

Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan

(Community Matters) I wasn’t able to make last night’s swearing in ceremony but am very happy for friends/new & returning council members Lee Leffingwell, Randi Shade & Laura Morrison. Randi & Laura round out an excellent group of council members.

Of course, we’ll miss Betty Dunkerley a great deal. There’s a reception at City Hall today at 4pm to honor Betty. And, friends are organizing a thank you gala and debt retirement party at the Headliners on August 6. Sponsors are giving $300. Tickets will cost $50. Please feel free to contact me or Cis Myers if you’d like to participate.

(Community Matters) Steven and I are producing two of our friend’s (Michael Mitchell’s) plays, Highway Home & Them. Austin & New York award-winning director, Katie Pearl will direct. The two short plays will be presented as Two Fountains and open Nov 29 at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre.

Katie directed a workship of Michael’s Highway Home at one of his last UT classes in the Spring. She loved it, we loved it and several weeks before any awareness that Michael had cancer we talked about producing the show. Given the situation today, we’ve timed the production to coincide with the end of Michael’s 6 months of chemo (kinda an exciting light at the end of the tunnel for him, his family and friends). We’re raising the $25,000 production costs from family, friends and sponsors of the arts, so that we can designate all box office proceeds to two nonprofits, the Lance Armstrong Foundation (for Austin patient navigation) and Fuse Box, an important Austin arts festival . Sponsorships qualify as charitable contributions through the ABPorter.org Fund at the Austin Community Foundation. More here