Marisa LaScala: Writer, Editor, and Good Addition to Your Bar Trivia Team

My profile of a local resident who went from near-homelessness to starring in regional theater.

Big River, Big Journey

...Though FaTye is a natural singer and performer, he still had a lot of ground to make up in his training. Luckily, the Westchester theater community embraced him. “Ninety percent of my training happened in Westchester,” he says. FaTye worked with the Broadway Training Center in Hastings-on-Hudson, the Actors Conservatory Theatre in Yonkers, the Lighthouse Youth Theatre in Thornwood, and the Lagond Music School in Elmsford, among others. “He’s incredibly hard-working,” Mallah says. “At Children’s Village, on one snowy day, he just got up early and shoveled all the walks.”

After high school, he studied at the American Musical Dramatic Academy and the Collaborative Arts Project before attending NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Not wanting to give up his apartment in Elmsford, he’d wake up at 4 am to commute to his 8 am classes. “I was never late,” he says.

Now, he’s starring as Jim in Big River, a show he calls “the pinnacle of my life” because of its parallels to his personal history. “Jim tries to get away from hardship, knowing something better is out there for him,” he says. “That’s who I am. I was always looking for the light, for the freedom.”

 

Click through to read the rest of the profile online, or download the PDF above.

 

I voted, then contributed two blurbs for PopMatter's list of best movies.

The 40 Best Films of 2011

No. 27: Super 8

In a year full of film nostalgia, Super 8 does double-duty, recalling the Amblin movies of the ‘80s while also touching on the joy of making homemade low-budget movies (and the never-ending quest for “production values”). While the monster-movie aspect of Super 8 is its weakest facet, its ensemble of youngsters is as strong as you can find in this year or any other. They’re plucky without being typical “movie kids”, their feelings ring emotionally true for adolescents, and director J.J. Abrams really nails the way a group of kids all talk over each other. As much as Super 8 made me think about the movies from my 1980s upbringing, what it really made me nostalgic for is hanging out with a gang of awkward-but-creative  pre-teens.

No. 13: The Descendants

Alexander Payne’s most recent movie comes with the strong script we expect from him, effortlessly weaving one family’s personal tragedy into the history of Hawaii with a laid-back, island-time pace. But what’s most remarkable about The Descendants is how Payne coaxes great performances from unlikely places. Sure, George Clooney, who carries the meat of the storyline, is as good as ever. But supporting him are career-making turns from Shailene Woodley (best known from The Secret Life of the American Teenager), Judy Greer (normally relegated to playing rom-com best friends), and Matthew Lillard (most often used for his goofball qualities). You wouldn’t expect to be able to throw a teen soap star, a perpetual best friend, and the comic relief onto an island together and get something so emotionally rich from them, but Payne did.

Click through to read the rest of the list at PopMatters

Seven Genius Urban Design Innovations

No. 2: Cyclehoop Car Bike Rack
It doesn't take much to create a structure you can lock a bike to, so we’re impressed when a bike rack has a bit of creativity behind it. Cyclehoop's Car Bike Rack—which has been making the rounds at special events in the U.K., such as the Big World October Walk, one of the events leading up to London's Olympic Games—works anywhere you can parallel park a car, and it has space enough for 10 bikes. It gets bonus style points for the pop-art colors.

No. 5: SFMTA Bus Shelters
The bus is often the most neglected form of travel, design-wise, getting neither the grand terminals of train stations nor the high-tech hubs of airports. At least San Francisco has a well- designed bus shelter, courtesy of Lundberg Design. The colorful, crimped roofs of the shelter aren't just there for visual whimsy; they harness solar energy that's used to power the LED displays, and excess energy feeds back into the grid.

Click through to see the rest of the slideshow at cntraveler.com.

I contributed three write-ups to PopMatters's list of the best television shows of the year.

The Best Television Shows of 2011

No. 33: Beavis and Butt-Head

You might guess that Beavis and Butt-Head, with their slacker attitudes and penchant for music-video-viewing, were wholly a product of their time. It turns out that the same dim-wittedness (and, in some cases, animation) work in any era. Sure, they’re now plopped in front of Jersey Shore and Teen Mom—shows that are basically their own self-satire, so you’d think there’d be nothing else to say about them. But writer/voice actor Mike Judge knows just what to say—something so profoundly stupid, it’s stupidly profound—to wring out the most laughs out of any situation, including The Situation.

