WBGO Journal

Theater critic Michael Bourne selects this season's best musicals. 

Click above to hear Michael's picks.

On YouTube there's a thriving genre in which woodworkers, mechanics, chefs and other makers document the step-by-step process behind their creations.

WBGO’s Jon Kalish went to Waterford, Maine where Gardner Waldeier has been entertaining viewers from the workshop attached to his 18th Century farmhouse.

Click above to hear Jon's feature on Bus Huxley's.

The 72nd U.S. Women's Open Championship is coming to New Jersey in mid July.  The USGA held its media day at Trump National Bedminster Wednesday. 

The day included a clinic for young girls featuring three of the top players on the women's tour, reigning U.S. Open Champ Brittany Lang, 2007 U.S. Open Champion Cristie Kerr and the current world number one ranked player Lydia Ko.

The U.S. Women's Open Champion runs from July 13th through July 16th.  WBGO's Doug Doyle gives us an audio postcard from the event as well as a chat with Brittany Lang on the putting green.

Drug users desperate to kick the habit are now turning to some New Jersey police departments for help.

Brick Township police chief James Riccio says about 150 drug users showed up at police stations in Brick and Manchester Township since the Heroin Addiction Response program was launched in January

It’s time for the theater awards. Theater critic Michael Bourne looks at the nominees for Best New Play on Broadway.

Click above to hear his choices.

Times Square has been called the crossroads of the world. A new tourist attraction that opened there this month displays much of the world under one roof in miniature form.

Models of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas comprise the new exhibit, Gulliver’s Gate.  WBGO's Jon Kalish went to check it out. Hear his report by clicking above.

The city of Newark recently celebrated the opening of the Shani Baraka Women’s resource center for women in crisis, to provide emergency services for women affected by domestic violence. The center has a personal connection to both the city itself and its mayor.

“You never think your going to be that person you never think your going to be that woman.”

28-year-old Newark native Christina Bright is a domestic violence survivor, she says she hopes the center will be able to reach those women who are often afraid or even ashamed to go out and get the help they need.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s powerful 1982 painting of a skull brought $110.5 million at Sotheby’s yesterday, to become the sixth most expensive work ever sold at auction.  There were gasps in the crowd when the auction ended.  According to various reports, only 10 other works have broken the $100 million mark.

The painting, “Untitled," was forged from oil stick and spray paint and had been expected to sell for $60 million.  The New York Times reported at least four bidders on the phones and in the room went way beyond that price tag.

On the morning of April 19th, 1995, Kathy Sanders dropped off her grandchildren at the daycare center located in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  Hours later her life would change forever.

“Twenty-two years ago, the morning of the bombing, I became a victim.  I didn’t have any choice.  When I began to pray for the men who killed my grandchildren, I don’t know what it did for [Timothy] McVeigh or [Terry] Nichols but it began to change my life.”

Kathy Sanders found forgiveness in an unexpected way.

Nancy Opel stars at the George Street Playhouse in Curvy Widow, a musical with a book (from a book) by Bobby Goldman.

Opel returns to GSP after her hilarious, show-stealing performance as Ma/The Mayor in The Toxic Avenger to star in this sassy, frank and witty musical comedy that follows the daily exploits of a feisty fifty-something widow. Her adventures inspire laughter and -- in the least expected places --  reveal unexpected truths about life, love, survival and sex.

The Partnership for Maternal & Child Health of Northern New Jersey and the SIDS Center of New Jersey will hold a conference next month on Black Infant Mortality (focused specifically on New Jersey). The conference is set for June 2nd at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark.

It’s been more than 20 years since a Blue Ribbon Panel was created under the former Governor of New Jersey Christie Whitman to address the issue. The Partnership was a part of the panel then and is now leading efforts to resurface this important public health issue.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will be completing a coast-to-coast tour at NJPAC for performances on Mother’s Day weekend.

It is especially significant that the Company will be performing 3 works (on Friday evening and Sunday matinee) that celebrates the marriage of modern dance and jazz.

A company premiere and a new production that pay homage to two jazz legends on their birth centennials; Artistic Director Robert Battle’s Ella to the scatting of Ella Fitzgerald and Billy Wilson’s The Winter in Lisbon tribute to Dizzy Gillespie.

WBGO Theater Critic Michael Bourne reviews Anastasia and has some thoughts on the Tony Award nominations.

Chaka Khan is one of the most recognizable names and voices in music history. The Queen of Funk is opening up about her unprecedented career her connection to jazz, her dedication to philanthropy, and her upcoming Mother's Day benefit show.   

Khan has had an eventful and storied career, going back to the early 1970s, when she was front-woman for the funk band Rufus. But before all of that, there was jazz.

Over ten years ago, New Jersey became the first state to enact legislation requiring every new mother to be screened for postpartum depression and anxiety before leaving the hospital.  But only fifteen percent of women are reaching out for help after being discharged.

“The stigma, the shame, the failure you’re already feeling while in the throes of this illness prevents you from admitting and asking for help,” said Lisa Tremayne, Program Director at The Center for Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders at Monmouth Medical Center.

