SCENE/STYLE: Sarah Claire & Esther Trunk Show Tonight (3/4)

Designers, and Auburn U alum, Sara Jordan and Aimee Wolk are having a trunk show for their fab clothing line Sarah Claire and Esther tonight at 242 E. 50th St, #1D, NYC 10022 from 7PM - 9PM.

The Sara Claire & Esther brand inspires confidence in classy girls who grew up loving tea parties and playing dress up. Today this girl has grown into the lady who still loves dressing up and feeling beautiful. She adores pearls, lace, romance and getting recognized for her gorgeous attire. She appreciates fine quality and detail, and regularly updates her wardrobe with flirty and tasteful pieces.

Sara and Aimee design every item with these women in mind. Each piece is similar to the clothing young girls discovered in their grandmother’s attic, yet stylish enough to wear today. These collections feature recycled fabrics or trim personally handpicked out of thrift stores and taken from vintage garments. This concept paired with surprise details, such as authentic vintage buttons, assures our clientele no two pieces will be exactly alike.

STAGE: The Savannah Disputation

Resurrect this! When susceptible Catholic spinster Margaret politely admits door-to-door pentacostal missionary Melissa into her home, her seemingly-solid faith starts to waver—much to the chagrin of her feisty sister Mary. But who's the blasphemer and who's the believer? Before long, the God-fearing sisters have ambushed their steadfast “guest” with the aid of an unsuspecting local priest, setting the scene for a smackdown of truly biblical proportions.

The Savannah Disputation is playing thru March 15 @ Playwrights Horizons

STAGE: Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire

One natural disaster strikes another! Experience the solo show sensation that took the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival by storm. Winner of the Village Voice Audience Award and FringeNYC's Outstanding Solo Show, this outrageous, politically incorrect comedy imagines Tennessee Williams’s tragic heroine has neither aged, nor left New Orleans. She was there when Katrina hit; she was sent to the Superdome; she was evacuated to Shreveport and entangled in the heartless bureaucracy of FEMA. Hers is a refugee story whose politics and pathos you have read, but one you've never experienced through the eyes of the desperately deliberately fragile, alcoholic, codependent, sex-addicted Blanche DuBois — America’s most broken woman™

Blanche Survives Katrina is playing now thru March 15 @ Soho Playhouse

STAGE: Conversation with a Kleagle

Photo credit: Underwood & Underwood/Corbis

Inspired by events in the life of civil rights leader, Walter White, the play takes place during the height of a lynching epidemic in the late 1920's. A black writer, passing for white, travels to the deep South to interview a kleagle (a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan). When his true racial identity is discovered he escapes, only to find that his rescuer's family paid a dear price, a price that brings the writer back down south to confront the kleagle and the Klan. Playing now thru March 15 @ 13th Street Repertory.

Conversation with a Kleagle by Rudy Gray is one of those rare shows that is important enough and powerful enough to warrant strong support and a large audience… Much of this play’s power comes from its revelation of the true face and danger of racism, often hidden behind carefully crafted personal facades or strategically controlled government positions… This play is an incredibly worthy piece of theatre. (NYTheatre.com, Ross Chappell)

STAGE: Sex Slaves in Mississippi??

There are 5,218 people living in Aberdeen, Mississippi. This is the story of 17 of them and the men that caused all of the trouble.

The whole thing started when Viola Haygood, the Assistant Librarian at the Charles B. Evans Memorial Library, fell in love for the umpteenth time. This one was new in town.

He was tall.

He was dark.

He was handsome.

And he smelled really good.

It was the dark coincidence of his arrival that caused the locals to comment.
Someone was kidnapping Aberdeen’s young women.

They were eating cheese nachos at Big Otis’s Saloon one night and gone the next. Not so much as a by-your-leave.
The town was getting nervous.

They were locking the stately front doors of their antebellum homes and the aluminum screen doors of their double-wide trailers. For the first time. Ever.

They would have called in the FBI but they didn’t have to, as that particular organization was proud to boast a national office on Aberdeen’s Main Street that runs along the scenic banks of the Tombigbee River.

This was a town in an uproar.

Dirty deeds being done dirt cheap.

Women being snapped up and carted off to who knows where.

FBI running up and down the streets like they knew which way was up.

Reporters descending like locusts.

Lawyers locking and loading.

And actor Frank Blocker plays them all.

Southern Gothic Novel: The Aberdeen Mississippi Sex-Slave Incident runs now through Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at Stage Left Studio Inc. in NYC.

BOOK/SCENE: Jimmy Carter reads in NYC tonight

See Georgia native Jimmy Carter live and direct tonight (1/26) as he reads from his new book, We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land, at Barnes & Noble (5th Ave & 46th St) at 7:30PM.

Amazon says: In this urgent, balanced, and passionate book, Nobel Peace Laureate and former President Jimmy Carter argues that the present moment is a unique time for achieving peace in the Middle East -- and he offers a bold and comprehensive plan to do just that.

President Carter has been a student of the biblical Holy Land all his life. For the last three decades, as president of the United States and as founder of The Carter Center, he has studied the complex and interrelated issues of the region's conflicts and has been actively involved in reconciling them. He knows the leaders of all factions in the region who will need to play key roles, and he sees encouraging signs among them.

Carter describes the history of previous peace efforts and why they fell short. He argues persuasively that the road to a peace agreement is now open and that it has broad international and regional support. Most of all, since there will be no progress without courageous and sustained U.S. leadership, he says the time for progress is now. President Barack Obama is committed to a personal effort to exert that leadership, starting early in his administration.
This is President Carter's call for action, and he lays out a practical and doable path to peace.

About the Author: Jimmy Carter was born in Plains, Georgia, and served as thirty-ninth President of the United States. He and his wife, Rosalynn, founded The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization that prevents and resolves conflicts, enhances freedom and democracy, and improves health around the world. He is the author of numerous books, including Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, An Hour Before Daylight and Our Endangered Values. He received a "Best Spoken Word" Grammy Award for his recording of Our Endangered Values. All of President Carter's proceeds from this series will go to the Maranatha Baptist Church of Plains, Georgia.