No. 32: New Girl

New Girl begins with a very typical fish-out-of-water premise: When Jess (Zooey Deschanel) breaks up with her long-time boyfriend, she needs to find a new living situation and winds up taking a room in an apartment with three dudes. The charm comes from how goofy all four roommates are. Sometimes the boys rightfully tease Jess for her quirky social blind spots, and sometimes they’re just as clueless as she is. And it’s always a good time watching Deschanel indulge her ultimate inner dork.

No. 23: Up All Night

NBC has best comedies on television because the network broadcasts shows about people, not premises. Up All Night is proof: There are no wacky reasons these characters are together (sorry, 2 Broke Girls) and no contrivances keeping them there. Instead, the show—about a couple raising a newborn, simple as that—draws humor from its characters not through their circumstances, but by being who they are. And, with the comedic chops of Christina Applegate, Will Arnett, and Maya Rudolph behind them, who they are is very funny indeed.

Click through to read the rest of the list at PopMatters.

'Another Earth' Applies More Thought, Less CGI

"Too often characters in movies reveal too much of themselves to each other, or describe exactly how they’re feeling to each other. Another Earth never falls into this trap. John doesn’t come out and discuss his dead wife and child with Rhoda, and Rhoda doesn’t talk about her time in prison. Those experiences weigh heavily on them, but go unremarked upon. They exist in the background, like Earth Two.

Other times, though, it feels as if Another Earth somewhat squanders its best idea. Once the concept of Earth Two is introduced, the mind races with questions: How similar is it to Earth One? Is there a second version of me on the planet? If yes, is that person identical to me, or are there differences? If there are differences, who has the better life? Another Earth raises all of these questions without really exploring them. Instead, it spends all of its time on Earth One, detailing a story about grief, loss, and guilt—a story that’s not as original or intriguing as the double-Earth conceit."

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

I contributed two blurbs for PopMatters's list of the most terrible films that came out last year.

The Worst Films of 2011

No. 8: Abduction

True, spoilery fact: There is no abduction in Abduction. Sure, main character Nathan, played by Twilight’s second-fiddle Taylor Lautner, sees his own face on a missing-persons website. But it’s not because he was abducted as a child—and the real reason is almost too stupid to go into. (It was a trap so the bad guys could lure him out of his safe, secret-agent-led foster home?) What follows is a series of fights and chases led by the ultimately charisma-less Lautner, who doesn’t really sell his character ultra-trained CIA spawn, but is even less convincing as a normal teenager. What’s most confusing of all is how director John Singleton and actors like Maria Bello, Sigourney Weaver, and Alfred Molina got dragged down with him.

No. 3: Just Go with It

Let’s see what Adam Sandler had been doing surrounding Just Go with It. He played a rich guy with a hot wife in Grown Ups. He played a rich guy with a hot ex-wife in Funny People. Immediately following Just Go with It, he played a rich guy with a hot wife (and his awful twin sister) in Jack and Jill. Sandler’s most interesting comedies arise when he creates a character—either real people with real flaws that drive the action, like Billy Madison, or strange outlandish types like in Little Nicky. Now, he seems content with being the normal, rich dude who puts in the minimum amount of effort to woo whatever young actress is roped in to play his love interest. Just Go with It is the peak of this sort of Sandler laziness. He has to choose between the young paramour he’s been chasing (Brooklyn Decker) and his female best-friend-all-along (Jennifer Aniston). What’s unclear by the end of the movie is what, apart from his successful plastic surgery practice, either of them see in him.

Click through to read the rest of the list at PopMatters.

Back to Broadway

Our first thought upon hearing the news: she’s back! She’s back! After a four-year absence—during which she was on TV’s Private Practice—Audra McDonald is finally returning to Broadway. The 41-year-old Croton-on-Hudson resident already has received raves for her portrayal as Bess in The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess when the production opened at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge this summer. On January 12, it’ll open on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. The Cambridge production featured more backstory than its original incarnation, which has raised a few (high-profile) eyebrows among theater folk. We asked McDonald about going from the small screen to the big stage, awards pressures, and the controversial decision to change the Gershwins’ original work.

You’ve been on Private Practice for the past four seasons. How is doing television different from being on the stage?
In stage performances, you have the opportunity to live through your character’s entire dramatic arc without significant interruption, and you have to calibrate your performance—and maintain your physical and emotional stamina—accordingly. You also feel the audience’s response to your performance—whether enthusiasm or indifference; it’s almost like a chemical chain reaction. Television requires a different set of muscles. Shooting an episode of a TV series can be physically exhausting, but you’re doing scenes in much smaller chunks, with many interruptions and breaks. You have to learn to jump right back into a specific dramatic moment even if you’ve been mentally going over your grocery list and reminding yourself to call the babysitter while the crew is setting up the next shot. I actually really like the variety, which is why I don’t limit myself to one particular genre.