This season on Broadway has been, to say the least, active. Same for off-Broadway, says WBGO Theater Critic Michael Bourne, especially downtown on Lafayette Street.

The Tribeca film Festival ends this weekend, after a pretty full 10 days of some 104 films, plus TV and immersive media experiences and celebrity chats. 

The highest profile premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival is The Circle, directed by James Ponsoldt from Dave Eggers screenplay of his own novel. Which conjures up a techno information gigantum that looks a lot like a cross between Google and Apple corporate cultures, with Tom Hanks as the Steve Jobs-like Eamon Bailey at the head of it all, backed up by Patton Oswalt his enforcer, Tom Stenton.

Last month's violent line of duty death of 44-year old FDNY EMT Yadira Arroyo has thrown a spotlight on the vast pay disparity between what members of the FDNY’s Emergency Medical Service are paid versus every other uniform agency including the Department of Sanitation.

Can high schoolers make a difference in their community by baking a cake?  A group of Montclair High School students are trying to do just that.

On a Friday afternoon in April, while other students are fleeing Montclair High School, about fifteen young women assembled in a second floor classroom with a cake and brownies. But they weren’t having a party.

Instead, they were making plans for an upcoming bake sale. The club is called “Baking for a Change,” and they discussed where they want to donate the money they raise – the local animal shelter or a conservation project.

The bottom line at Auschwitz is, eighty percent of the people who were sent from Hungary, Jews, upon arrival in the gas chambers.  The other twenty percent will be sent to slave labor camps all over Nazi occupied areas.  I see people dying all around me.  They’re dying of hunger, dying from diseases, accidents on the work sites from really hard labor.  They’re going to kill you.  One morning we are standing at attention when an S.S.

A play now on Broadway tells the story of a play that became a scandal a hundred years ago — in Yiddish.  Theater Critic Michael Bourne reviews Indecent.A play now on Broadway tells the story of a play that became a scandal a hundred years ago — in Yiddish.   Theater Critic Michael Bourne reviews Indecent.

For many Americans a broadband connection to the internet is an essential necessity of 21st Century life. And yet there are some who can't afford it. A small town in Vermont is the latest in a series of efforts to organize a wireless network that offers high-speed internet access at a price that low-income people can afford. WBGO's Jon Kalish reports on the wireless mesh movement.

Click above to hear Jon's report on the WBGO Journal.

A Broadway veteran and Monmouth County native is training local kids and adults to follow in her footsteps on stage.  Saturday (April 22) marks the launch of Red Bank Performance Prep, and education division of the long-time downtown Red Bank events and entertainment company, Flipping Fun.

Theresa Fowler Pittius was an original cast member of Cameron Mackintosh's highly acclaimed, International Broadway Touring Production of Oliver.  She's been involved with many other Broadway projects and is now giving back to the community that helped make her dreams come true.

The Third Annual Mike Nichols Charity Hockey Game this Friday, April 21st at Prudential Center will benefit spinal cord research and quality of life initiatives. 

Proceeds from the game featuring many former and current NHL stars will go to the Nichols Family Trust to provide for Mike's medical needs, as well as the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, which is dedicated to curing spinal cord injuries by funding innovative research and improving the quality of life for individuals living with paralysis.

Author, former Associated Press reporter and New York resident Sally Cook returns to SportsJam with Doug Doyle to talk about her latest book, How to Speak Soccer: From Assist to Woodwork - An Illustrated Guide to Pitch-Perfect Jargon.

Playwright Tony Meneses feels right at home at Two River Theater in Red Bank.  He's excited about the world premiere of The Women Of Padilla.   Meneses was also the playwright of one of Two River's most adored shows Guadalupe in the Guest Room.

The Women of Padilla characters are linked by their marriages to eight brothers and their shared last name, Padilla.   The eight very different sisters-in-law connect through the power of food, faith, laughter and each other while their husbands are away at war.

Film Critic Harlan Jacobson has three ways to embark on adventure at the movies.  Harlan reviews The Lost City of Z, Tommy's Honour and Graduation.

WBGO Theater Critic Michael Bourne is not complaining about the abundance of plays and musicials on Broadway recently, especially when three stars have returned with outstanding performances.  Bourne loves his old friend and former college roommate Kevin Kline in Present Laughter as well as Patti Lupone and Christine Ebersole in War Paint.

People were competing for video game supremacy by pumping quarters into arcades on boardwalks, laundromats, and their local VHS rental stores since the 1980’s.  And before that on a little old video game console called Atari.  But gamers making a real living playing them, that’s a different story.  Adam Fletcher is director of communications at The Coalition, the studio that develops content for the popular XBOX One title Gears of War 4.

In the wake of the numerous deaths of young black men at the hands of police, the rise of the black lives matter movement, and the mass incarceration epidemic, tensions have been at an all time high in recent years. A new program being launched in the city of Newark is working to change all that. The All Star Project’s Cops and Kids program is working to break the stereotypes that often lead to tension between young people and the police.

“Their cousins, their family members, fathers have been locked up before so it makes them have that negative outlook.”