Mamba's Daughters

This Portland theatre season has been delightfully packed with stories about incredible women who have overcome seemingly impossible odds. They've all been stunning, but we've hit a new high with Portland Center Stage's HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW, a biographical portrait of African American stage and screen performer Ethel Waters.

Target Margin Theater (David Herskovits, Artistic Director; John Del Gaudio, Artistic Producer) continues the 2013-14 season with their winter 2014 TMT Lab: Yiddish Version curated by TMT Artistic Producer John Del Gaudio. TMT's Lab offers a sampler of works from the canon of Yiddish theater and literature, to remind us all how diverse and sophisticated Yiddish culture was, and how great its loss.

The New York Times is reporting the sad news that Anne Brown, the soaring soprano who literally put the Bess in 'Porgy and Bess' by inspiring George Gershwin to expand the part in his opera that was originally to be called 'Porgy,' died Friday in Oslo. Brown was 96.