Download the PDF above to read the rest of the article.

For this feature package, I highlighted eight local up-and-comers: April Bukofser & Marin Milio, Clare Galterio, Todd Sandler, Stan Rosenberg, Malcolm D. MacDougall III, Stephen Ferri, and Jay Alvear.

People to Watch

The Hostess 
Clare Galterio

“Show me some dance moves,” Clare Galterio, 26, says to an older gentleman at a slot machine. Sure enough, he starts up with a jig of sorts. Galterio joins in.

“I deal with eighteen-year-olds all the way up to eighty-seven-year-olds,” Galterio says. “I need to be able to talk to anyone.” You want her to talk to you, too, because Galterio is the in-person and on-air hostess who does the big giveaways at the Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway. The public relations manager has given away cars, cash, even ShopRite gift cards to lucky gamblers. The filmed bits she does to promote the casino’s prizes are simulcast on cable and shown in casinos, racetracks, and bars all over the country (and a few in Canada, too). She’s also done segments for WPIX. Right now, she is auditioning for other TV hosting gigs. 

Galterio’s easy charm with people—which lets people do goofy dances without feeling silly—makes her a natural host. “I grab people from the audience. I do trivia. We do dance-offs.” Then again, Galterio is no stranger to performing. Growing up in Bedford, she danced her way through the studios of Westchester. “I’ve been dancing my whole life, but being on TV has always been my dream.”

Soon, that dream will be realized on an even bigger screen. Recently, she was cast—right off the casino floor—in Imogene, a movie starring Kristen Wiig and Annette Bening. She plays, fittingly, someone who gives away a car. “I did a tour for the directors when they wanted to film at Empire City,” she says. “They said, ‘Listen, we have a part written for someone to give away a car. Would you like to be in the movie?’ That was amazing because people don’t just give away roles like that, especially for speaking parts.”

Auditioning for other hosting jobs is not always easy. For example, she auditioned to be the new Nets announcer—on crutches. “I had to do it on a sprained ankle.” (She didn’t book the job, but the basketball season was truncated anyway.) In the meantime, life is good at Empire City. “I make people really happy,” she says. “I’m not the machine that they want to take out all of their frustrations on.”

Click through to read the rest of the feature package online.

Photo by Cathy Pinsky.

Prison Break
Cecil Suwal goes from tabloid fodder to personal-growth expert.

When you meet Cecil Suwal, you’d never guess that the 27-year-old Harrison native was a felon. She’s pretty, well-spoken, and graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University; she plans to get a PhD. But she and her then-boyfriend, now husband, Mark Brener, 65, were both sent to prison for running the Emperors Club VIP, the escort service that brought down Eliot Spitzer.

Suwal pleaded guilty in 2009 to money laundering, conspiracy, and conspiring to promote prostitution and served six months in the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. (Brener was sentenced to 30 months.) “Prison was extremely difficult,” she says. “We lost everything. But I can’t necessarily say I regret it, as it has helped us grow up in ways that we wouldn’t have had if we were still living the life we were living before.”

After a brief return to Westchester post-prison, Suwal and Brener are reunited, married, and together have written a self-help book, The Science of Activating Your Supreme Power, and founded a website theoneworldinitiative.com, They’ll also be teaching a personal-growth class at The Learning Annex in Manhattan. We asked Suwal about her experiences.

[Q&A Excerpt]

What was your reaction when Mark told you he was running an escort service? Did you have any reservations about working there yourself? Conceptually, for me, an escort service is okay—a prostitution ring is not. An escort service is designed to fulfill needs like having a date on the town, traveling together, and going to dinners and shows. That idea seemed perfectly legitimate and fun in my eyes.

What was prison like? Prison was the absolute most difficult time period in my life. I was isolated from the rest of the world, isolated from my family. I had to leave my school, leave my entire life and everyone I loved.

And now you’re married? Mark wanted to marry me before. I wasn’t ready. Being separated from him made me realize I was ready to marry him. Being away from him meant that I experienced life without him, and I could say that I preferred life with him to life without him.

How did your previous experiences inform the book you’ve written? We wanted to write a personal-growth book. Mark and I were always trying to help people, though, clearly, the vehicle we were using wasn’t a good idea.
 
Click through to read the rest of the Q&A online.