Stephen DiLauro aka Uke Jackson (a nom de plume he assumed in 2000) is an American playwright, novelist, newpaper reporter, art writer, and ukelele player.
DiLauro has written for American Artist , [1] the Village Sun, [2] [3] The Fortune Society, [4] and Cigar Aficionado. [5] DiLauro was at onetime the chief art critic for the Manhattan periodical Downtown. [6]
As a ukelele player and afficinado DiLauro (aka Uke Jackson) is best known for founding and leading the New York Ukulele Ensemble and for "Ukefest" at its' height attended by thousands. [7]
On March 10, 1992 a televised adaptation of DiLauro's one act play about a Puerto Rican burglar who breaks into a Jewish matron's (Rose) Brooklyn apartment "Avenue Z Afternoon" appeared on General Motors Playwrights Theater on the A&E Network starring Anne Meara (as the matron) and Lou Diamond Phillips (as the burglar). [8] [9] Carole Kucharwicz in reviewing the program in Variety said of it in closing ....'The question of putting bars on Rose's windows becomes the metaphor that the one-acter turns on: each character's reality observed by the other, each reality understood and accepted - impossible with the bars. All in all a productive afternoon." [10]
In 2008 Jackson/DiLauro combined his love for ukeleles with his role as a playwright in creating the book for the musical Sex Drugs and Ukeleles staged at the Theater for the New City in the East Village, Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. [11] [12] DiLauro's play Monster Time was listed as one of the top ten dramatic works of the year in the volume The Burns Mantle Theater Yearbook of 1989-1990 Featuring the Ten Best Plays of the Season and New York Magazine described it as [a] "Prison drama heightened by the setting being death row'. [13] [14]
DiLauro is the co-author of "Perillo Artist of the American West" (Alpine Fine Arts Collection 1981). [15] He is also the co-author with Roy Moyer (ed.) and Gilbert Lascault of the 1986 monograph from Hudson Hills Press Doğançay on the Turkish American artist Burhan Doğançay. [16]
DiLauro's 1996 CD audio collection River Tales was covered in Newsweek, as well as other news outlets. [17] [18]
He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Ferrin DiLauro and grew up in Clinton Township, New Jersey. His father was a United Airlines pilot and real estate investor.
DiLauro was formerly married to the actress Suzanne Jackson who played "Dolly" on the daytime television soap opera One Life to Live . This marriage and his previous one both ended in divorce. [6]
The ukulele, also called a uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings.
Anthony Robert Kushner is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Among his stage work, he is most known for Angels in America, which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, as well as its subsequent acclaimed HBO miniseries of the same name. At the turn of the 21st century, he became known for his numerous film collaborations with Steven Spielberg. He received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013. Kushner is among the few playwrights in history nominated for an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award.
Donald Margulies is an American playwright and academic. In 2000, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Dinner with Friends.
Oscar Hammerstein I was a German-born businessman, theater impresario, and composer in New York City. His passion for opera led him to open several opera houses, and he rekindled opera's popularity in America. He was the grandfather of American playwright/lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II and the father of theater manager William Hammerstein and American producer Arthur Hammerstein.
Melvyn Hayes "Mel" Gussow was an American theater critic, movie critic, and author who wrote for The New York Times for 35 years.
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (UOGB) is a British musical ensemble founded in 1985 by George Hinchliffe and Kitty Lux. The orchestra features ukuleles of various sizes and registers from soprano to bass. The UOGB is best known for performing musically faithful but often tongue-in-cheek covers of popular songs and musical pieces from a wide variety of music genres taken "from the rich pageant of western music". The songs are often performed with a reinterpretation, sometimes with a complete genre twist, or well known songs from multiple genres are seamlessly woven together. Songs are introduced with light hearted deadpan humour, and juxtaposition is a feature of their act, the members of the orchestra wear semi-formal evening dress and sit behind music stands, in a parody of a classical ensemble.
Atlantic Theater Company is an Off-Broadway non-profit theater. The company was founded in 1985 by David Mamet, William H. Macy, and 30 of their acting students from New York University, inspired by the historical examples of the Group Theatre and Stanislavski.
