By Dave Donnelly
Monday, March 10, 1997
Cassandra Wormser, Pamela Young
Cassandra Wormser, Pamela Young
ONCE again the English-Speaking Union has held its high school Shakespeare contest, and once again it was a success. Winning the top prize for the delivery of her monologue and sonnet was Seabury High senior Cassandra Wormser. If that Shakespearean sounding name is familiar, it's because Cassandra also won the contest last year as a junior. In fact, she went on to New York -- one of her prizes for winning -- and was first runner-up in the national competition! Now she gets another chance when the national contest is held next month. Among those who showed up at Wo International Center to watch the competition was Luka Lyman, who won the contest in her junior year and is now a theater major with full scholarship at USC. She just arrived home from a break in school, and had come directly from the airport to watch the judging, this time with no trepidation. Once again, good luck to Cassandra in New York ... Fortune shines
on this CassandraTHEN there's Jason Uechi, the 28-year-old doctoral candidate in composition at Columbia University who hails from Kealakekua on the Big Isle. I mentioned last week that the tone poem he'd written was premiered by the New York Youth Symphony and reviewed in the New York Times and received an e-mail from Uechi. He wrote, "A review in the New York Times goes a long way, but until it's in the Star-Bulletin, it doesn't mean a whole lot to my Mom!" I reprinted Uechi's complete reply on my Internet web page. He says his dream would be to write "an opera on the arrival/death of Captain Cook" ...
ISLE entertainers do manage to entertain all over the world and the well-traveled Pamela Young often chronicles their visits on her "Mixed Plate" program on KITV. The half-hour show airing March 26, for example, will show footage of the Brothers Cazimero at Carnegie Hall, Tony Conjugacion, Keola Beamer and Moe Keale in Seattle, Brother Noland in Las Vegas, Peter Moon in Japan and Keali'i Reichel in New York. Also on the show are Glenn Medeiros in Spain and Martin Nievera in Manila as well as Kapena, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole and Henry Kapono ...
MY personal feeling is that the whole issue of cloned sheep and all the hoopla it's engendered, complete with the predictable puns ("Send in the Clones," "Another Ewe" etc.) is overdone. Still, the late night comics are so enamored of the issue (so to speak) that it'll probably remain with us. Sylvia Hormann-Alper, new public relations director at Manoa Valley Theatre, reminds us that she and MVT associate producer Karen Brilliande played clones in Aldyth Morris' play "Neither Kith nor Kin" at Diamond Head Theatre before clones became fashionable. Now the two find themselves sharing an office together, and probably making MVT honcho Dwight Martin wonder if he's seeing double ... Clones encounter
RECUPING at home from a tough angioplasty that took five hours due to complications is Ruby Hamada. She's rarely -- if ever -- mentioned in the paper though her husband, longtime isle drummer Bruce Hamada and two sons, Bruce Hamada Jr., bassist for Loretta Ables at Lewers Lounge, and state Rep. Randall Iwase get a lot of ink. So here's to Ruby, the leader of that merry band, and best wishes for a quick recovery ...
UH regents have extended the contract of President Kenneth Mortimer into the year 2000 ... And Al Hulsen, former head of public radio here, is now a senior fellow at the East-West Center working to increase Pacific island news coverage ...
IT'S called the Pillsbury Kids Bake-Off Contest, but kids are only involved in creating the concoctions with all the "poppin' fresh" ideas they can hatch. The bake-off finals will be Saturday at the Princess Kaiulani Hotel and Foodland is joining with Pillsbury in coming up with lots of prizes for contestants. And don't be confused -- that may not be Honolulu Lite columnist Charles Memminger at the event. They're flying in the Pillsbury Dough Boy from the mainland to participate ... No, they're not baking kids!