Theater for the New City, founded in 1971 and known familiarly as "TNC", is one of New York City's leading off-off-Broadway theaters, known for radical political plays and community commitment. Productions at TNC have won 43 Obie Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. TNC currently exists as a 4-theater complex in a 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) space at 155 First Avenue, in the East Village of Manhattan.
The New York Ukulele Ensemble was founded by playwright and novelist Uke Jackson. The ensemble'smMembers included: Heather Lev, Katie Down, Debra Sherline, Holly Duthie, Christina Liao, J Walter Hawkes, Greg Gattuso, Uncle Zac, and Uke Jackson. The line up was all ukulele, including soprano, concert, tenor, baritone and bass ukuleles, and banjo ukes.
John Michael Friedman was an American composer and lyricist. He was a Founding Associate Artist of theater company The Civilians.
Molly Lewis is an American musician who is known for her ukulele playing and who rose to prominence on the Internet. She plays both covers and original songs. Her original music consists of comedic songs that deal with relevant pop culture topics. She is currently signed with DFTBA Records through which she released her first EP I Made You A CD... But I Eated It.
May Singhi Breen was an American composer, arranger, and ukulelist, who became known as "The Original Ukulele Lady". Her work in the music publishing business spanned several decades. Breen was the driving force in getting the ukulele accepted as a musical instrument by the American Federation of Musicians. In 2000, she became the first woman inducted into the Ukulele Hall of Fame.
Carol Weston is an American writer. The author of sixteen books, both fiction and non-fiction, she has been the "Dear Carol" advice columnist at Girls' Life since the magazine's first issue in 1994. Her newest book is Speed of Life, which received starred reviews in Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and Booklist. The New York Times Book Review called it "perceptive, funny, and moving."
Michael Alan Lerner is a French-American screenwriter, director, and journalist.
This is a list of creative periods (series) by Burhan Doğançay, a Turkish-American artist, who became famous for translating realistic objects such as billboards, posters, graffiti and other street art into seemingly abstract compositions. Considered the most influential Turkish-born artist of the post war-era, Dogancay's oeuvre is categorized into fourteen distinct series in which he predominantly used collage and fumage. While Dogançay spent most of his artistic career in New York City he always remained closely connected to his native Turkey. In addition, Dogancay created a photographic archive called Walls Of The World (1975-2012), which encompasses about 30,000 slides of walls in approximately 500 cities in over 100 countries.
The New Federal Theatre is a theatre company named after the African-American branch of the Federal Theatre Project, which was created in the United States during the Great Depression to provide resources for theatre and other artistic programs. The company has operated out of a few different locations on Henry Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Since 1970, the New Federal Theatre has provided its community with a stage and collection of talented performers to express the voices of numerous African-American playwrights.
James Patrick Baron, also known as Tiki King, is an artist, musician, and luthier. He was an artist in the tiki revival scene of the early 1990s. As a luthier he created the pineapple cutaway double octave ukulele and has designed ukuleles for celebrities such as Greg Hawkes and Bette Midler. He released three solo ukulele CDs as well as one with his lounge band Tiki King and the Idol Pleasures. He currently plays bass drum and ukulele in Tribal Celtic band the Wicked Tinkers who have released a total of nine albums.
The Women's Interart Center was a New York City-based multidisciplinary arts organization conceived as an artists' collective in 1969 and formally delineated in 1970 under the auspices of Women Artists in Revolution (WAR) and Feminists in the Arts. In 1971, it found a permanent home on Manhattan's far West Side.
Jonathan Reynolds was an American writer. He practiced as an actor for a short period before becoming a writer. He wrote for David Frost and Dick Cavett before a breakthrough with two comedy plays which ran off-Broadway in 1975. His most successful play was Geniuses at Playwrights Horizons in 1982, which was inspired by his time on the set of the war movie Apocalypse Now. Reynolds wrote several screenplays, receiving praise for his writing on the 1984 romantic comedy Micki & Maude. His other film work was less well received and he was awarded the 1988 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay for 1987's Leonard Part 6. Reynolds returned to writing plays in the late 1990s and received a Pulitzer Prize for Drama nomination for his work on the 1997 play Stonewall Jackson's House. He wrote a food column for The New York Times Magazine between 2000 and 2005, publishing a selection of columns in book form in 2006. Reynolds returned to acting in 2003 leading in Dinner with Demons at the Second Stage Theater.